Best Baseball Pitcher of All-time

[Brownian Motion]

The New York times invites its readers to select the greatest baseball pitcher of all time. Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax, Walter Johnson, Bob Gibson are the names most commonly mentioned, but Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver, Pedro Martinez, Christy Mathewson, Cy Young, Bob Feller, and a dozen others are also championed by the fans. Conspicuous by a near-total absence of support is Roger Clemens.

http://community.nytimes.com/article/comme...l/24koufax.html

[GregK]

he's nowhere near as flashy as most of the big names, but Greg Maddux in his prime Atlanta years was the best I have ever seen. The way he made the best hitters look foolish grounding out to the pitcher on a routine basis was pretty amazing.

[BruceH]

I like Sandy Koufax and Christy Mathewson, but of course, I don't know what I'm talking about.

[Brownian Motion]

Although I have a soft spot for Seaver, the best I ever saw was Koufax.

[Larry Kart]

IIRC, Bill James said it was Lefty Grove.

[Tim McG]

Nolan Ryan and Satchel Paige get my vote.

[tkeith]

Walter Johnson, hands down.

In the modern era, Steve Carlton gets my vote, and contemporary pitchers I go Maddux by a mile. I never saw Koufax pitch, before my time. But I saw Seaver, Ryan, Carlton, Clemens, Martinez, Maddux, and even J.R. Richard... Carlton was the tops of all of them. Pity he played on so many shit teams.

[vajerzy]

The one I emulated when I was a kid was Tom Seaver- I subscribed to the theory that power is in the legs- so I built my legs up to add speed and reduce the stress on my arm.

The only pitcher I would pay money to watch pitch a game is Greg Maddux- because he's a thinking pitcher and he gets batters out not with speed but with location and movement.

To me- he is the best I have seen.

Edited February 25, 2008 by vajerzy

[Dan Gould]

I don't deny Greg Maddux as an all-time great but I can't understand why he gets all the love and Pedro Martinez doesn't. There's simply no comparison over their respective periods of dominance, and unlike Steve Carlton, Pedro did it in an era of much greater offense, and unlike Maddux, he didn't have weak hitting middle infielders + pitchers to ease his path through a lineup.

Make no mistake, I admire Maddux as much as any pitcher but when you put it all together, the only advantage he has over Martinez is longevity and sustained good health.

As for the question of greatest of all-time, I don't think its possible for someone whose oldest memory of watching a great pitcher is Tom Seaver to make that judgment.

[AllenLowe]

Seaver had a tendency to choke in the big game -

there's only one choice - go with the Jew 'cause in baseball there's so few -

KOUFAX

[GregK]

I don't deny Greg Maddux as an all-time great but I can't understand why he gets all the love and Pedro Martinez doesn't. There's simply no comparison over their respective periods of dominance, and unlike Steve Carlton, Pedro did it in an era of much greater offense, and unlike Maddux, he didn't have weak hitting middle infielders + pitchers to ease his path through a lineup.

Sure he did. He pitched in the NL for quite some time before he went to the dreaded Red Sux. The difference to me though is that Maddux didn't have to throw at hitters to keep them off the plate like Pedro did. Maddux had superb control, better than any other pitcher I can think of.

[Larry Kart]

Koufax at his best was the best pitcher I ever saw -- it was almost laughable what he could do; batters had about as much chance to hit him as they did to hit a watermelon seed that you'd whanged on a table top with a knuckle -- but his best, through no fault of his own, didn't last that long.

[Dave James]

If you're talking over the course of a single season, I'll take Bob Gibson in 1968. A 1.12 ERA is almost criminal.

Up over and out.

[Tim McG]

Koufax was on steroids.

[papsrus]

If you're talking over the course of a single season, I'll take Bob Gibson in 1968. A 1.12 ERA is almost criminal.

Up over and out.

Yes. A monster. And as far as intimidation goes, I'd think as good as Maddux is/was, any batter would rather face him than Gibson in his prime. Yikes. Ryan was no slouch in that regard either. Remember the time that batter (forget who it was) charged the mound and Ryan just stood there waiting for him, then grabbed the guy and put him in a head lock and started pounding on him? Yikes again.

[Larry Kart]

I remember Koufax throwing a no-hitter per year in 1962, 1963, and 1964, followed in 1965 by a 1-0 perfect game against the Cubs. Even more insane, in that 1-0 perfect game, the Dodgers got one hit. Cubs pitcher was Bob Hendley.

