If you had one game to win....who would be your starter...

[mweb]

He just always seems to come up big.

He may not be at the top of your list but he is at the top of mine.

Seems and reality are obviously different in this case. He often comes up big. Pettitte is also on the downside of his career and is not as good of a pitcher as Beckett, so even if we say their clutchness or whatever is equal, Beckett is easily the better pitcher at this point. It's unlike you to disregard stats, but if that's the route you want to go, have at it.

[Sports Guy]

Seems and reality are obviously different in this case. He often comes up big. Pettitte is also on the downside of his career and is not as good of a pitcher as Beckett, so even if we say their clutchness or whatever is equal, Beckett is easily the better pitcher at this point. It's unlike you to disregard stats, but if that's the route you want to go, have at it.

Well, Santana is better than Beckett...So why not take him?

Are you going to let a small sample size of postseason stats effect you?

[mweb]

I know it's off-topic, but I can't help it... Why on earth would you think that Koufax is overrated? According to what possible criteria?

His stats are skewed because he pitched in a great pitchers park in a great pitching era. Obviously he didn't have much longevity, not his fault, but still needs to be considered when ranking the best pitchers ever. His image also benefits from having his career end in his prime, much like Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain, etc did. When one doesn't have the declining stage of their career, they are viewed more highly imo.

Koufax is only 33rd in ERA+ despite not going through the decline phase which likely would have hurt that stat.

He was great, no question, but not a top 10 pitcher imo, which many seem to think.

[RShack]

Koufax is only 33rd in ERA+ despite not going through the decline phase which likely would have hurt that stat.

Which just proves that a single snapshot stat doesn't tell you everything that matters...

I'll betcha that if you took any collection of hitters, or pitchers, or pitching coaches who were familiar with that great pitcher's era, and asked them who would be on their All-Everything Team, every single one of them would include Koufax.

[mweb]

Well, Santana is better than Beckett...So why not take him?

Are you going to let a small sample size of postseason stats effect you?

I would take Santana over Pettitte, now doubt about that. Beckett was just as good as Santana in the regular season this year, and has shown the ability to take his game to a new level in the playoffs, Santana hasn't had as much opportunity in the playoffs, but has been great his last 3 starts. I'd be thrilled with either guy, at this moment, I'd take Beckett in a close call though.

[mweb]

Which just proves that stats don't tell you everything that matters...

Well tell me everything that matters then. And if you can address anything else in my post, feel free.

[longflyball]

I'm surprised Pedro has not been mentioned. His prime was marred by fragility and ended quickly, but if you take his performance around the turn of the century and consider how different the run environment was then/is now from what it was when Gibson and Koufax pitched there is no comparison. For a time he was virtually a lock for 7 innings of 2 run baseball. If you use postseason numbers as a benchmark his 5-3 record and 3.40 ERA in 79.1 innings don't knock your socks off, but he did throw 17 shutout innings in the 1999 postseason.

If I had to win a baseball game tomorrow I would start Jake Peavy. He allowed 4 runs or more only 5 times in 2007.

[RShack]

Well tell me everything that matters then. And if you can address anything else in my post, feel free.

Not only do I not know everything that matters about pitching, I know very little about pitching. But I know enough to know that ERA+ ain't everything. I also know that pulling out a career-ERA+ for a guy with the profile of Sandy Koufax is disingenuous. When you did that, you knew you were pulling in years when he was still figuring out how to perfect his craft and harness his talent, and you knew he had to do that in the majors because he was *prevented* from having any MiL experience. You knew all that, which means you knew his career ERA+ is not at all representative of his accomplishments. But that's the one-and-only number you pulled out anyway. That alone makes me suspicious of whatever kind of point you're trying to make.

If you want to say he is "over-rated" because of the MiL years he was deprived of, and because of the years after 1966 that he didn't have due to arthritis, go right ahead. But that says absolutely nothing about the quality of pitcher he was, any more than Ted Williams' 2 stints in the Marines lessens his quality as a great hitter, or the years Ali lost when he was illegally banned from his profession lessens his quality as a great boxer. If you think that any of these guys are less-great because of the years they didn't have, then I think you've gotten lost in an arcane argument about "longevity vs. peak", and have forgotten to care about how amazingly, once-in-a-few-lifetimes good these guys were.

