I am in no way saying this is a definitive measure of a player's absolute worth on the scale of baseball history, but it's a great tool to measure just how dominant a player was/is relative to his competition. ERA+ measures the pitcher's park-adjusted ERA in a ratio with the league average ERA during that same time, with 100 being league-average (just like OPS+). For example, a pitcher with an ERA+ of 70 is 30% below average, while a pitcher with an ERA+ of 125% is 25% better than the league average.

Here is the top 20 all-time leaders in ERA+, and I've got to be honest, I knew the top guy was good, but I didn't realize he was THAT good. There are also a couple of unbelievably dominant relievers on the list (though maybe not the ones that you’d expect) as well as some interesting active players:

1. Pedro Martinez, 160
2. Lefty Grove, 148
T3. Walter Johnson, 146
T3. Dan Quisenberry, 146
T3. Hoyt Wilhelm, 146
T3. Joe Wood, 146
T7. Johan Santana, 145
T7. Ed Walsh, 145
9. Roger Clemens, 144
10. Jim Devlin, 143
T11. Addie Joss, 142
T11. Al Spalding, 142
13. Roy Oswalt, 140
14. Kid Nichols, 139
T15. Mordecai Brown, 138
T15. Cy Young, 138
T17. John Franco, 137
T17. Randy Johnson, 137
19. Bruce Sutter, 136
20. Pete Alexnder, 135

This list can't be correct, it doesn't have Nolan Ryan in the top 3![/Texags]

quote:

---

I knew the top guy was good, but I didn't realize he was THAT good

---

Only reason Pedro isn't mentioned more in the "greatest pitchers of all time" talk is his longevity.

Clemens may very well hit 5000 innings, while Pedro could close his book before he reaches 3000 due to injuries.

before I clicked this, I thought "Pedro has to be top 5"

Pedro's 2000 season (18-6, 1.74 ERA, 284 K, .737 WHIP, 7 CG, 4 SHO) is the second greatest ERA+ season of all time, at 285. He's bested only by Hall of Famer Tim Keefe's 1880 season, when he posted a 294 ERA+ with 12 shutouts in 12 starts, an ERA of 0.86 and a WHIP of .838.

The list is flawed...where is John Koronka???

I think the problem with ERA+ is that I don't think the average pitcher is as good as 40 years ago. Now that everyone has a five man rotation that's a lot more pitchers in the league, add that there are more teams and that waters things down even more.

quote:

---

1. Pedro Martinez, 160
2. Lefty Grove, 148
T3. Walter Johnson, 146
T3. Dan Quisenberry, 146
T3. Hoyt Wilhelm, 146
T3. Joe Wood, 146
T7. Johan Santana, 145
T7. Ed Walsh, 145
9. Nolan Ryan, 144
10. Jim Devlin, 143
T11. Addie Joss, 142
T11. Al Spalding, 142
13. Roy Oswalt, 140
14. Kid Nichols, 139
T15. Mordecai Brown, 138
T15. Cy Young, 138
T17. John Franco, 137
T17. Randy Johnson, 137
19. Bruce Sutter, 136
20. Pete Alexnder, 135

---

fify

Go ROY!!

It's a secondary stat, if not a tertiary one. It's all in what you want to acknowledge with stats. Stats like this one very nicely ignore the opinion of the players who faced them (among other things). They are neat to look at, but that's about it. Stat monkeys won't put the Ryan Express so high, but if you hear what the players who faced him say, there isn't a single pitcher who they would rather not face than Nolan Ryan. Unfortunately, Walter Johnson and anybody who faced him are long dead, and we have to rely on second hand analysis to compare players from different eras (eras, not ERAs).

Imagine what it'll be like in 50 years when stat monkeys sit around and laugh at how people used to take things like ERA+ and VORP seriously.

Neat list though, thanks for posting it (seriously, no sarcasm).

quote:

---

Stats like this one very nicely ignore the opinion of the players who faced them (among other things). They are neat to look at, but that's about it. Stat monkeys won't put the Ryan Express so high, but if you hear what the players who faced him say, there isn't a single pitcher who they would rather not face than Nolan Ryan.

---

The problem with this argument is stats are supposed to take out the subjectivity and base judgments on facts not opinions. We use stats because our eyes deceive us in determining who was most effective at achieving the primary object of the game which is to score more runs than one's opponent. The goal of a pitcher is to limit the opposition's ability to score runs, not to be the most feared by opposing batters. Ryan may have been one of the most intimidating pitchers in the history of the game but the fact of the matter is when compared with the elites of the game, he wasn't as successful in limiting the opposing team's ability to score runs as judged by his ERA.

[This message has been edited by themissinglink (edited 7/11/2007 2:28a).]

I've been arguing with anyone that will listen that Pedro is a much, much better pitcher than Clemens. Clemens has him on longevity stats (more K's, wins, etc.) because he's played much longer (like how Nolan did).

But on a yearly basis...it's not even close. Pedro is the best, most dominant pitcher of our time & maybe even ever.

