Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

How does your analysis factor in Koufax' first 6 seasons (half his career, total WAR 6.8) or do you just disregard it? Since you haven't I don't think actually given us your analysis, but just talked down to us about how stupid we are, it seems a reasonable question.

One other aside, Koufax first pitched 66 years ago and last pitched 55 years ago. He's a lot closer in time to Grove (who pitched until 1941, just 14 years before Koufax started) than to today's pitchers. Why do you completely discount Grove because he pitched in prehistoric times, but apparently treat Koufax' numbers as legit?

Because he's KOUFAX. Logical consistency doesn't matter. Math doesn't matter. Context doesn't matter. He's KOUFAX. It's irrelevant that Spahn pitched 11 of Sandy's 12 years, Spahn and Grove must be dismissed as pitchers of antiquity, for the dominant pitcher of modernity, Koufax, who hasn't pitched in 55 seasons. But even though our argument centers on defining the best of "all time" as the best of an arbitrarily and completely inconsistently decided modernity (hence, it's not really of "all time", now is it?), we will dismiss Kershaw too, who is the obvious choice if the modernity argument is made sincerely because....

Well I'm sure there's a super advanced statistical argument you and I are too stupid to understand, even though no actual statistical argument has been given, simply a series of fallacies, references to common unadjusted statistics that are then walked back, and an appeal to statistical authority.