The shortcomings of medical science in his era gave him fewer years than he would have had 20 years later when there was more medical knowledge and superior surgical techniques, but that in no way compromises the impact of the 5 or 6 peak years he did have. Because he was deprived of MiL development *and* lost years because he was ahead of medical science, peak-value is the only possible way to judge his impact... because that's all there was. Bill James looked at peak value, and he ranked Koufax as one of the Top 5 baseball players of the 20th Century. Not "Top 5 Pitchers" at peak value, but "Top 5 Baseball Players" at peak value (along with Ruth, Wagner, Mantle, and Grove). I guess Bill James over-rated him too. I don't keep up with the world in which stat guys argue about these things but I believe even the most cynical stat freak who looks at peak pitchers put him in the top-5, and they do that regardless of how much room there is for foul-ball pop-ups in Dodger Stadium.

His era was a pitchers era. And during that era, he was considered by everyone as being in a league of his own. During the time he pitched, there was only 1 Cy Young Award, shared by both leagues. During the time that both leagues shared one award between them, nobody but Koufax won a Cy Young unanimously (as in "every single vote for him, and not a single vote for any other pitcher in either league"). Not only was Koufax the only guy to get a Major League Cy Young Award unanimously, he got it 3 times in 4 years... and it was *unanimous all 3 times*. Nobody complained. Everybody said, "Yep, that's right." (The "missing year" in his streak of unanimous Cy Young's was '64 when he was hurt so bad that he missed a third of his starts. Even during that injury-plagued "off year" when he was pitching as more of a cripple than usual, he still went 19-5 and put up a 1.74 ERA and a 187 ERA+.)

He pitched before Video Kinetic Analysis existed. It was later invented for Olympians, to do things like help the javelin-thrower know how to change his delivery to get maximum force into the javelin toss. They videotape the guy, then do computer analysis of the image, use thinning algorithms to reduce the man to a stick-figure, then apply physics on the stick figure to see how he could/should change his motion. Koufax pitched before videotape, let alone that kind of analysis. However, years later they took some old film footage of him pitching and processed that film. And they discovered that he was perfect. He had figured out *the* optimal pitching delivery. There was *nothing* about him to fix. Which is probably what helped ruin his elbow: he had figured out the kinetics to such an optimal degree, and was generating so much force, that he was taxing the weak link, which is the elbow. In other words, one large contributor to his short career was the very fact that he had succeeded so well at optimizing his own pitching mechanics. And he did that by himself, without any of the modern tools and techniques of modern training.

You say his stats don't reflect the years he didn't pitch, the years that would have been his decline. His stats also may not reflect his peak. Many think he never reached his peak, because he had to quit first. Regardless of that, in an era of dominant pitching, he was considered by everybody as the best of the best. Just like the Beatles were looked up as being on a different level, not only by fans but also by the Stones, the Who, and everybody else in the pantheon of rock, Koufax was looked up to by the greats of that era. Nobody thought they were better than Koufax. One of my favorite quotes about him comes from Yogi Berra (who else?) After the '63 WS, Yogi said, "I can see how he won 25 games. What I don't understand is how he lost 5."

Koufax only had 5 or 6 seasons after he got his act together enough to be anything above-average as a ML pitcher. Everybody knows that, and nobody who pays real attention to baseball claims otherwise. So exactly who is over-rating him? Koufax had it figured out by age 25. When you separate out his pre-25 formative years, his peak years are all that's left. If you think his performance during those years is "over-rated", then please tell me the long list of guys who had a better 5 or 6 years than he did. Other people say anywhere from Top-1 to Top-5 all-time, but you say he's over-rated. Bill James said he was one of the Top-5 of all 20th Century ballplayers at *any* position, but you say he's over-rated. I can't wait to see the long list of guys who you think were better than him. (I'm sure Bill James would like to see this list too.)

ps: When Eric Clapton first saw Jimi Hendrix play, it made him want to quit. Do you think Jimi Hendrix is over-rated as a guitarist because he died at 27, didn't have a long career, and we never got to see what else he would do? Do you think we should look at how many years he played, and forget what people like Eric Clapton thought of him? Is there some "career EADGBE+" score that convinces you that Jimi is "over-rated" just because he died?