I consider Clemens one of the greatest, if not THE greatest pitcher of all time.

But I certainly wouldn't argue with those that say year-by-year that Pedro was better -- he was... Pedro was just unable to do it for the period of time that Clemens did.

quote:

---

Pedro is the best, most dominant pitcher of our time

---

I think Randy Johnson might have some argument there. He had some pretty monster seasons in Arizona.

Randy Johnson couldn't hold a healthy Pedro's athletic supporter.

Randy was great in Arizona but go back and look at Pedro at the turn of the century. He was INSANE in late-90s/early-00s.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/m/martipe02.shtml

quote:

---

Stat monkeys won't put the Ryan Express so high

---

What?

Are you implying that there is a conspiracy against Ryan and that SABR is specifically creating statistics that hurt him?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Check out "Texas A&M & Baseball In No Particular Order"
at tamu-and-baseball.com


[This message has been edited by AgRyan04 (edited 7/11/2007 9:08p).]

Since we're debating the greatness of guys still in the game, here's the ERA+ leaderboard for active pitchers:

1. Pedro Martinez, 160
2. Johan Santana, 145
3. Roger Clemens, 144
4. Roy Oswalt, 140
5. Randy Johnson, 127
6. Greg Maddux, 135
7. Roberto Hernandez, 133 (there's a name you didn't expect to see on this list)
8. Carlos Zambrano, 130
T9. Kevin Brown, 127
T9. Roy Halladay, 127
T9. Tim Hudson, 127
T9. Mike Timlin, 127

I haven't seen his name listed among the greatest active pitchers talk on this thread, so it's worth pointing out that Greg Maddux is the only pitcher pitcher not named Pedro Martinez or Walter Johnson to have two seasons on the top ten all-time single season ERA+ list:

1. Tim Keefe (1880), 294
2. Pedro Martinez (2000), 285
3. Dutch Leonard (1914), 279
4. Greg Maddux (1994), 273
T5. Walter Johnson (1913), 259
T5. Greg Maddux (1995), 259
7. Bob Gibson (1968), 258
8. Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown (1906), 253
9. Pedro Martinex (1999), 245
10. Walter Johnson (1912), 240

Maddux isn't as entertaining of a pitcher as the likes of Pedro, Clemens, and Johnson, because he's not a strikeout pitcher, but he's still going to go down as one of the all-time greats.

[This message has been edited by WestTxAg06 (edited 7/11/2007 9:38p).]

I don't quite understand pitcher's park adjusted ERA, but considering that Pedro had that amazing season starting 50% of the time at Fenway and also in the steroid era, is quite an amazing accomplishment

It speaks well of Roy Oswalt too that he has started half of his games in hitter friendly MMP.

----
And of the flipside, one thing that works against Nolan Ryan is that generally speaking his 'home park' for most of his career was a pitcher's park. Definitely the Astrodome, also Shea Stadium, and old Angels Stadium too.

quote:

---

Randy Johnson couldn't hold a healthy Pedro's athletic supporter.

---

Are you serious? Here's Randy's first four seasons in Arizona:

1999 17-9 2.48 ERA 364 K 12 CG
2000 19-7 2.64 ERA 347 K 8 CG
2001 21-6 2.49 ERA 372 K
2002 24-5 2.32 ERA 334 K 8 CG

Look at those strikeout numbers. That's sick.

Quiz! That's a blast from the past. He was fun to watch throw, unless he was playing against your team.

No Steve Carlton? I expect to see him on lists like that. He hurt his career numbers with his last few seasons, but numbers are still impressive.

my buddies & i were emailing about clemens/pedro not too long ago. here are some stats.

clemens has raw #'s on him. more k's, more wins, etc. he's also played 8 more years 22 to 14. but biggio has more hits than mickey mantle, more doubles than mickey mantle....you see where i'm going. and nolan ryan has more stats than all of them.

pedro has

a better winning % (on crapier teams)
more k's per 9 innings
better era (and clemens pitched in the pre-steroids era...85-92)
better strikeouts to walk ratio
better batting average against
better ops
pedro's had an era over 4.00 once (last year) clemens has had it 5 times
pedro's never had a losing season....clemens has had 2
clemens averaged 177 k's per season. pedro averaged 215

we also talked about johnson & maddux. they are both great...but don't quite measure up in the long haul against pedro or clemens.

the better question is who are the top 5 pitchers of this era? top 4 are easy...who's the 5th?

quote:

---

my buddies & i were emailing about clemens/pedro not too long ago. here are some stats.

clemens has raw #'s on him. more k's, more wins, etc. he's also played 8 more years 22 to 14. but biggio has more hits than mickey mantle, more doubles than mickey mantle....you see where i'm going. and nolan ryan has more stats than all of them.

pedro has

a better winning % (on crapier teams)
more k's per 9 innings
better era (and clemens pitched in the pre-steroids era...85-92)
better strikeouts to walk ratio
better batting average against
better ops
pedro's had an era over 4.00 once (last year) clemens has had it 5 times
pedro's never had a losing season....clemens has had 2
clemens averaged 177 k's per season. pedro averaged 215

---

The Mickey Mantle/Craig Biggio analogy is an interesting one. Raw numbers are misleading in determining the greatness of a player who had health problems in his career or who didn’t play for an ultra-long period of time like Clemens has. Another example: Sandy Koufax is tied for 94th on the all-time wins list at 165, and 38th on the all-time strikeouts list at 2,396. Are pitchers like Chuck Finley, Jim Kaat, Bill Lee, and John Candelaria better than Koufax? I think not, even though they rank higher on those aforementioned statistical leaderboards.

