Best lefty off all time? My vote is Koufax!

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by tschock

It's a skill. It's a preference to do it but a skill to master it. Which they both did. So both had their own skill set which they mastered. The end result of them having a different style pitching and each pitching to their own strengths. Neither would have been nearly as successful of a pitcher had they tried to pitch in the style of the others strength.

As to the article, it is good in what it does, but it's comparing averages and really doesn't mean much when you are looking a pitchers on the elite end of the scale, as is the case with both Johnson and Maddux. They both were much more effective in what they do so you could probably ignore what any 'analysis' would say they should do.

That point has some merit.

Maddux and Johnson were extremely gifted at what they did and were on the extreme end of the scale.

What many forget about Maddux is that Maddux had an above average fastball in his prime. He sat in the low 90's on his fastball. League average was 88. Add in the elite movement and command, Maddux was something special and a power pitcher in his own right(in his prime).

Maddux ended up with 3,371 career strikeouts. I think many fans forget Maddux is a member of the 3,000 strikeout club.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by HistoricNewspapers

That point has some merit.

Maddux and Johnson were extremely gifted at what they did and were on the extreme end of the scale.

What many forget about Maddux is that Maddux had an above average fastball in his prime. He sat in the low 90's on his fastball. League average was 88. Add in the elite movement and command, Maddux was something special and a power pitcher in his own right(in his prime).

Maddux ended up with 3,371 career strikeouts. I think many fans forget Maddux is a member of the 3,000 strikeout club.

I bet half his Ks were getting batters to swing at pitches off the plate or that broke into the dirt.

[AndrewJerome]

The point has been made several times that humans are getting bigger, taller, and stronger as time goes on. This is undeniably true, but for me this has a much more pronounced impact on other sports like basketball, football, track and field, swimming etc. It’s undeniable in basketball. NBA players are simply taller, more athletic and more skilled now than 30 years ago. Guys who play like the Greek freak, near 7 feet tall, did not exist 30 years ago. There is no modern Spud Webb or modern Mugsy Bogues. Same in football. O linemen and D linemen are significantly bigger, stronger, and more athletic now than 30 years ago. And obviously track and field times get lower and lower. Swimming times get lower and lower. All of those athletes are bigger, taller, stronger, and more athletic than the athletes that came before them in those sports. I’m not sure this exactly tracks in baseball. And that’s why I love baseball, and don’t enjoy track and field and swimming as much. It is true that some baseball players now are bigger, taller, stronger than ball players of previous times. Pitchers especially. However, this is not true across the board for elite baseball players. The best athletes simply don’t always make the best baseball players. Again, this is what makes baseball great. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever, and he was a pretty terrible baseball player relative to MLB stars. Bigger, taller, stronger, more athletic doesn’t always equate to better in baseball. As a hitter, you need elite hand eye coordination, eyesight, and wrist strength to create bat speed for any of the bigger, taller, stronger to matter. Little Jose Altuve at 5’ 4” has this ability as a hitter, which makes baseball great. As a pitcher, you need some semblance of control for a 100 MPH fastball to matter. You need to be skilled. You need to have control of the strike zone. The fact that modern pitchers overall throw harder does not make every single one of them all better pitchers than the pitchers who came before them. And I have no idea what more height and more weight has to do with being a good pitcher besides getting you more velocity (and giving you much more risk of blowing your arm). Anyway, you need to be able to locate the ball and get guys out for any of that to matter. Straight 98 MPH fastballs down the middle get crushed by good hitters. I have a ton of respect for Nolan Ryan. And Nolan Ryan threw really, really hard for his time. He also wasn’t nearly the best pitcher of his time. He never won a Cy Young in his 20+ years of pitching. There’s a lot more to pitching than just how hard you can throw.

Randy Johnson has freakish size for any era. He first pitched in 1988 at 6’ 10”. It’s 2021. If he’s the model of baseball evolution or whatever other phrase you want to call it, then there should be 7 foot guys now dominating the sport. It isn’t going to happen. Randy is an outlier. Once you get to about 6’ 3 or 6’ 4” that’s about it for being an elite baseball player. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to field ground balls won’t work out so well. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to swing at pitches at their knees won’t work out so well. It would be comedy gold though. There’s limit to how much height helps you as a baseball player.

Vlad Jr isn’t great because he’s bigger, taller, stronger and more athletic than previous ball players. He lost 40 pounds last year and he’s still squishy. He’s not some freak physical specimen. But he can smash a baseball.