[RShack]

I'm surprised Pedro has not been mentioned.

Me too.

His prime was marred by fragility and ended quickly, but if you take his performance around the turn of the century and consider how different the run environment was then/is now from what it was when Gibson and Koufax pitched there is no comparison.

People say this, but I wonder. In particular, I wonder about ERA+. I haven't studied up on this, so I could be missing something, but here's what puzzles me. I believe that ERA+ is a measure of how a guy compares to league-average. Is this more-or-less correct? If so, then there's something that doesn't make sense to me. When Koufax and Gibson were pitching, it was a pitcher's era. Which means league ERA was way, way lower than during Pedro's peak years. Since the league average for pitchers was so much better, that means it would be that much *harder* to be way-way-better than league-average. So, I easily can see how somebody can put up an ERA+ of over 200 if the league is throwing an ERA in the high-4's or 5's. But I don't see how somebody could do that when the league is throwing an ERA in the mid-3's. I would think that an ERA+ of over 200 during the era when Koufax and Gibson pitched would be damn near mathematically impossible. (Yeah, Gibson did it, but still... you get the point...)

Maybe I'm wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if I am. But if I am, what mistake am I making?

ps: If you're not sure of the question I'm asking, think of it like this... think of it like test scores in a Calculus class. ERA+ is basically like the prof curving the grades to normalize them. Let's say you make an 88 on the test. If the rest of the class does cruddy (say the class average is 38), and the prof curves that class-average score to a "C" (say, 70), then your 88 become great. It gets curved up to a super-high "A++++", to a numerical score that's way-higher than 100. In that case, a curve is good for your 88. But if the class average is 93, then you hope the prof does not curve the scores, because all the sudden your 88 looks like crap, and a curve would translate your 88 into a number below the average after the curve. So your 88 would suddenly be a D instead of an A++++. The difference between D and A++++ is not how you did, because you made an 88 in each example. The difference is that your 88 looks good when others do bad, and your 88 looks bad when others do well. Same idea here (except for the confusing factor that "low ERA" is good while "low test score" is bad). The point is that the better the class average is, the *harder* it is for your grade to get curved into a super-good score. So, how does it happen that a "pitchers era" makes Koufax and Gibson have ERA+ that look bad compared to Pedro's? Since their entire "class" of pitchers did well compared to Pedro's "class" of pitchers, I would think the very fact of it being a pitchers era would make it way, way harder for their ERA+ scores to look super good. I'd think it would be way easier for Pedro to have an ERA+ of over 200 than it would be for Koufax or Gibson, simply because the "class average" of Pedro's class of pitchers was so much worse. (I'm probably wrong about this, but I don't see why.)

[longflyball]

ps: When Eric Clapton first saw Jimi Hendrix play, it made him want to quit. Do you think Jimi Hendrix is over-rated as a guitarist because he died at 27 and didn't have a long career? Do you think we should look at how many years he played, and forget what people like Eric Clapton thought of him? Is there some "career EADGBE+" score that convinces you that Jimi is "over-rated" just because he died?

I'm hijacking this thread so egregiously someone should call the cops, but since you mentioned it I'll take the bait and say that the thought that Hendrix is overrated has crossed my mind a few times. I've only really been exposed to Experienced and Ladyland, but only a handful of the songs on those two albums jump out to me and say "the all time guitar god recorded this song." The simple explanation is that I'm listening to them in context of living in the 21st century, rather than in the 60's, when what he did was innovative and groundbreaking. By now everyone has had 35 years to be influenced by and imitate what he did.

It doesn't help that the sound is kinda fuzzy and distant on those two albums.

[longflyball]

Me too.

