Monday, July 09, 2012

THE GREATEST PITCHER OF ALL TIME


Through the years baseball has seen some of the greatest pitchers in baseball dominate their league, and sometimes cross over to the other league due to free agency. Seeing them dominate one team after another, and watching the stats they generate become more amazing year after year leads to the question: Who was the best pitcher of all time?

I really don’t know if that question is answerable when you look at all the variables that come into play. Health, weather, the night before and the team being faced on a particular day are all intangibles.

If I were to pick the best they would be:
Tom Seaver, Cy Young Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan and Bob Feller. Of those individuals some are way before my time and most have pitched under different sets of rules like 100 pitch counts as opposed to going until you tired. There is one criteria that I think is so important, but not used in consideration of evaluation, that being smarts. Raw power is great, but sometimes pitchers don’t have it on a particular day and smarts are needed. Compensating for a lack of a certain pitch in a pitcher’s arsenal is what makes greatness greater.

But who is the best? This is subjective and my opinion probably doesn’t agree with yours, but that is what makes baseball so interesting. I would rule out all pitchers that pitched in pre-1935 because of the ball, the talent and the fact that the talent was all white. When the Hispanic, Black and Asian players started to show up and play in the majors, the talent suddenly became even better, and so the difference.


Two pitchers stand out in my mind as the greatest, whose careers overlapped and could be considered contemporaries, Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson. They both held the same characteristics that make me think they were the greatest. Both had tremendous talent, had determination, could strike a batter out and were focused and arrogant in their approach. Neither one would accept mediocrity, but when they did pitch, you could almost guarantee they would be dominating.

Seaver; Career: 311-205 (18th), 2.86 ERA, 3640 SO (6th), P, Hall Of Fame in 1992, 3xCy Young Award, 1967 NL Rookie of the Year, 12xAllStar, Mets/Reds/... 1967-1986, Right handed, 5x K Leader.

Gibson; Career: 251-174 (46th), 2.91 ERA, 3117 SO (14th), P, Hall Of Fame in 1981, 1968 NL MVP, 2xCy Young Award, 9xAllStar, 9xGG, Cardinals 1959-1975, Right handed, 1x K Leader.

You may wonder why I would make this comparison and say both were so great when clearly, Seaver seems to have better stats. Intangibles, intangibles, intangibles, that is what makes then so similar, and if you asked the hitters that faced both pitchers in their prime, you would get different opinions about who was the greatest.

That's all I wrote, folks!

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