Poll - Greatest Living Player

[aro13]

For anyone that saw Koufax pitch he will always be the greatest pitcher they ever saw. Nobody can change that.

However, no one had more circumstances or advantages that favored him than probably anyone in history including Bonds.

He was a very good pitcher up until 1961 who happened to pitch in a lousy home park in the Coliseum. In 1962 the Dodgers moved to Dodger Stadium the greatest pitchers park in history. In 1963 the strike zone was made larger both up (a huge advantage for fastball pitchers that worked up in the zone) and down. In 1962 mound heights were virtually ignored and when Koufax pitched in Dodger Stadium he was pitching down hill. At home Koufax walked 2.1 men per nine on the road 3.5 men per nine. Check out the perfect game by Koufax when a complete unknown named Bob Hendley threw a one hitter in the same game. The mound height was crazy high.

The best example of the mound height and the influence in Dodger Stadium is in 1964 when Dean Chance of the Angels (who happened to be playing their home games in Dodger Stadium until Anaheim stadium was built) won the CY Young award by posting a 1.07 era at Dodger Stadium.

Evaluating Koufax is really hard, if you just look at the raw numbers he has a place in the discussion for greatest ever but if you look at the circumstances it sways the decision. I don't know where to put him, but you would likely be better off trying to convince people that the world is flat than Koufax wasn't an elite pitcher.