[Larry Kart]

That Cub-Dodgers game, as you might expect, set a record for the least amount of hits in a nine-inning major league game. As frosting on the cake, Koufax had 14 strikeouts that day.

[Tim McG]

I think Gaylord Perry, Juan Marichal and Don Drysdale [even though he was a hated dodger] deserve at least an Honorable Mention here.

Maybe even [the hated dodger] Don Sutton.

Edited February 25, 2008 by GoodSpeak

[Hot Ptah]

Satchel Paige.

[Tim McG]

Satchel Paige.

I wholeheartedly agree.

However, he never faced the "great" Babe Ruth....no, wait! Babe Ruth never faced any of the greatest Black pitchers of his time.

[Overrated is a word I would use to describe Ruth....but that's another story.]

[Dan Gould]

I don't deny Greg Maddux as an all-time great but I can't understand why he gets all the love and Pedro Martinez doesn't. There's simply no comparison over their respective periods of dominance, and unlike Steve Carlton, Pedro did it in an era of much greater offense, and unlike Maddux, he didn't have weak hitting middle infielders + pitchers to ease his path through a lineup.

Sure he did. He pitched in the NL for quite some time before he went to the dreaded Red Sux. The difference to me though is that Maddux didn't have to throw at hitters to keep them off the plate like Pedro did. Maddux had superb control, better than any other pitcher I can think of.

But Pedro's period of dominance was in Boston. When he left Montreal, he'd had exactly one extraordinary dominating season to his credit, one season with an ERA+ of 200 (he'd have four more in Boston), one season with a sub-1.00 WHIP (four in a row in Boston).

As far as control goes, Maddux does have a career mark of 1.81 Walks per 9 IP. But Pedro's isn't so bad either, at 2.38. Career WHIP favors Pedro (1.030 to 1.141) and career WHIP+ favors Pedro even more (161 to 134). So, Pedro dominated the DH league even more than Maddux dominated the easier league to pitch against.

[Tim McG]

I don't deny Greg Maddux as an all-time great but I can't understand why he gets all the love and Pedro Martinez doesn't. There's simply no comparison over their respective periods of dominance, and unlike Steve Carlton, Pedro did it in an era of much greater offense, and unlike Maddux, he didn't have weak hitting middle infielders + pitchers to ease his path through a lineup.

Sure he did. He pitched in the NL for quite some time before he went to the dreaded Red Sux. The difference to me though is that Maddux didn't have to throw at hitters to keep them off the plate like Pedro did. Maddux had superb control, better than any other pitcher I can think of.

But Pedro's period of dominance was in Boston. When he left Montreal, he'd had exactly one extraordinary dominating season to his credit, one season with an ERA+ of 200 (he'd have four more in Boston), one season with a sub-1.00 WHIP (four in a row in Boston).

As far as control goes, Maddux does have a career mark of 1.81 Walks per 9 IP. But Pedro's isn't so bad either, at 2.38. Career WHIP favors Pedro (1.030 to 1.141) and career WHIP+ favors Pedro even more (161 to 134). So, Pedro dominated the DH league even more than Maddux dominated the easier league to pitch against.

Pedro Martinez is a crybaby, that's why.

[Hot Ptah]

For pitchers I saw in their prime, Sandy Koufax was the greatest. To me, he was a level above Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux, Steve Carlton, and others. Koufax was almost superhuman in his prime.

[Dan Gould]

Maybe even [the hated dodger] Don Sutton.

Glad to see you are uninformed in all aspects of baseball, not just the use of performance enhancing drugs.

Don Sutton barely belongs in the Hall of Fame. His ERA over the course of his career was exactly 8% better than the LEAGUE AVERAGE. He never sniffed a Cy Young (best finish, 4th). He led his league in ERA exactly one time. He reached 300 wins, so he got into the Hall. And you think he deserves an honorable mention in this discussion?

[vajerzy]

As for the question of greatest of all-time, I don't think its possible for someone whose oldest memory of watching a great pitcher is Tom Seaver to make that judgment.

I hope I'm reading you wrong- but the best that I have seen is Seaver. That's my judgement. No one can answer the best of all time. A more appropriate question is who do you believe is the best in your lifetime.