People say this, but I wonder. In particular, I wonder about ERA+. I haven't studied up on this, so I could be missing something, but here's what puzzles me. I believe that ERA+ is a measure of how a guy compares to league-average. Is this more-or-less correct? If so, then there's something that doesn't make sense to me. When Koufax and Gibson were pitching, it was a pitcher's era. Which means league ERA was way, way lower than during Pedro's peak years. Since the league average for pitchers was so much better, that means it would be that much *harder* to be way-way-better than league-average. So, I easily can see how somebody can put up an ERA+ of over 200 if the league is throwing an ERA in the high-4's or 5's. But I don't see how somebody could do that when the league is throwing an ERA in the mid-3's. I would think that an ERA+ of over 200 during the era when Koufax and Gibson pitched would be damn near mathematically impossible.

Maybe I'm wrong. It wouldn't surprise me if I am. But if I am, what mistake am I making?

ps: If you're not sure of the question I'm asking, think of it like this... think of it like test scores in a Calculus class. ERA+ is basically like the prof curving the grades to normalize them. Let's say you make an 88 on the test. If the rest of the class does cruddy (say the class average is 38), and the prof curves that class-average score to a "C" (say, 70), then your 88 become great. It gets curved up to a super-high "A++++", to a numerical score that's way-higher than 100. In that case, a curve is good for your 88. But if the class average is 93, then you hope the prof does not curve the scores, because all the sudden your 88 looks like crap, and a curve would translate your 88 into a number below the average (say, 70) after the curve. So your 88 would suddenly be a D instead of an A++++. Same idea here (except for the confusing factor that "low ERA" is good while "low test score" is bad). The point is that the better the class average is, the *harder* it is for your grade to get curved into a super-good score. So, how does it happen that a "pitchers era" makes Koufax and Gibson have ERA+ that look bad compared to Pedro's? Since their entire "class" of pitchers did well compared to Pedro's "class" of pitchers, I would think the very fact of it being a pitchers era would make it way, way harder for their ERA+ scores to look super good. I'd think it would be way easier for Pedro to have an ERA+ of over 200 than it would be for Koufax or Gibson, simply because the "class average" of Pedro's class of pitchers was so much worse. (I'm probably wrong about this, but I don't see why.)

Well, according to Baseball Reference, of the 20 pitchers with the best all-time ERA+, 6 pitched in 2007 and another retired in 2005.

You'll have to page the resident statheads to get a satisfactory answer as to what the implications of that are. But my best attempt at an explanation is that even in a very low run environment there is a level of run prevention beyond which even the greatest pitchers cannot surpass, so that in 1968 it would be physically impossible for a pitcher to compare as well to the league as Pedro compared to the league in 1999. The more runs are scored, the easier it is for great pitchers to compare well to the rest of the league.

[RShack]

I'm hijacking this thread so egregiously someone should call the cops,

Ha! Very nice...

but since you mentioned it I'll take the bait and say that the thought that Hendrix is overrated has crossed my mind a few times. I've only really been exposed to Experienced and Ladyland, but only a handful of the songs on those two albums jump out to me and say "the all time guitar god recorded this song." The simple explanation is that I'm listening to them in context of living in the 21st century, rather than in the 60's, when what he did was innovative and groundbreaking. By now everyone has had 35 years to be influenced by and imitate what he did.

It doesn't help that the sound is kinda fuzzy and distant on those two albums.

So, you don't think much of either Jimi or Electric Ladyland.

Hmmm.

Sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but I think you're going to Hell.

EDIT: "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to longflyball again." I tried to give you *positive* rep for doing that, but it wouldn't let me. (I figured the points might make you feel better between now and when your time is up and you discover things getting a bit too warm ;-)

[RShack]

Well, according to Baseball Reference, of the 20 pitchers with the best all-time ERA+, 6 pitched in 2007 and another retired in 2005.

You'll have to page the resident statheads to get a satisfactory answer as to what the implications of that are. But my best attempt at an explanation is that even in a very low run environment there is a level of run prevention beyond which even the greatest pitchers cannot surpass, so that in 1968 it would be physically impossible for a pitcher to compare as well to the league as Pedro compared to the league in 1999. The more runs are scored, the easier it is for great pitchers to compare well to the rest of the league.

OK, thanks...

