O/T Best Starting pitcher of all time.

[sycks22]

To those that said CY Young, he struck out a guy every 3rd inning, gave up the most hits / most losses. He's the Favre of baseball, some nice records, but when you throw a complete game every time out there you're bound to get some records. Don't get me wrong 511 wins is amazing, but over 300 losses is pretty bad.

[martyogelvie]

I'm a sucker for stats so I picked Cy..

the best I ever saw would be Tom Terrific.. and having never seen the pre war guys its hard to get a feel for them vs simply looking at the stat line.

I love it when the subject of unbreakable records comes up and folks overlook CYs 511 wins.. I simply point out that a pitcher could win 20 games for 20 years in a row and still be 100 wins shy of CY.. that is the MOST unbreakable record IMO of any record in sports...

[Brendan]

Originally Posted by sycks22

To those that said CY Young, he struck out a guy every 3rd inning, gave up the most hits / most losses. He's the Favre of baseball, some nice records, but when you throw a complete game every time out there you're bound to get some records. Don't get me wrong 511 wins is amazing, but over 300 losses is pretty bad.

He had 511 wins. His winning percentage was actually very good. Compare his winning percentage to other greats and he's in the top bunch. The record he holds for the most losses gives him an impression that he had a low winning percentage. .618 is not low.

Giving up the most hits is just a novelty stat. Same thing with strikeouts. Because he pitched the most innings of any pitcher, he is going to have some of these records. If you want to go that route, he also has the record for games started, innings pitched, batters faced, complete games and earned runs. You can make an argument that ERA means something, but an out is an out whether it's a flyball at the wall or a strikeout. Also, three and a half strikeouts per game was not that low in those days.

Originally Posted by Cy2009

Another point about a closer, especially Rivera. For a team to win a game, the team must score more runs than the other team. It becomes far more difficult when the team is behind and has to come up with runs to come from behind to win the game. How many times has Rivera helped his team come from behind to win a game?

Don't undermine his RBI!

[packs]

I've said it before, but I think you guys are being very shortsighted about Rivera. What he is able to do is incredible. You and I will never see a more dominant pitcher in our lifetimes. Rivera is a gamer. I wouldn't give the ball to any other pitcher in history in the ninth inning of game 7 of any World Series.

Rivera's post-season numbers:

8-1 with an 0.71 ERA in 139 IP with 42 saves, 86 hits allowed and only 21 walks.

I'm not saying Mariano is the best pitcher of all time. But I would agree that he is the most dominant pitcher ever to step onto the mound.

[Hankphenom]

This is an almost impossible task to determine by the stats, but why should we even try? First, who did the hitters from each generation name the most often? That should give you one pitcher from each generation, more or less. Then take what the hitters say about the pitchers they've seen pitch during their lifetime, especially the old-timers who stayed in the game a long time as managers, scouts, coaches, etc. That should boil it down to a select few. Then get out the numbers and start crunching them if you want. And I don't think you can compare relief pitchers to starters. As others have said, we have no idea what it would have been like for Walter Johnson or Bob Feller, for example to only have to get through one inning at a time. Then there's the element of criteria: are we talking about the pitcher with the nastiest stuff, or the most effective pitcher? All this is great fodder for discussion.
Hank Thomas

[ls7plus]

Originally Posted by packs

I've said it before, but I think you guys are being very shortsighted about Rivera. What he is able to do is incredible. You and I will never see a more dominant pitcher in our lifetimes. Rivera is a gamer. I wouldn't give the ball to any other pitcher in history in the ninth inning of game 7 of any World Series.

Rivera's post-season numbers:

8-1 with an 0.71 ERA in 139 IP with 42 saves, 86 hits allowed and only 21 walks.

I'm not saying Mariano is the best pitcher of all time. But I would agree that he is the most dominant pitcher ever to step onto the mound.

With all due respect, gentlemen, Rivera's not even lined up in the starting blocks against guys like Grove, Johnson, Koufax, Martinez, Mathewson, Alexander and Spahn (13 20-win seasons?? Imagine having your staff ace every year for 17-18 years!!!). Sorry, Rivera's out of his element here, and simply a non-starter (pun intended!).

Makes for some good controversy, though, albeit quite short-lived!

Larry

[Touch'EmAll]

I heard about one pitcher who could top them all ... named Sidd Finch

[Cy2009]

Here's another interesting stat concerning Walter Johnson vs. Mariano Rivera.

Mariano Rivera pitched in 1200 innings, total. Walter Johnson pitched 110 complete game shutouts. Plus Walter lost 26 complete games 1-0. That means that Walter pitched more complete game shutout innings plus 1-0 loss innings than Mariano pitched in his entire career (1224-1200).

Cy