Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[jgannon]

Originally Posted by G1911

Again, ignoring every other year, and again, the evidence does not support the conclusion that when the strike zone was expanded, he moved into a pitcher friendly home park and his road stats stayed flat, he learned some new mechanic and that was responsible for the change instead.

Nobody is arguing his teammates were better, as discussed before, so that is irrelevant to the question of the thread.

The math shows his home road splits are extremely unusual with one of the most extreme home park heavy splits of all baseball history. There is no reason to think that so many favorable factors aligning are not the primary cause of his success only when circumstances heavily favored him. It was not until Expansion, a heavy pitcher park and an expanded strike zone he improved at home. The argument this is random chance and not the cause is disproven by the huge gap in his splits.

A logical, fact-based or statistical case for Koufax that does not pretend inconvenient facts simply do not exist would be interesting to undertake.

Below, is something I wrote in a post on page 3 after posting Koufax's stats. I think it's important to consider. Again, I am not saying that Chavez wasn't a factor. My argument is that Koufax began to improve prior to the move to Chavez, and if he hadn't, we wouldn't be discussing him right now.

What I said on page 3:

If your argument is that Chavez Ravine, largely created the phenomenon that was Sandy Koufax, look at his away E.R.A's. You'll notice that from 1955 - 1959, they were really quite high. He brought things down a bit in 1960, but obviously with an 8-13 Won/Loss Record, and an overall 3.91 E.R.A. for the year, it wasn't exactly a banner year.

Then look at 1961, which was a year before Koufax and the Dodgers played at Chavez. Koufax' away E.R.A. is down below 3.00 for the first time, at 2.77. His Won/Loss Record goes up to 18-13.

Interestingly, in the spring of that year, catcher Norm Sherry spoke with Koufax about his control. In an interview, he said:

'It was 1961 in Orlando, where we went to play the Twins in an exhibition game. We’d talked on the plane going over there, and he said, “I want to work on my change-up and my curveball.” We went with a very minimal squad because one of our pitchers missed the plane. Gil Hodges went as our manager. [Koufax] couldn’t throw a strike, and he ended up walking the first three guys. I went to the mound and said, “Sandy, we don’t have many guys here; we’re going to be here a long day. Why don’t you take something off the ball and just put it in there? Don’t try to throw it so hard. Just put it in there and let them hit it.”'

''I went back behind the plate. Good God! He tried to ease up, and he was throwing harder than when he tried to. We came off the field, and I said, “Sandy, I don’t know if you realize it, but you just now threw harder than when you were trying to.” What he did was that he got his rhythm better and the ball jumped out of his hand and exploded at the plate. He struck out the side. It made sense to him that when you try to overdo something, you do less. Just like guys who swing so hard, they can’t hit the ball. He got really good.'


Koufax himself said, 'I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.'

Now if you look at his record going forward, the next year, yes, the Dodgers moved to Chavez, and his record improved. But his away record improved also. The 3.53 E.R.A he posted on the road in 1962, is misleading. His last legitimate start was on July 12th where he pitched 7 innings beating the Mets 1-0. However, by this point, the pain in his pitching due to a crushed artery in his left palm, put him on the disabled list after a one-inning outing at Crosley Field on July 17th, a game in which he was tagged for the loss, and was credited with an 18.00 E.R.A.

He attempted to pitch again in September and October, getting into four games. Three out of those four were on the road. His E.R.A for the month of September was 8.22 and for October, ws 27.00. He only pitched a total of 8.2 innings in September and October. And if you add the inning he pitched on July 17th, that's a total of 9.2 innings. Four out of five of those games were on the road. If you eliminate the E.R.A.'s from those games, his away E.R.A. goes down significantly. It would be interesting to calculate that. Maybe we could do that in a bit.

Then you go on the 1963 -1966 run. And we all know what Koufax did there. His E.R.A.'s on the road respectively are 2.31, 2.93, 2.72, 1.96.'

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Koufax's E.R.A. improved on the road, as compared to the early part of his career. The downward trend began before the expansion of the strike zone and before the move to Chavez.

We're not disagreeing on there being outside factors that coincided with Koufax's great run. We're just disagreeing on your saying that those factors were the only thing that made the pitcher. I say, without the change Koufax made in his approach to pitching, he would not have made his push to greatness.

And I think there are other factors beyond the numbers that factor into greatness. Koufax pitched through pain much of the time during the height of his career, pitching complete games. Add to this, his rising to the moment in the 1963 and 1965 World Series.