Raw numbers are worth something, but in my opinion, they don’t tell the whole story. Looking at the raw numbers, one would think that Clemens is no doubt better than Pedro. However, though I haven’t studied the question enough to say for sure, I think that based on the statistics that a pitcher has control over (strikeout rate, walk rate, and home runs allowed) you could make a pretty convincing argument that Pedro is a greater pitcher than Clemens.

The fact that Pedro put up two sub-2.00 ERA years in the offensively explosive late 1990s is just unfathomable.

quote:

---

we also talked about johnson & maddux. they are both great...but don't quite measure up in the long haul against pedro or clemens.

the better question is who are the top 5 pitchers of this era? top 4 are easy...who's the 5th?

---

Going on ERA+, you’d have to say that Johan Santana and Roy Oswalt are making pretty strong arguments to be included among the greatest pitchers of the era. They’re both under 30, though, and since this list is composed of guys with a full career’s worth of innings already, I'm hesitant to include them in "greatest of the era" talk just yet. As such, I think the two names to consider for rounding out the top five of this era are John Smoltz and Curt Schilling.

With similar career lengths (Schilling has pitched for 20 years, Smoltz 19), raw numbers are a pretty solid metric for comparisons. Schilling leads in strikeouts and wins (though not by much). The two are tied in ERA+. I think you also need to consider saves, since Schilling was a closer for a time, and Smoltz converted to that role for four years. Schilling has 22 career saves, Smoltz has an impressive 154 (with a three year stretch of 55, 45, and 44 saves). Who gets the edge? Probably Smoltz, because I don’t think Schilling’s small lead in wins and strikeouts can overcome the fact that Smoltz has been incredibly dominant not only as a starter, but as a closer, too.

It wouldn't be fair, though, to compare the two without mentioning their postseason performances. In 15 appearances, Schilling is 8-2 with a 2.06 ERA. Impressive. Smoltz, though, has pitched for better teams over his career, and thus has 40 postseason appearances. His line stands at 15-4, 2.65, with 4 saves. Smoltz also deserves credit for being an integral part of the greatest baseball game of the last 25 years: Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, when he and Black Jack Morris dueled for 9 shutout innings, before Smoltz gave way to Alejandro Pena, who gave up the only (and Series-winning) run of the game, in the bottom of the 10th inning.

So, is it Smoltz or Schilling? I’m going to go with Smoltz, because he's been slightly better over the course of his career (factoring in the saves), and he's been one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time. Moreover, when I think of pitchers I've seen in my lifetime, and which ones I’d give the ball to when I was in a must-win situation, Smoltz is right at the top of the list.

[This message has been edited by WestTxAg06 (edited 7/12/2007 6:00p).]

I'd go with Smoltz just because Schilling is an ass.

If you asked me who I would take in a 5 season span, a top of his game Clemens or a top of his game Martinez, I'd take Pedro every time.

Just hard to discount that Clemens has been almost as dominant, but did it for a decade longer. I would wager that if you put another 10 years on Pedro's slate that his career #'s would average out to be worse than Clemens'.

Glavine's name should probably be thrown in for the top 5, too. He'll be over 300 wins soon.

Best List out there using Win Shares

The Top Ten

1. Walter Johnson (387 WSAB/560 WS): In this year's Hardball Times Annual, David Gassko ranked the all-time best pitchers using something called Pitching Wins Above Replacement. David's system is similar to Win Shares Above Bench, but it differs in one significant way: it adjusts for the increasing level of competition over time. It gives current pitchers credit for succeeding in a tougher environment (better training, medical support and a larger pool of talent to draw upon).

As far as I know, that is the only legitimate way you can develop a system that doesn't place the Big Train first among the post-1900 pitchers (Johnson is second in PWAR). Pitching from 1907 through 1927, he was among the top three league leaders in strikeouts fifteen times, ERA twelve times and shutouts eleven times. He placed in the top 10 youngest players twice at the beginning of his career, and the top 10 oldest players four times at the end of his career. I won't bother quoting all the superlatives associated with the man; he was simply awesome, dude.

image2. Grover Cleveland Alexander (325 WSAB/476 WS): Pete Alexander was a contemporary of Johnson's. He didn't dominate the National League as completely as Johnson dominated the American, but he came close. The graph shows how Alexander's ERA compared to the league average each year. Every pitcher at the top of this list has a similar graph. These guys were consistently, exceptionally good.

