Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Your logic would mean there's no such thing as a great pitcher who pitches to contact, or who isn't a dominant strikeout pitcher, because once a batter puts a ball in play it's all just dumb luck. That just does not square with experience. Did you ever watch Greg Maddux pitch?

Put another way, putting a ball in play on a pitch that was a hanging curve or a fastball with no movement down the middle is just not the same as doing so on a wicked slider two inches off the plate. A great pitcher can throw more pitches that are difficult to make solid contact with and thus your chances of getting a hit off him on a ball you put into play is not just random or some stat that will eventually hit the mean.

Isn't that the whole idea behind good knuckleball (or sinkerball) pitchers? Don't let batters get good contact on balls so they hit mostly pop us, weak grounders, or foul balls. But that isn't really cool anymore so no one really tries mastering it. Nowadays seems like everyone wants the studs throwing 100 MPH that strike everyone out, so are more and more the kinds of pitchers you see coming up.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by BobC

Isn't that the whole idea behind good knuckleball (or sinkerball) pitchers? Don't let batters get good contact on balls so they hit mostly pop us, weak grounders, or foul balls. But that isn't really cool anymore so no one really tries mastering it. Nowadays seems like everyone wants the studs throwing 100 MPH that strike everyone out, so are more and more the kinds of pitchers you see coming up.

I've watched enough baseball games to be pretty damn sure there are pitchers who are harder to hit solidly whether you put the ball into play off them or not, but maybe it's all an illusion. Incidentally Maddux' BABIP for his career was 9 points below the league average, and if you exclude his end of career seasons probably a bit better than that. That seems significant to me but I don't know. Kershaw -- 23 points below.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I've watched enough baseball games to be pretty damn sure there are pitchers who are harder to hit solidly whether you put the ball into play off them or not, but maybe it's all an illusion. Incidentally Maddux' BABIP for his career was 9 points below the league average, and if you exclude his end of career seasons probably a bit better than that. That seems significant to me but I don't know. Kershaw -- 23 points below.

Peter,

I'm with you. It's the interperative abilty of some people that seems to totally fail them. Oh, they can compile the data and create the formulas and all, but they still have to then determine and interpret the results and how truly meaningful they really are.

Example, there are a ton of different tax programs out there that are used by accountants, and some are definitely better (or worse) than others. Truthfully, most accountants/CPAs will tell they all have issues and could use lots of improvements to work better and more effectively. But the problem is these programs are created by programmers, not the accountants/CPAs that most often use them. And when we complain to programmers about issues, shortcomings, and errors in these programs they invariably give us their excu.....er, reasons, for not being able to really change anything because they are the programmers, we are not, and they know what they are doing so that is how it is. Hard to believe there could be so many variations in tax software out there when they are all supposedly trying do the same calculations across the board. One would think all tax programs should pretty much be exactly the same, basically this minus that times this rate = income taxes due, right? But its not, because programmers know programming, not taxes. And each different programmer puts their own unique thinking, biases, and such into the tax software product they create. And that's why their different tax software can end up being easier or harder to use than others, can do more or fewer things, and can even come up with completely different tax liability results.

Now go back and swap statisticians for programmers, and ask them to develop their formulas and equations to determine who the greatest lefty pitcher of all time is, instead of how to figure out what your income taxes will be next year. Want to guess how many statisticians will come up with different equations/formulas, along with different answers to the question, especially since each statistician will likely complete their assignment using their own definition of what "greatest" means, without ever asking what you or anyone else thought or wanted it to be?

[Peter_Spaeth]

I was told Maddux' BABIP "tracked precisely" the BABIP's of his era. I'd still like to know if -- given that in fact his career BABIP was 9 points lower than the average -- that is tracking precisely or not. Hard to explain away 23 years or whatever it was as a small sample size.

The other thing is, his BA against was 14 points lower than the average, even though he wasn't much of a strikeout pitcher. How does that happen?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I was told Maddux' BABIP "tracked precisely" the BABIP's of his era. I'd still like to know if -- given that in fact his career BABIP was 9 points lower than the average -- that is tracking precisely or not. Hard to explain away 23 years or whatever it was as a small sample size.

The other thing is, his BA against was 14 points lower than the average, even though he wasn't much of a strikeout pitcher. How does that happen?

Statistics don't lie Peter, so you've got to be right! LOL

Maybe a better question to ask some statisticians is what day of the week it is (or maybe what hour of the day), because that's how quickly their sample sizes and other statistical arguments seem to change in this discussion.