--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: By the way I > thing Tom Seaver a pretty knowledgable baseball guy > who had some knowledge of Koufax growing up in > California has said he thinks Koufax was the best > pitcher ever.
Well Koufax, Bob, a pretty knowledgeable baseball guy, said that Pedro was better than he was. That's worth something too, don't you think? Bob, I have some idea of what a phenomenally accomplished doctor you are. I'm just asking that you to apply the same sort of rigorous thinking to something that is much easier to analyze - if you put your emotions aside. Let's say I was a pharma rep for GSK trying to sell you on Zocor. If I came to you and told you how great Zocor was, I'm guessing that you would demand the clinical data. If I hemmed and hawed for a while, and then finally admitted that, well, the clinical data says that Lipitor is stronger, what would you say? If I told you about how these great doctors (from before Penicillin was invented, or the role of cholesterol in heart disease was discovered) all thought Zocor was stronger, that might impress you a little bit, I guess. And I could tell you stories about that time Lipitor didn't do anything for my friend's cholesterol problem, but Zocor cleared it right up. But if the M&M data said that Lipitor has better life-extending results (which I think it does) and the clinical data said that it was stronger at lowering LDL and raising HDL (which I'm pretty sure it is) then would you prescribe Zocor to your patients just because I told you it was wonderful? I hope not. You said that Pedro and Koufax both had the best ERA possible. But that's not really true, is it? Gibson had a better ERA than Koufax at least once - much better. So it was _possible_ to put up better numbers than Koufax did during his era - and Gibson wasn't in Dodger Stadium. There's one yardstick for you right there. No pitcher has put up numbers that even vaguely resemble Pedro's at his peak during the last few years. But there were pitchers who put up numbers that were comparable to (or better than) those of Koufax. Gibson, IIRC, won 26 games in 1968. Now, W-L for pitchers aren't particularly informative, but, well, how often did Koufax do that? Now, here is the player page for Koufax at the Baseball Prospectus Web Site: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/cards/koufasa01.shtml And here is the player page for Pedro: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/cards/martipe02.shtml You tell me what those numbers suggest. I'd point out that "Stuff", which is a rough statistic that BP uses for dominance, has Pedro as considerably better than Koufax in his best seasons. If we use your metrics - that is, just against the other players of his time, ignoring park effects, difficulty, everything - then why isn't Gibson the best ever? His 1968 season was better than anything Koufax ever did, phenomenal though Koufax was. If Koufax had five seasons so much better than everyone else that they automatically qualify him as the most dominant pitcher ever - why didn't he win five Cy Youngs? Randy Johnson has five. Clemens has six. Maddux won _four in a row_. Pedro won three in a row, and probably deserved more. You mentioned postseason performance. The first question, of course, is how many Division Series did Koufax have to pitch his team through? How many League Championship Series? So yes, he did very well in the World Series. But in terms of pure postseason performance, did he do anything as impressive as Randy Johnson last year? Mike Mussina in 1997? Lots of people claimed that Barry Bonds couldn't "hit in the clutch" because of his poor postseason performance. Do you still think so after last year? Willy Mays, I would point out, _sucked_ in the postseason. Does anyone blame him for it? No, of course not. Players who people like are clutch players, and players who people don't like aren't, and that's as far as it goes. The same thing with injuries. It's true that Maddux has much better medical care available to him than Koufax did - not that he's ever needed it, but certainly it's true. But Koufax had better medical care than Walter Johnson. Which one was more durable? Koufax was legendarily fragile during his own era. If you're right, and we only count players against their contemporaries, what does that tell us? Furthermore, Koufax had what Maddux and Pedro don't - a high pitching mound, and the chance to take it easy against at least half the batters in the other teams lineup. Don't you think that decreased his chance of injury? If statistics only told us what we "know" to be true, then they would be useless anyways. It's only when they tell us something that is contrary to our perceptions that they are useful. In this case, the statistics are saying something that you don't like, Bob, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. Now, if they declared that Andy Pettite was the greatest pitcher ever, then clearly we'd have to cook up some new statistics. That would be absurd. But it's certainly reasonable to say that Pedro's 1999 season was the most dominant ever. It's also reasonable to say that Gibson's 1968 season was. Or one of Koufax's great ones. It just so happens that Koufax's don't seem to quite make the grade against Pedro's best, and Koufax's career clearly doesn't quite make it against, say, Seaver or Clemens. That doesn't make him anything less than a phenomenal pitcher - one of the best of all time. Just not _the_ best. ===== 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