All of this agrees with what I was wondering about: it's *easier* to get a really good ERA+ when pitching-in-general sucks. So, people using ERA+ to compare Pedro to Koufax and Gibson are using a number that isn't fair to Koufax and Gibson. Pedro had an easier time racking up his great ERA+ simply because he pitched in a time when pitching was lousy.

So, we should not be using ERA+ that way. We should only be using it as a scale to compare pitchers within a season, not across seasons. Yet it seems like using it across seasons is what people *normally* do. We just had an example of somebody saying Koufax is over-rated because his career ERA+ was "only" 33rd of all time. But that's just one example. This happens all the time. Yet it appears that ranking somebody in terms of career ERA+ relative to others of different years is wrong. If it's wrong, why does everybody do it? And if it's wrong, and if so many folks around here are into stats, how come people don't holler whenever somebody does it?

[mweb]

Not only do I not know everything that matters about pitching, I know very little about pitching. But I know enough to know that ERA+ ain't everything. I also know that pulling out a career-ERA+ for a guy with the profile of Sandy Koufax is disingenuous. When you did that, you knew you were pulling in years when he was still figuring out how to perfect his craft and harness his talent, and you knew he had to do that in the majors because he was *prevented* from having any MiL experience. You knew all that, which means you knew his career ERA+ is not at all representative of his accomplishments. But that's the one-and-only number you pulled out anyway. That alone makes me suspicious of whatever kind of point you're trying to make.

If you want to say he is "over-rated" because of the MiL years he was deprived of, and because of the years after 1966 that he didn't have due to arthritis, go right ahead. But that says absolutely nothing about the quality of pitcher he was, any more than Ted Williams' 2 stints in the Marines lessens his quality as a great hitter, or the years Ali lost when he was illegally banned from his profession lessens his quality as a great boxer. If you think that any of these guys are less-great because of the years they didn't have, then I think you've gotten lost in an arcane argument about "longevity vs. peak", and have forgotten to care about how amazingly, once-in-a-few-lifetimes good these guys were.

The shortcomings of medical science in his era gave him fewer years than he would have had 20 years later when there was more medical knowledge and superior surgical techniques, but that in no way compromises the impact of the 5 or 6 peak years he did have. Because he was deprived of MiL development *and* lost years because he was ahead of medical science, peak-value is the only possible way to judge his impact... because that's all there was. Bill James looked at peak value, and he ranked Koufax as one of the Top 5 baseball players of the 20th Century. Not "Top 5 Pitchers" at peak value, but "Top 5 Baseball Players" at peak value (along with Ruth, Wagner, Mantle, and Grove). I guess Bill James over-rated him too. I don't keep up with the world in which stat guys argue about these things but I believe even the most cynical stat freak who looks at peak pitchers put him in the top-5, and they do that regardless of how much room there is for foul-ball pop-ups in Dodger Stadium.

His era was a pitchers era. And during that era, he was considered by everyone as being in a league of his own. During the time he pitched, there was only 1 Cy Young Award, shared by both leagues. During the time that both leagues shared one award between them, nobody but Koufax won a Cy Young unanimously (as in "every single vote for him, and not a single vote for any other pitcher in either league"). Not only was Koufax the only guy to get a Major League Cy Young Award unanimously, he got it 3 times in 4 years... and it was *unanimous all 3 times*. Nobody complained. Everybody said, "Yep, that's right." (The "missing year" in his streak of unanimous Cy Young's was '64 when he was hurt so bad that he missed a third of his starts. Even during that injury-plagued "off year" when he was pitching as more of a cripple than usual, he still went 19-5 and put up a 1.74 ERA and a 187 ERA+.)

He pitched before Video Kinetic Analysis existed. It was later invented for Olympians, to do things like help the javelin-thrower know how to change his delivery to get maximum force into the javelin toss. They videotape the guy, then do computer analysis of the image, use thinning algorithms to reduce the man to a stick-figure, then apply physics on the stick figure to see how he could/should change his motion. Koufax pitched before videotape, let alone that kind of analysis. However, years later they took some old film footage of him pitching and processed that film. And they discovered that he was perfect. He had figured out *the* optimal pitching delivery. There was *nothing* about him to fix. Which is probably what helped ruin his elbow: he had figured out the kinetics to such an optimal degree, and was generating so much force, that he was taxing the weak link, which is the elbow. In other words, one large contributor to his short career was the very fact that he had succeeded so well at optimizing his own pitching mechanics. And he did that by himself, without any of the modern tools and techniques of modern training.

