Barely OT: ESPN Ranking Greatest Players

[bosoxfan]

Originally Posted by Matt

I stopped looking through when I saw Pedro Martinez ahead of Lefty Grove & Grover Alexander.

If your talking about the greatest pitcher and longevity is not a BIG part of the equation, Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all time.

He had the best 5 year period of any pitcher ever and that includes Grove, Koufax, ect.........

These questions are not a waste of time. Discussing subjects like this is what make sports great. Not as great as Pedro but great just the same.

[AMBST95]

These lists have about as much merit as the NCAA Football Coaches Poll

[CobbvLajoie1910]

Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all-time?

I needed that laugh this morning. Thank you
(No offense, Red Sawk fans. I do admire your passion though!)


Now, if we are talking about most cowardly hurlers of all-time.....Mr. Martinez, come get your major award.

Originally Posted by bosoxfan

If your talking about the greatest pitcher and longevity is not a BIG part of the equation, Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all time.

He had the best 5 year period of any pitcher ever and that includes Grove, Koufax, ect.........

These questions are not a waste of time. Discussing subjects like this is what make sports great. Not as great as Pedro but great just the same.

[CMIZ5290]

Originally Posted by CobbvLajoie1910

Pedro Martinez is the greatest pitcher of all-time?

I needed that laugh this morning. Thank you
(No offense, Red Sawk fans. I do admire your passion though!)


Now, if we are talking about most cowardly hurlers of all-time.....Mr. Martinez, come get your major award.

+1

[tbob]

Nolan Ryan better than Bob Gibson??? Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux better than Christy Mathewson??? Phil Niekro better than Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell and Rube Waddell??? Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher of all time???
What a joke....

[WWGjohn]

Not to belabor the point on the "roids & HGH" players but when comparing the effect of amphetamines to roids and HGH there is no comparison. Amphetamines are antifatigue agents but do not enhance strength, promote tissue growth, or accelerate healing. HGH especially can increase the amount of fast twitch muscle fiber which in turn would translate into faster bat speed. It's a serious step up in artificially boosting your performance.

[cyseymour]

What a baffling list. Clemens over Cy Young? I will defend the Pedro Martinez ranking, though. I saw him in his prime and he was absolutely sensational. It was fireworks. Pretty much all the guys in Boston who've seen him will defend him. There will never be another one in our lifetime like that.

[z28jd]

Originally Posted by WWGjohn

Not to belabor the point on the "roids & HGH" players but when comparing the effect of amphetamines to roids and HGH there is no comparison. Amphetamines are antifatigue agents but do not enhance strength, promote tissue growth, or accelerate healing. HGH especially can increase the amount of fast twitch muscle fiber which in turn would translate into faster bat speed. It's a serious step up in artificially boosting your performance.

Doesn't matter, they're all against the rules. If those players from the 60's had the same rules in place as they do now, the numbers would've diminished. If they had HGH available, you can guarantee the numbers would've went up. They had amphetamines, and they used them freely from what we have heard. You want to hold the players from the "steroid" era to high standards when no rules were in place, then you have to hold the older players to the same standards because both groups were breaking later rules.

What you have to do is be able to compare the players to their own generation, and that is how you figure out who is the best. Steroids don't make you an all-time great, in some cases they can hurt. Rondell White, Ruben Sierra and Carlos Baerga all bulked up a lot over one off-season and all of them slumped badly because they were too bulky.

No one here knows who was actually clean during the steroid era, so how do you rate any of them high? If you want to eliminate a few, aka the usual suspects, then you have to eliminate them all.

Since I can't positively name one clean person from the 60's on, and unless there is a clean baseball player on this board we don't know about, no one else here can either. So I go back to the method of weighing the players against players from their own time period. The early 2000's had big stats all around, so a 50 home run season doesn't hold as much weight as a 50 homer season from the 1930's, etc

It's amazing that in hindsight, the steroid era was actually 4-5 bad guys beating up on all the clean guys, or at least that is what the story has been changed to...

[cyseymour]

One thing to remember about Pedro, Maddux and Randy Johnson is that they were going up against all those juicers. The league ERA's were astronomical, and they were still putting up incredible numbers.

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by cyseymour

One thing to remember about Pedro, Maddux and Randy Johnson is that they were going up against all those juicers. The league ERA's were astronomical, and they were still putting up incredible numbers.

Agreed - that same kind of context also makes Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell look even better than they were at first glance. Pitching in an era where a .300 batting average wasn't particularly impressive can put a big hurting on a pitcher's numbers.

[EvilKing00]

Originally Posted by Gecklund311

Agreed - that same kind of context also makes Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell look even better than they were at first glance. Pitching in an era where a .300 batting average wasn't particularly impressive can put a big hurting on a pitcher's numbers.

soooo u dont think Johnson was on the juice??? or hgh?? come on man - piazza was too, so were most of them, its all good

[Gecklund311]

Originally Posted by tbob

Nolan Ryan better than Bob Gibson??? Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux better than Christy Mathewson??? Phil Niekro better than Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell and Rube Waddell??? Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher of all time???
What a joke....

Agree on almost every count - Ryan couldn't carry Gibson's jock. If my life was riding on a baseball game, I'd probably choose Gibson in his prime to pitch it - he was a money pitcher of the highest order.

I would argue the Maddux point though - he was pretty much the modern day Matty in that he played for a relatively dominant team of his time and was noted as much for pitching with his brain as much as his stuff. The difference is that Maddux pitched a large part of his career in an era that was a hitter's paradise, making his numbers even more impressive.