--- "John D. Giorgis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Thus, the mere fact that Sandy Kofax isn't tops in > strikeouts - (and the fact that you didn't really > follow that up with other signgle-measures of > greatness) tells me nothing about whether or not > Kofax merits the title of "greatest pitcher of > all-time." > > JDG
John, that's my point. What is the purpose of a pitcher? It's to keep runs off the board. That's it. A pitcher has only one function on a team. No-hitters, strikeouts, "stuff", they're all meaningless. The only thing that counts is keeping runs off the board. Bob was telling me about strikeouts and stuff and no-hitters. The first two of those are things that get you to a good pitcher. The third is just a fun statistic. It's impressive, but a no-hitter does no more for a team than a one-hitter. That's why we talk about ERA. Even more it's why we talk about ERA+ (that is, ERA adjusted for league and park context). As you get more sophisticated we can talk about Win Shares (Bill James's new invention) or VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) - all these wonderful tools that people have invented to measure exactly how good a pitcher is. They are designed to take into account all these varying factors that go into what makes a great pitcher. Bob, so far as I can tell, is arguing that we should just abandon all of these ideas in favor of I remember that guy, he was really great. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month! http://sbc.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
