Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The old school argument, it seems to me, automatically discounts anyone from the past two decades or even longer. I get the romantic notion that men were men in the good old days and today's pitchers are wimps, but the game is what it is, today's pitchers don't choose to be rested more or to be on pitch counts.

I think the argument of innings per game and complete games is not a very good one; the game is just different. I don’t think it should be dismissed because it’s not a pitchers choice; we hold things against pitchers for many reasons out of their control. It wasn’t Smoky Joe Wood’s decision to blow his arm out either. Any metric intended to exclude entire eras is, I think, unreasonable in the context of an “all time” argument. Yet this is the most frequent type of argument made; most all time arguments end up where people are attempting to structure an argument to simply effectively, if not explicitly, exclude eras they don’t like as much. Kershaw is a wimp, Grove sucked and the 19th century just doesn’t count for all time at all.

What I think is a better argument than the one posited, if one wants to go down this road and to attempt to exclude modernity, is total innings. If a pitcher pitches less innings in a game or season because teams want to avoid injury and extend careers (at least, that’s how I remember the arguments a couple decades ago) those innings should be effectively made up by that extended career. But we don’t see this. The last 20 years or so has seen plummeting innings (there is of course a general downward trend through all of baseball history) but pitchers don’t seem to ever make those innings up later in their careers, by extended careers with healthy carefully nursed arms. It seems pitchers are blowing out as fast as ever, though I’m too lazy to track down a dataset tonight.

I’m not saying I agree with this, but this seems the better way to dismiss modernity if one is so inclined: it’s not their fault, but they are used poorly and have less value because their careers are so needlessly short as a result.

Personally, I think “all time” is obviously a context centric argument, and all eras must be included and should generally balance out. An all time won’t balance perfectly because greatness is so very rare that samples of it will naturally fluctuate without bias or without era preference. One season may have 5 players have truly great seasons in context, and another only 1 because of random chance.

I would exclude modernity in the sense of active players, because we cannot reasonably evaluate the totality of something that is not complete. But all time should include 1876 to the most recently retired player, and generally see a fairly even number of players from each era in the conversation. People tend to gravitate to dead ball, the mid 20’s to early 30’s, the 50’s and 60’s, or the ultra modern and gloss over the other eras.

Personally, I think the modern way of using pitchers makes strategic sense but is boring and wimpy as hell and one reason I’ve lost most interest in the current game. The players as great as any other era, but it’s boring and baseball has lost the feel of a pastoral romance that made it the national pastime.