Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[cammb]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Look at his three Cy Young seasons where his numbers are just phenomenal, as well as his next two best seasons, and I'd be curious why you think they don't measure up to Koufax. PS If the issue with Kershaw is post season, yeah I agree with that.

I am from the old school where innings pitched, strikeouts, complete games and shutouts mean something. Yeah, he is no akoufax

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by cammb

I am from the old school where innings pitched, strikeouts, complete games and shutouts mean something. Yeah, he is no akoufax

Look at Kershaw's K/9 it's quite high. Higher than Koufax actually. As for the other stats, it's hardly Kershaw's fault that he pitches in an era that thinks differently about starting pitchers and days between starts and pitch counts.

[G1911]

Kershaw has pitched more innings (2,454) in his career than Koufax (2,324) did.

Kershaw (2,670) has more strikeouts than Koufax (2,396) did.

Kershaw has a better K/9 than Koufax, 9.8 to 9.3.

Koufax had 40 Shutouts, Kershaw has 15. Kershaw is the active leader, as complete games are dead (unfortunately, personally).

This old-school argument (which I don't think is generally invalid or necessarily bad, innings matter a lot I think, CG's not so much) doesn't seem to support Koufax over Kershaw.

[Carter08]

I have no problem agreeing that wins might be an overrated stat and peak years can outweigh longevity. That said, when Spahn has 198 more wins than Koufax and 178 more wins than Koufax those numbers are just too astronomical for me to overcome. I mean those are would be really high win counts on their own but they are just the delta between Spahn and two greats.*

*Just purchased a PSA Type 1 autographed photo of Spahn from 1942 and am accordingly very biased.

[Carter08]

Originally Posted by Carter08

I have no problem agreeing that wins might be an overrated stat and peak years can outweigh longevity. That said, when Spahn has 198 more wins than Koufax and 178 more wins than Koufax those numbers are just too astronomical for me to overcome. I mean those are would be really high win counts on their own but they are just the delta between Spahn and two greats.*

*Just purchased a PSA Type 1 autographed photo of Spahn from 1942 and am accordingly very biased.

I meant 178 more wins than Kershaw.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

Kershaw has pitched more innings (2,454) in his career than Koufax (2,324) did.

Kershaw (2,670) has more strikeouts than Koufax (2,396) did.

Kershaw has a better K/9 than Koufax, 9.8 to 9.3.

Koufax had 40 Shutouts, Kershaw has 15. Kershaw is the active leader, as complete games are dead (unfortunately, personally).

This old-school argument (which I don't think is generally invalid or necessarily bad, innings matter a lot I think, CG's not so much) doesn't seem to support Koufax over Kershaw.

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.

[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.

[Mark17]

Originally Posted by G1911

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.

I agree with this.

Originally Posted by G1911

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 don't think the goal was to have pitchers extend their careers so much as to reduce injuries and always have a "fresh" arm on the mound. Back in the day, pitchers would pace themselves out of necessity. Not all of Christy Mathewson's pitches were his top effort. In his book, "Pitching in a Pinch," he says he didn't throw his fadeaway more than a few times per game because it was hard on his arm. So when you look at a statistic like strikeouts, for example, modern guys who are only expected to throw 65 or 70 pitches in their start can give 100% on every pitch. Grove and Spahn couldn't; they had to pace themselves. They would've much preferred getting a fly out with one pitch, than a strikeout with 5 or 6 pitches.

So, just as people argue that Grove/Spahn were great over a long period of time and Koufax is given an unfair advantage if the criteria is to only look at his best 5 seasons, I would also say that modern pitchers have an unfair advantage over the old-timers (including Koufax) on a per pitch basis, because every one of their pitches is their 100% best, while with the old-timers, maybe they were bearing down with 80% of their pitches, but easing up a bit, for expediency, 20% of the time.

Originally Posted by G1911

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.

I agree with this, especially the last paragraph.