3. Roger Clemens (292 WSAB/435 WS): Clemens has no chance of catching Johnson, and little chance of catching Alexander. But as I said upfront, it's much harder these days to accrue a lot of pitching Win Shares. And if you believe baseball is more competitive now than it used to be, you pretty much have to agree with David Gassko that Roger Clemens is the greatest pitcher of all time.

Clemens has covered every angle: he has posted a 3.11 ERA at home and 3.09 on the road. Righties have hit .227 against him, lefties have hit .229. His career ERA is 2.92 during the day and 3.20 at night. No matter where he's pitched, who he's faced or what situation he's pitched in, Clemens has dominated.

image4. Christy Mathewson (286 WSAB/426 WS): Mathewson was a great man and a great pitcher. He was one of the few people (only person?) willing to speak out about the Black Sox scandal at the time it occurred, and he is the subject of Eric Rolfe Greenberg's wonderful book, The Celebrant.

Mathewson led the league in ERA five times and had the lowest walk rate seven times. As the graph shows, his walk rate dropped substantially as he aged. Unfortunately, his strikeout rate eventually dropped too, causing him to hang up his spikes in 1916.

image5. Lefty Grove (275 WSAB/391 WS): Grove pitched in the 1920s and 1930s, one decade more current than Johnson, Alexander and Mathewson. He led the American League in strikeouts seven straight years, but a sore arm (coinciding with a trade to the Red Sox) made him a different kind of pitcher the second half of his career. Still, he led the league in ERA four times after being traded to the Sox.

In fact, Grove led his league in ERA nine different times, more than any other pitcher. The next highest total is seven, by Clemens. And the most astonishing fact about Grove is that he didn't even pitch in the majors until he was 25. Focusing on his peak years more than the length of his career, Grove is second to only Johnson in All Star Win Shares (see the definition below)

image6. Warren Spahn (257 WSAB/412 WS): On the other hand, Spahn is 43rd in All Star Win Shares. That's not shabby, but he built his tremendous credentials (and his Hall of Fame plaque) by being consistently very, very good for 21 years. Spahn led the league in ERA "only" three times, but in three different decades.

You know how some people say that pitchers can't control what happens to balls that are hit against them (batting average on balls in play)? Well, there are several pitchers on this list who belie that notion, and Spahn is one of them. In the graph, you can see that Spahn consistently had a lower BABIP than average. The difference may not look like much, but that's only because of the graph dimensions. His career BABIP was .265, when the major league average was .278. And he did it year after year, with different sets of fielders behind him.

7. Tom Seaver (247 WSAB/388 WS): Most pitchers lose their ability to strike out batters at some point in their careers. For some, like Johnson, it's gradual. For others, like Grove, it happens quickly. For Seaver, one of the greatest strikeout pitchers of all time, it pretty much happened in 1979, his second full year with the Reds.

Most of the pitchers at the top of this list figured out how to pitch well after they lost their strikeout edge. Seaver is a good example. In 1981, when Seaver was 14-2 with a 2.54 ERA, his BABIP was only .224.

image8. Greg Maddux (244 WSAB/380 WS): Maddux is the first person on this list who never led his league in strikeouts. But he had the best walk rate in the league seven times, didn't allow home runs and also had a consistently low BABIP (see the graph).

No doubt, his BABIP was helped by his fine glovework (16 Gold Gloves and counting) but there's a reason Rob Neyer calls him the Smartest Pitcher Who Ever Lived. Maddux is one of the most unique pitchers of all the greats.

9. Eddie Plank (230 WSAB/361 WS): Eddie Plank takes us back to the Mathewson era—he was the A's great lefthander before Grove. Like Grove, he didn't reach the majors until the age of 25, but he pitched into his 40s; sort of an early version of Warren Spahn. Plank is easy to overlook—he was overshadowed by Johnson and never led the American League in ERA, strikeouts or walk rate—yet he still manages to rank ninth in WSAB.

Plank was born in Gettysburg, PA, went to Gettysburg College, and led tours of the Gettysburg battlefield after he retired and died in Gettysburg.

10. Phil Niekro (214 WSAB/374 WS): Maddux may have been unique and Spahn may have had a long career, but Niekro beats them on both counts. He's another guy who didn't make the majors until he was 25, but that's okay. He pitched until he was 48.

As you might imagine, Niekro's credentials are all about career length, the benefit of mastering the mighty knuckleball. Niekro is tenth in WSAB but 67th in All Star Win Shares. His favorite park must have been Candlestick, where the gusty winds could add a little twist to his knuckleball. In fact, his career ERA at Candlestick was 2.37 (in 235 innings).

The Second Ten

image11. Steve Carlton (213 WSAB/366 WS): Most everyone knows about Carlton's career year in 1972 (at the age of 27), but he was also a terrific pitcher into his late 30s. Take a look at how he maintained his strikeout rate through until 1985, when he turned 40.