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by AndrewJerome

The point has been made several times that humans are getting bigger, taller, and stronger as time goes on. This is undeniably true, but for me this has a much more pronounced impact on other sports like basketball, football, track and field, swimming etc. It’s undeniable in basketball. NBA players are simply taller, more athletic and more skilled now than 30 years ago. Guys who play like the Greek freak, near 7 feet tall, did not exist 30 years ago. There is no modern Spud Webb or modern Mugsy Bogues. Same in football. O linemen and D linemen are significantly bigger, stronger, and more athletic now than 30 years ago. And obviously track and field times get lower and lower. Swimming times get lower and lower. All of those athletes are bigger, taller, stronger, and more athletic than the athletes that came before them in those sports. I’m not sure this exactly tracks in baseball. And that’s why I love baseball, and don’t enjoy track and field and swimming as much. It is true that some baseball players now are bigger, taller, stronger than ball players of previous times. Pitchers especially. However, this is not true across the board for elite baseball players. The best athletes simply don’t always make the best baseball players. Again, this is what makes baseball great. Michael Jordan was the best basketball player ever, and he was a pretty terrible baseball player relative to MLB stars. Bigger, taller, stronger, more athletic doesn’t always equate to better in baseball. As a hitter, you need elite hand eye coordination, eyesight, and wrist strength to create bat speed for any of the bigger, taller, stronger to matter. Little Jose Altuve at 5’ 4” has this ability as a hitter, which makes baseball great. As a pitcher, you need some semblance of control for a 100 MPH fastball to matter. You need to be skilled. You need to have control of the strike zone. The fact that modern pitchers overall throw harder does not make every single one of them all better pitchers than the pitchers who came before them. And I have no idea what more height and more weight has to do with being a good pitcher besides getting you more velocity (and giving you much more risk of blowing your arm). Anyway, you need to be able to locate the ball and get guys out for any of that to matter. Straight 98 MPH fastballs down the middle get crushed by good hitters. I have a ton of respect for Nolan Ryan. And Nolan Ryan threw really, really hard for his time. He also wasn’t nearly the best pitcher of his time. He never won a Cy Young in his 20+ years of pitching. There’s a lot more to pitching than just how hard you can throw.

Randy Johnson has freakish size for any era. He first pitched in 1988 at 6’ 10”. It’s 2021. If he’s the model of baseball evolution or whatever other phrase you want to call it, then there should be 7 foot guys now dominating the sport. It isn’t going to happen. Randy is an outlier. Once you get to about 6’ 3 or 6’ 4” that’s about it for being an elite baseball player. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to field ground balls won’t work out so well. 6’ 8” and taller guys trying to swing at pitches at their knees won’t work out so well. It would be comedy gold though. There’s limit to how much height helps you as a baseball player.

Vlad Jr isn’t great because he’s bigger, taller, stronger and more athletic than previous ball players. He lost 40 pounds last year and he’s still squishy. He’s not some freak physical specimen. But he can smash a baseball.

It is common misconception to believe size does not matter a lot in baseball. There is a reason why the average height of a pitcher is Six foot three and not 5 foot 9. Same for hitters. The average male human is around five foot nine, and if size did not matter then the league would also be five foot nine in average and there would be several five foot three guys being MVP's

If size did not matter then how come there are no Five foot three MVPs??

There are few outliers who are small at the plate and on the mound, but small guys like Altuve still weigh 165 pounds, not 140 like some in the pre war era.

There aren't any six foot eleven pitchers dominating baseball now, but there are plenty of six foot five + ones....and go back go pre war times and show me how many six foot five pitchers were better than average(and not some stiff).

But you are right, there is a lot of natural ability to be able to hit like Vlad that is in your genetic code. There is a certain body make-up to allow someone to throw 98 MPH. When you have 8 billion people in the world you will produce more players that possess that ability as opposed to when you have only 2.5 billions people in the world.

Then when you consider that the population to draw from players in 1930 ONLY included white americans, and no minorities and no world wide players, that severly limits the player pool and why you don't have those guys league wide throwing 95 MPH, and when one came along, he was a marvel.

I will await the list of five foot five Cy Young winners and five foot three MVP players if size does not matter in baseball. If you find any, they come from when the talent wasn't nearly as good in the early 1900's, because everyone else was smaller too.

BTW Vlad is six foot two and anywhere from 230-250. That is a lot of muscle mass underneath any 'blubbler'

I understand that baseball fans want to cling to the notion that the players of yesteryear did it better, etc....but that is not reality...and I'm from yesteryear.

Go ahead and do a search of current pitchers being over six foot five and see how many of them reach the upper 90's on their fastballs. Guys like Tyler Glasnow would be an absolute monster in 1933, standing six foot eight and throwing 99 MPH, and has command and knows how to pitch.

