Gautam Mukunda <sniped Gautam's post except for>
> A team with Pedro (at his peak, the best pitcher ever) There are a lot of pitchers who were better 'at his peak'. Has he thrown a perfect game? (I know I know, not an official perfect game.) A no hitter? I think that it is even wrong to say 'at his peak' like he will have no more good years. I think Randy Johnson is the best pitcher right now and has been for a long time. Ever? No. Me: No, but what does it matter? Is the job of a pitcher to throw perfect games? Is Greg Maddux an inferior pitcher because he never has? The job of a pitcher is to keep runs off the board. If he got 27 groundouts to shortstop there's no difference between that and 27 strikeouts. There has never, in history, been any pitcher as good at keeping runs off the board as Pedro was last year. Last year he had the largest margin between his ERA and that of the second place pitcher in history - and he had it by a lot. He also had the largest margin between his ERA and that of the league average. Again, by a lot. Even Randy Johnson, incidentally, says that Pedro is better than he is. Randy is phenomenal - basically, in fact, he's Sandy Koufax. Their careers are, at this moment, almost indistinguishable, although Randy is going to keep going, so he will be more valuable over the course of his career quite soon. But there are empirical data to show that Pedro's last two seasons are the two best by any pitcher ever. There is, as I keep emphasizing, _data_. No offense but what you've said above isn't analysis, it's assertion. What makes Randy better than Pedro? More strikeouts? First, Pedro was the only pitcher in the American league to have more than 300 strikeouts, and he I believe set the record for strikeouts per 9 innings pitched, which means he's actually a better strikeout pitcher than Randy, although with fewer innings, and he _did this in the American League with a DH_. But even if he didn't, so what? Strikeouts, again, are not the job of a pitcher. They're just cool to look at. A lower ERA (adjusted for park and league)? No, Pedro's is lower, by quite a bit. If that's the case, how could Randy be better? He pitches more innings, true, but Pedro's innings are _so much_ more effective that he more than makes up for it. Check out _Baseball Prospectus 2001_ or their website www.baseballprospectus.com. We have very good metrics of pitcher effectiveness, and Pedro just blows everyone away on them. Kevin: The problem is that even last year the Yankees were considered toast. They didn't win their division, barely made the playoffs by limping in with a horrible September. Then they win the world series. Everyone wants to call the Yankees out, every year. So statistically yes a lot of teams look better, but that doesn't mean a thing when the bright lights are on. What about the Mariners? The A's have the best record in the second half of the season and have swept the M's. The Yankees have handled the M's but not the A's, I wish they were playing Seattle first. It's just nice to have posts like this to replay later. Kevin T. Me: I should point out that I made an extended post predicting who would make the playoffs pretty close to the beginning of the season. Someone can look, but I recall predicting the Yankees (if the Red Sox had injury problems), Cleveland, Seattle, Oakland, Atlanta, Houston, St. Louis, and LA - and I said that the NL West was too close for me to be confident in my call on the last one. If St. Louis keeps its lead in the NL Central, I will, I believe even have called division winner/wild card correctly for every division save the NL West. 7 for 8 isn't too bad, so I hope people do keep my posts to look back at them later :-) In particular as when Oakland was well below .500 I picked them to win more than 90 games, as Dan M. can verify :-) The Yankees, I should note, _absolutely_ won their division last year. The only time the Yankees have ever been the wild card was 1997 when they were behind the Orioles and lost to the Cleveland Indians in the ALDS. How do you think they made the playoffs? Seattle, after all, was the wild card, Oakland and the White Sox won their divisions. While the A's do have the best second half record (and I love the A's) the Mariners have the best for the season, which is a very important predictor. By what definition of handled do you say that the Yankees have handled the M's? I am willing to say with a fair degree of certainty - without looking it up - that the Mariners have a winning record against the Yankees this season. Finally, note the influence of the unbalanced schedule. The Yankees have beat the snot out of the pathetic <sob!> Orioles and Devil Rays, with their only competition being the very mediocre Red Sox and Blue Jays. The Mariners and Oakland have not only had to play each other, I believe that _every team_ in the AL West is fairly close to .500. My web connection is down, so I can't look it up, but I believe that is the case. Doing what they have done in a division that difficult is even more impressive. Note that I'm not saying the Yankees won't win. A 5 or 7 game series is just a flip of the coin. The worst team in baseball could take a 7 game series from the best. I'm just saying that the A's and Mariners are better teams, and will _probably_ win. Gautam