12. Garylord Perry (212 WSAB/369 WS): Perry's Hall of Fame case is similar to Niekro's: a long, long career and a funky pitch. He was one of the top five oldest players in his league for seven straight years.

13. Mordecai Brown (203 WSAB/296 WS): "Three Finger" Brown vs. Christy Mathewson may have been the greatest pitching rivalry in baseball history. The two faced each other 25 times, often with a pennant at stake, and Brown won 13 times, lost 11 and had one no decision. The rivalry reached its peak in that June 13, 1905 game, when Brown one-hit the Giants but lost to Mathewson, who no-hit the Cubs.

Brown was the Greg Maddux of his day. He didn't strike out many batters, but he also didn't walk many and benefited from perhaps the greatest fielding team of the 20th century, the Cubs of 1904-1910.

image14. Bob Gibson (203 WSAB/317 WS): Gibson's 1968 is certainly one of the greatest pitching seasons of all time. His 1.12 ERA (boggles the mind, doesn't it?) set a modern day record and his amazing performance in the World Series (even though the Cardinals lost to the Tigers) cemented his reputation. So how did he do it? What made 1968 stand out from all the other years?

It was a convergence of everything, really. His strikeout rate wasn't any higher than usual, but he had career bests in walk rate, home run rate and BABIP. And most importantly, he left 87% of the men who reached base against him on base, as the lefthand graph shows. How did that happen? Well, batters only batted only .141 vs. Gibson with runners in scoring position, more than forty points lower than his overall BA allowed of .184.

Gibson had a big career platoon differential, by the way. Lefties hit .257 against him; righties hit .204.

15. Robin Roberts (201 WSAB/339 WS): In the new Baseball Historical Abstract, Bill James described the "Robin Roberts" family of pitching (which includes Fergie Jenkins and Catfish Hunter) thusly: they would all go 23-14, 22-15, 21-13 year after year, pitching lots of innings with exceptional strikeout to walk ratios, but tons of home runs allowed. Roberts had exceptional control (almost always finishing first or second in least walks allowed per inning) and did indeed lead the league in home runs allowed four straight years. It's a combination that can win, particularly with some fleet outfielders. Roberts was such a flyball pitcher that Richie Ashburn aggregated six of the 10 highest putout totals ever for an outfielder.

All of the pitchers in the Robin Roberts family had severe platoon differentials: lefties hit about 40 points higher than righties against both Jenkins and Hunter. In the second half of his career, lefties batted .294 against Roberts.

image16. Carl Hubbell (199 WSAB/305 WS): Hubbell had that screwball; they say his arm was turned permanently outward as a result of throwing it all those years. They also say that Walter Johnson could scratch his knees without bending over. Who knows?

Hubbell had exceptional control and the screwball seems to have helped him keep his batted balls fieldable. The graph shows his career BABIP, which was below average most of his career.

17. Randy Johnson (198 WSAB/311 WS): One of the all-time great strikeout pitchers, Johnson led the league in strikeouts nine times. At 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings, he has the highest strikeout rate in history. He is also death to lefty batters, who have hit only .196 against him. Most tellingly, Lefty batters have only stepped up to the plate 12% of the time against him. Carlton pitched to lefties 16% of the time; Glavine has faced lefties in 20% of his plate appearances.

18. Cy Young (197 WSAB/303 WS): This ranking is completely unfair to Cy Young. He first pitched in 1890, so his place here is based only on the second half of his career. He had such exceptional control that his profile looks like Robin Roberts', except that no one hit home runs back then. I wonder if he was a flyball pitcher?

image19. Jim Palmer (196 WSAB/312 WS): Palmer won three Cy Young awards and led the league twice in ERA, but he never came close to leading the league in strikeouts or giving up the least walks per nine innings. No, Jim Palmer was the master of the LOB (Left on Base) and BABIP (see the graph).

With runners in scoring position, Palmer's batting average allowed sank from .230 overall to .213. With two outs and runners in scoring position, it sank further to .207. Many great pitchers pitch better with men on base, but Palmer's performance was better than most. And that BABIP? I think you can chalk up almost all of it to that wonderful Orioles defense; the team BABIP during the years Palmer pitched was around .260—only slightly higher than Palmer's career mark of .255.

image20. Dennis Eckersley (194 WSAB/301 WS): Eckersley is the first pitcher on this list who relieved for a significant amount of time. I spent a lot of time struggling with relievers in my WSAB methodology, and I'm still not sure it's right. There are two issues: relievers get credit in the Win Shares system for pitching high-leverage innings, so good relievers naturally have more Win Shares per inning pitched.

And it's easier to relieve than it is to start. For example, look at what happened to Eckersley's strikeout ratio when he was moved to the bullpen in 1987. It took off because he knew he was almost always only going to pitch for one inning. He could throw his best and not worry about saving himself. I'll explain how I handled relievers at the end of the article but this ranking for Eckersley feels about right.