Scherzer is only average height at six foot three right now. He averages 94 MPH and can hit the upper 90's, with movement. His command is better than ANY 'control' pitcher that pitched before 1980, without a doubt, except he threw harder than all of them and most likely taller than all of them.

Your assertion that these guys just throw harder and thats it is utterly and completely false.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Pedro wasn't exactly a big dude, maybe 5 foot 10 and 170.

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Pedro wasn't exactly a big dude, maybe 5 foot 10 and 170.

That threw 97 MPH with movement and command....and would not be pitching in 1933. There was not a pitcher in MLB in 1978 that possessed what Pedro had.

Five ten is not five three. Edited to add that he was 5 '11.

Size alone does not make someone good. It has to be coupled with velocity, command, and everything else.

Do you really believe that Don Drysdale would be 'Don Drysdale' if he maintained his velocity and everything else, but was only five foot five instead of six foot five??

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

I bet half his Ks were getting batters to swing at pitches off the plate or that broke into the dirt.

I would bet more Ks were from those called third strikes way outside the Braves staff were famous for getting.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by bnorth

I would bet more Ks were from those called third strikes way outside the Braves staff were famous for getting.

Maddux and Glavine were geniuses at expanding the strike zone. Pedro got a lot of those calls too.

[HistoricNewspapers]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Maddux and Glavine were geniuses at expanding the strike zone. Pedro got a lot of those calls too.

Isn't that true of every great, in every sport...to get the calls?

[HistoricNewspapers]

I also want to add that in addition to being taller AND throwing harder, that command has gotten better over time, not worse, especially by the hard throwers.

The two kings of fastballers, Feller and Ryan, averaged 4.1 and 4.7 walks per nine innings, which is not good. They were marvels in their time and they did possess velocity as good as the best today, but they were rare in that regard...and their control was not as good as the flame throwers of now.

They were freaks of nature in their time due to their velocity, and now they would just be another pitcher in the clubhouse in regard to velocity, but with the organization waiting for them to develop command before they were good enough to contend with the big boys for awards and the big contracts.

In all of this, I do not want to minimize Koufax though. Koufax did have a great prime good enough to be in the discussion, even considering everything I've said, and it is unfortunate we didn't get to see how he would have held up. Just that Johnson was better .

PS, and a nod to Ryan for reinventing himself to gain command and that knowledge did help pitchers like Randy Johnson. The early players get their due to being pioneers, as without them the next generations of players wouldn't have learned more by watching the best of the previous generations.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by HistoricNewspapers

I also want to add that in addition to being taller AND throwing harder, that command has gotten better over time, not worse, especially by the hard throwers.

The two kings of fastballers, Feller and Ryan, averaged 4.1 and 4.7 walks per nine innings, which is not good. They were marvels in their time and they did possess velocity as good as the best today, but they were rare in that regard...and their control was not as good as the flame throwers of now.

They were freaks of nature in their time due to their velocity, and now they would just be another pitcher in the clubhouse in regard to velocity, but with the organization waiting for them to develop command before they were good enough to contend with the big boys for awards and the big contracts.

In all of this, I do not want to minimize Koufax though. Koufax did have a great prime good enough to be in the discussion, even considering everything I've said, and it is unfortunate we didn't get to see how he would have held up. Just that Johnson was better .

PS, and a nod to Ryan for reinventing himself to gain command and that knowledge did help pitchers like Randy Johnson. The early players get their due to being pioneers, as without them the next generations of players wouldn't have learned more by watching the best of the previous generations.

Don't disagree with anything you've said, just not sure what the overall point is in regard to the size and condition of players today versus yesterdays, and the finesse/control versus speed/dominance comparison, and where your take is on all this. If I missed or didn't connect the dots properly from something in an earlier post, my apologies.

Your comment about Feller and Ryan being freaks of nature is not inaccurate, but then, so are all the modern pitchers that throw close to or over 100 MPH today. Just because more of them are now pitching in the majors today is probably a bigger testament to the money and modern technology fueling the search for such talent, not that there were necessarily fewer freaks back in Feller's days. The overall world population back then was smaller, as was the portion of the population even being considered as possible MLB candidates. But no average, normal human being can go anywhere near consistently throwing 80-90 MPH pitches, let alone 100 MPH, then or now.