The Roaring Twenties

21. Red Ruffing (194 WSAB/322 WS): Ruffing was one of the first adopters of the slider. That, and the fact that he pitched for the Yankees during the '30s, are probably the most significant things you can say about the guy. He only won one ERA title and one strikeout title. But he pitched well for a long time (twice among the top 10 youngest players and twice among the top 10 oldest) and deserves his place on this list and in the Hall.

22. Bert Blyleven (192 WSAB/339 WS): Bert Blyleven is the first pitcher on our list who is eligible for the Hall of Fame but not in it. In fact, he is the only one of the top 33 pitchers ranked by WSAB who isn't in the Hall. Why is that?

Well, he was a strikeout pitcher with great control, but he only led the league in strikeouts once. He never led the league in ERA, never finished higher than third in Cy Young voting (weird fact: in 1984, he finished third to two relievers: Willie Hernandez and Dan Quisenberry). This wasn't just the result of sportswriters' bias, by the way. He just didn't have many remarkable peak seasons. Blyleven is 120th in All Star Win Shares; only three other pitchers we will consider today rank lower.

On the other hand, all three of those pitchers are in the Hall of Fame: Eppa Rixey, Nolan Ryan and Don Sutton. Bert should be there too.

23. Ferguson Jenkins (190 WSAB/323 WS): See Robin Roberts.

24. Ted Lyons (189 WSAB/312 WS): Ted Lyons may be the worst strikeout pitcher on this list—he averaged only 2.3 strikeouts a game. He also wasn't too shabby with the bat, hitting .311 in 1930.

In 1942, when Lyons was 41 years old, he only pitched for the White Sox every Sunday. He completed every game, went 14-6 and led the league with a 2.10 ERA. As Bill James pointed out in the new Historical Abstract, that was back in the day when teams played doubleheaders every Sunday. Remember doubleheaders?

25. Eppa Rixey (183 WSAB/315 WS): Rixey pitched from 1912 to 1933, during Pete Alexander's heyday, with the Phillies and Reds. When the Phillies sold Alexander in 1917, Rixey was so disgusted that he quit for a year and served in World War I.

I can't find evidence of this anywhere, but I wonder if Rixey was a groundball pitcher? He didn't allow many home runs per game but he wasn't a strikeout pitcher. Batters typically put the ball in play against him. Plus, he is the all-time leader in sacrifice hits allowed. Don't know what that all means exactly, but I wonder...

26. Tom Glavine (180 WSAB/303 WS): Glavine is a master of guile. I've got to think that very few pitchers got to own a part of the (pseudo) strike zone the way that Glavine was given the outside part of the plate. Thanks to that curve on the outside "corner," righthanded batters actually had a lower batting average against him than lefthanded batters. And he never gives in, always happy to walk a batter, even with runners in scoring position, just to maintain his ownership of that corner.

image27. Bob Feller (179 WSAB/292 WS): What would Bob Feller's career have looked like without World War II? The graph on the left (strikeouts per nine innings) should give you an indication. He led the league in strikeouts every full season he played from 1938 to 1948.

In his prime, he averaged about 20 WSAB per season. Add those four years back to his career total, and he's got 219, good for 10th place.

28. Ed Walsh (179 WSAB/265 WS): Ed Walsh pitched from 1904 to 1917, and the further I go down this list the more I'm convinced you should adjust Win Shares by era to get a fair pitcher ranking. I don't mean to knock Walsh, but he only had seven good seasons. Now, they were really, really good and he pitched a lot in those years (464 innings in 1908, for instance). His WSAB total is based on his real performance. But the conditions were such that no pitcher today could ever hope to match his best season. He accrued 34 WSAB in 1908; in Clemens' best season he picked up 24 (1997).

image29. Hal Newhouser (176 WSAB/264 WS): Hal Newhouser had one goofy career. A hard throwing lefty, Newhouser could strike out lots of batters but only reached success when he found the strike zone (see the graph) in 1944. Kept out of the war because of a congenital heart defect, Newhouser went 9-11, 8-14 and 8-17 for the Tigers before finally blossoming (at the young age of 23; he first pitched in the majors when he was 18). He was lights out from that point on, even winning the MVP in both '44 and '45.

30. Nolan Ryan (175 WSAB/334 WS): You might be tempted to call Nolan Ryan a modern Hal Newhouser, but Ryan never found the strike zone as well as Newhouser did, and Newhouser never struck out batters at the rate Ryan did. What really separates Ryan from lots of people is the length of his career, and the fact that he maintained his strikeout pace right up until the end. The only pitcher who comes close to what Ryan achieved is Clemens, as this comparative graph shows:

image

In a nutshell, Ryan led the race early, Clemens had a great surge in his mid-30's, and Ryan seemed to find something extra when he hit 40. Speaking as someone on the other side of 40, I can't even imagine that.

The Thirties
Speed Round. Two sentences each:

31. Early Wynn (175 WSAB/309 WS): Started pitching in 1939, but didn't make his first All-Star team until 1955 a few years after Mel Harder convinced him to scrap the knuckleball and throw a curveball and change instead.

32. John Smoltz (172 WSAB/269 WS): Third member of the vaunted Braves' rotation of the 1990s. Starter ERA = 3.36; Reliever ERA = 2.35.

33. Red Faber (172 WSAB/292 WS): It's hard to say what made Red Farber so good. He might have been a Tom Glavine-type, pitching to the situation and deploying his spitter (one of the last legal ones) to induce fieldable balls.

34. Jack Quinn (170 WSAB/287 WS): Quinn was the oldest player in the AL five times and one of the 10 oldest 15 times. Incredibly, he is 76th in All Star Win Shares, and the first non-Hall of Famer on our list other than Blyleven.

35. Pedro Martinez (170 WSAB/248 WS): Pedro is 35th in WSAB but 10th in All Star Win Shares. In his prime, the best ever. Check out some of his graphs in Fangraphs.

image36. Whitey Ford (168 WSAB/261 WS): Ford was a great situational pitcher, as you can see by the number of men he left on base. Overall, batters hit .240 against him, but .226 with runners in scoring position and .215 with two outs and runners in scoring position (includes the years 1957-1967 only).

37. Carl Mays (168 WSAB/256 WS): Unfortunately known for killing Ray Chapman with a fastball, Mays was a sidearmer at a time when sidearmers were rare. As a result, he typically had lower BABIP averages than the league in the first half of his career.

38. Hoyt Wilhelm (167 WSAB/256 WS): Wilhelm is the highest rated pitcher who was a reliever virtually all of his career. He also definitely had a big impact on his BABIP, as most knuckleballers do. The second-highest rated reliever is Goose Gossage, at 56.

39. Wilbur Cooper (164 WSAB/266 WS): Cooper was a fine pitcher, of course, but he's on this list more because of when he pitched (1912 to 1926) than how well he pitched.

40. Don Sutton (164 WSAB/319 WS): Sutton is 235th in All Star Win Shares, he also benefited more from his ballpark than almost any other player on our list (2.66 ERA at Dodger Stadium; 3.63 everywhere else). That is all I will say about Sutton.


And there you have it: our all-time Win Shares Above Bench survey. I've enjoyed this review and learned a lot in the process. Most particularly, I've learned that there are two glaring omissions from the Hall of Fame: Sherry Magee and Bert Blyleven. I know that the sportswriters can't do anything about Magee, but here's hoping they rectify the Blyleven omission soon.

References and Resources
Win Shares are great, but they suffer from a lack of context. Specifically, they don't include any sense of "loss shares" or playing time, and the way it applies replacement level is pretty funky. Win Shares Above Bench is an attempt to resolve that issue. To calculate WSAB, I took these steps:

- First calculated the "expected" Win Shares for each pitcher, based on the number of innings he pitched and the average number of pitching Win Shares accrued per inning in that league that year.
- Multiply expected Win Shares by 50% for starters and 75% for relievers to get a "bench level" of Win Shares. I use 50% for starters because I'm convinced total Win Shares undervalues starting pitchers.
- Subtract one from the other to calculate Win Shares Above Bench.

All Star Win Shares are the number of Win Shares above 125% of expected Win Shares, with no deduction for any totals below 125% of expected Win Shares. In other words, All Star Win Shares gives pitchers credit for extraordinary years, but no subtraction for subnormal years or injuries. For two good examples: Sandy Koufax is 31st in All Star Win Shares and Dizzy Dean is 30th. In WSAB, however, both are in the 90's.

For relievers, I used 250% of expected Win Shares. This may strike you as high, but relievers can pick up some huge numbers of Win Shares just based on their leveraged innings. Even using 250%, Mariano Rivera is 19th all-time. Billy Wagner is 41st.

I used many sources for this article, including Bill James' and Rob Neyer's Guide to Pitchers and James' two Historical Abstracts.

After posting the article, one reader pointed out to me that Eddie Plank actually didn't attend Gettysburg College. According to Wikipedia, History books often erroneously state that Plank was a graduate of Gettysburg College. Plank did attend the Gettysburg Academy, a prep school affiliated with the college, but Plank never attended nor graduated from the college. Plank did, however, play for the Gettysburg College baseball team.

Dave is the manager of the Baseball Graphs website. and a regular contributor to Heater, a PDF fantasy magazine for the digital age. Comments about this article can be sent to him through the miracle of e-mail.

http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/the-all-time-best-pitchers/

quote:

---

Are you serious? Here's Randy's first four seasons in Arizona:

1999 17-9 2.48 ERA 364 K 12 CG
2000 19-7 2.64 ERA 347 K 8 CG
2001 21-6 2.49 ERA 372 K
2002 24-5 2.32 ERA 334 K 8 CG

Look at those strikeout numbers. That's sick

---

The strikeouts are impressive but Pedro had a several season stretch where his ERA was a fraction of the league average.

In '99 his ERA was 3.00 LOWER than the league average. Then the next year he turned around and one upped himself when his era was 3.24 LOWER than the league average.