And the talk about pitchers being taller and stronger nowadays has some equal questions I feel. The taller aspect does have some play as it does give players a physical advantage over shorter players, such as in terms of the angle at which pitches come at batters. Think back to the '60s when pitcher dominance was so great that MLB lowered the mounds. Suddenly finding a pitcher of Randy Johnson's height would negate that mound reduction. Also, someone of Johnson's height has longer legs and arms than the average MLB pitcher. So not only are his pitches coming at batters from a higher release point and angle, his increased stride distance and arm length due to height results in him actually releasing the ball a lot closer to home plate than anyone else. And if memory serves, isn't a pitcher's MPH velocity still measured at a single point just after having released the ball (if not, please correct me)? In which case, even though a shorter pitcher may be clocked at a higher absolute MPH speed, a taller pitcher's throws will have a shorter distance to go, thus reducing the amount of speed reduction during flight from the pitcher's hand to the catcher's mitt, and likewise significantly reduce a batter's time to react to a pitch. And I believe the reduced batter reaction time is a much more critical and important factor than the absolute MPH velocity of pitches in determining a pitcher's success. So it begs the question, since there are supposedly so many taller athletes today (just look at the NBA), why aren't all MLB rosters filled with multiple pitchers closer to '7 tall than to '6 tall?

And then that brings up the question of a pitcher's strength, and how that can possibly effect their ability to, as they say, "throw harder". In truth, it would seem actual physical strength has maybe very little to do with how hard and fast a pitcher throws. Otherwise you'd expect alll modern pitchers to have arms that looked like Schwarzenegger's in his prime. Fact is, most pitchers would likely tell you that bulking up makes them a worse pitcher, and they need their pitching musceles to be more flexible and resilient than as big as possible.

So my point is that as far as modern pitchers are concerned, the bigger, faster, stronger narrative may not really fit it all. Instead, it seems to be more of a question of human anatomy, dynamics and muscle and body structure all coming together in such a way as to optimize the human pitching machine, if you will. Human size, strength, and speed don't seem to matter that much, at least when it seems the optimization of the human pitching machine occurs mostly at or just a bit above the average U.S. male size and body structure, and almost never occurs at extreme outliers like being '5"3 or '6"10 tall. And those on the shorter extreme have the added disadvantage of their stride and arm length, causing their pitches to have to travel farther from hand to catcher's mitt than taller pitchers, and thus giving batters even more time to react to their pitches. So in terms of probability, I would expect there to be more very tall MLB pitchers than there ever will be very short ones. Having said that, if you think Feller and Ryan are freaks, I don't think they even come close to the super freaky level that Randy Johnson is at, to have been able to pitch like he did with those body dimensions. And no one would ever mistake Johnson for Schwarzenegger.

So because of all this, I still think that the notion of all ballplayers from past eras, especially as it concerns pitchers, not being anywhere near as good as today's players, may not stand up as much as they'd like you to believe when it comes to the elite players from those earlier eras. Such as Grove and Spahn, who stood '6"1 and '6"0, respectively, sort of in that wheelhouse size for the optimal human pitching machine.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by HistoricNewspapers

Isn't that true of every great, in every sport...to get the calls?

It's only completely anecdotal, but I thought especially after his 1990 playoff tirade Clemens from that point on had to earn everything he got with the umps.

Certainly true in basketball, in terms of foul calls and not calling traveling.

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

It's only completely anecdotal, but I thought especially after his 1990 playoff tirade Clemens from that point on had to earn everything he got with the umps.

Certainly true in basketball, in terms of foul calls and not calling traveling.

I definitely subscribe to this theory. I think it's actually much more significant than people realize, across the board. I actually started including which umpires were behind the plate in my models and always wanted to include interaction variables between umps and pitchers to see who was prejudiced for and against who, but never got around to it. It was too much work and I was retiring from full time gambling anyhow (and sports betting wasn't my primary income source anyhow, poker was. Sports betting was supplementary income). The juice just wasn't worth the squeeze. But it definitely has an effect.

[clydepepper]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Maddux and Glavine were geniuses at expanding the strike zone. Pedro got a lot of those calls too.

The secret, of course, is to almost always be close. The more control you show, the more control you are 'given'.

Wild pitchers almost never get the borderline calls.


.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by clydepepper

The secret, of course, is to almost always be close. The more control you show, the more control you are 'given'.

Wild pitchers almost never get the borderline calls.


.

Yep. If you can get a large percentage of strikes called on pitches even an inch or two off the plate, that's just a huge advantage for the pitcher against most hitters who lose efficiency very quickly as you get towards the inside or outside of the plate and even more off it. An integral part of the confrontation that just isn't measured by BABIP or whatever. And why a master of placement such as Maddux can be every bit as much a joy to watch as a dominant strikeout pitcher, if not more so.