That takes sick to a completely different level.

EDIT: This might help put that into perspective. Here is how their ERAs compared against the rest of the league as a percent of the league average. The lower the number the better.

Pedro
1997 45%
1998 62%
1999 41%
2000 35%
2001 53%
2002 51%
2003 47%

That is a 7 year stretch where his ERA was essentially 1/2 (usually more than that) of the league average. The only year it wasn't was his first in the AL.

Big Unit
1999 56%
2000 56%
2001 54%
2002 53%
2003 91%
2004 59%

To put that into even more context let's look at it a different way. Koufax is almost always credited for having the greatest 4 or 5 year stretch in history, right? Here is how he stacked up when compared to the average NL pitcher over his incredible stretch.

1962 70%
1963 62%
1964 54%
1965 63%
1966 53%

Koufax was putting up sub-2.00 ERAs in a time when the league ERA was around 3.25. Pedro was doing it when the league ERA was between 4.40-5.00.

Pedro was flat out historic.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Check out "Texas A&M & Baseball In No Particular Order"
at tamu-and-baseball.com

[This message has been edited by AgRyan04 (edited 7/12/2007 11:47p).]

quote:

---

The strikeouts are impressive but Pedro had a several season stretch where his ERA was a fraction of the league average.

---

All I'm saying is that Randy Johnson has an argument for most dominate pitcher of the era. His ERA may be half a point higher than Pedro's, but he was also pitching a alot more innings and striking out a lot more batters.

quote:

---

Koufax was putting up sub-2.00 ERAs in a time when the league ERA was around 3.25. Pedro was doing it when the league ERA was between 4.40-5.00.

---

As I mentioned above, ERA+ doesn't take into account the fact that pitching has been seriously watered down. When Koufax was pitching there were 24 teams, and each team only used 4 starting pitchers (96 starting pitchers). Now there are 30 teams and each team uses a 5 man rotation (150 starting pitchers). Guys that are starting now would have never made the majors back in the 1960s. That raises the league average, so it's easier for a guy nowdays to have a low ERA compared to the average. Look at the list of the top 20 ERA+ above. Roy Oswalt is good, but he's not a top 20 all time pitcher. And John Franco? Seriously?

another criteria I like to use for measuring the greatness of a starting pitcher is the Steve-Carlton-1972-Phillies test

Has the pitcher ever had a great year on a below average or really bad team.

For example, right now Oswalt is 8-5 on a 39-50 astros team. that is impressive. Roger Clemens and Nolan Ryan both had seasons where they won 19-20 games on teams that finished 10+ games under .500

And Tom Glavine is the opposite. A classic frontrunner. Posted great W-L record when playing on great / playoff teams. But when he played on the bad Mets teams these past few years, his W-L was also bad.

Good point, W.

FWIW, Glavine has a career 119 ERA+. That's good for 118th all time, tied with Hall of Famers Red Faber, Rollie Fingers, and Bob Lemon, but also with names like Lon Warneke, Bobby Shantz, Don McMahon, and Paul Quantrill.

Looking at the list of career leaders makes me think ERA+ is even more of a flawed statistic. Any list of greatest pitchers ever that includes Dan Quisenberry, Joe Wood, and John Franco is a flawed list.

When you're talking about a full career, I still think wins in one of the best stats. In a given season one pitcher can get fluke run support and have a great year, but when you're talking about a whole career only the best of the best end up at the top of the wins list. Bash Glavine all you want, but he did finish in the top 3 in Cy-Young voting 6 times. The reason his #s went down in NY is most likely due to the fact that he signed there when he was 37. Not exactly the prime of his career.

quote:

---

Looking at the list of career leaders makes me think ERA+ is even more of a flawed statistic. Any list of greatest pitchers ever that includes Dan Quisenberry, Joe Wood, and John Franco is a flawed list.

---

No one is saying that ERA+ gives you a definitive list of the greatest pitchers of all time, it's merely a tool for evaluating the dominance of a pitcher against the offenses he faced and compared to his peers.

Look at Quisenberry's career numbers. In the era of true "stoppers", he was pitching 130 innings a season (by comparison, Mariano Rivera has broken the 100 inning mark only once and has averaged only 81.7 innings per season) and was absolutely dominant for those 130 innings. In fact, he's more dominant than the two original stoppers who are continually lauded for the Hall of Fame, Bruce Sutter and Goose Gossage.

quote:

---

When you're talking about a full career, I still think wins in one of the best stats. In a given season one pitcher can get fluke run support and have a great year, but when you're talking about a whole career only the best of the best end up at the top of the wins list.

---

Are you serious?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Check out "Texas A&M & Baseball In No Particular Order"
at tamu-and-baseball.com

I still think my list is the best.

quote:

---

quote:

---

When you're talking about a full career, I still think wins in one of the best stats. In a given season one pitcher can get fluke run support and have a great year, but when you're talking about a whole career only the best of the best end up at the top of the wins list.

---

Are you serious?

---

Yes.