You say his stats don't reflect the years he didn't pitch, the years that would have been his decline. His stats also may not reflect his peak. Many think he never reached his peak, because he had to quit first. Regardless of that, in an era of dominant pitching, he was considered by everybody as the best of the best. Just like the Beatles were looked up as being on a different level, not only by fans but also by the Stones, the Who, and everybody else in the pantheon of rock, Koufax was looked up to by the greats of that era. Nobody thought they were better than Koufax. One of my favorite quotes about him comes from Yogi Berra (who else?) After the '63 WS, Yogi said, "I can see how he won 25 games. What I don't understand is how he lost 5."

Koufax only had 5 or 6 seasons after he got his act together enough to be anything above-average as a ML pitcher. Everybody knows that, and nobody who pays real attention to baseball claims otherwise. So exactly who is over-rating him? Koufax had it figured out by age 25. When you separate out his pre-25 formative years, his peak years are all that's left. If you think his performance during those years is "over-rated", then please tell me the long list of guys who had a better 5 or 6 years than he did. Other people say anywhere from Top-1 to Top-5 all-time, but you say he's over-rated. Bill James said he was one of the Top-5 of all 20th Century ballplayers at *any* position, but you say he's over-rated. I can't wait to see the long list of guys who you think were better than him. (I'm sure Bill James would like to see this list too.)

ps: When Eric Clapton first saw Jimi Hendrix play, it made him want to quit. Do you think Jimi Hendrix is over-rated as a guitarist because he died at 27, didn't have a long career, and we never got to see what else he would do? Do you think we should look at how many years he played, and forget what people like Eric Clapton thought of him? Is there some "career EADGBE+" score that convinces you that Jimi is "over-rated" just because he died?

I never claimed ERA+ was everything, but it is a very good stat to use when comparing careers. I'll try to address your points one at a time.

Your disingenuous stuff is nonsense, and insulting, so thanks for that. I'll explain why it's nonsense for you as well. First off, I would use that stat for any pitcher's career regardless of the point I'm trying to make. Secondly, most players aren't as good when they first come up as they are in their prime, that's common sense. So I can pull up the vast majority of pitchers ERA+ to prove whatever point I'm trying to prove, and you can than say I'm being disingenuous because they had a bad start or finish or middle of their career. The vast majority of pitchers either take awhile to reach their peak performance or have a decline phase with weaker performance. Most go through both, Koufax only went one, so he should actually have an advantage over most in this regard.

So you have a problem with his whole career being evaluated, fine, lets just focus on Sandy's peak. It was great, but the peak is overrated due to the reasons I mentioned in my first post. His best year in ERA+ is tied for 56th all time, his next best is 70th, and those are his only appearances in the top 100. Obviously tremendous years, but based on the perception of his peak, I would have expected seasons among the best 5 or 10 ever.

Concerning your longevity points, well having a career end due to injury is different than going to war or being wrongfully banned from the sport. Injuries happen all the time in sports, a players career must be evaluated with their injuries and missed time in mind. Now, I agree about the medical science part, but that was the case(speaking of all sorts of injuries here) for a lot of players.

You mention Bill James list, well that's interesting, since I have two lists I'm quite sure he's seen, because he wrote them: the top pitchers of all time and best players ever. Maybe he's changed his mind since you read whatever you read, but Bill has Koufax as the 14th greatest pitcher ever, and the 51st best player ever as of the end of 2000.

He also writes this: "The Dodgers moved into Dodger Stadium in 1962. In the five years that he pitched there, Koufax had a career record of 57-15 and an ERA of 1.37. On the road his record was just as good(54-19), but his ERA was 2.57."

So that goes back to the ballpark point. If Koufax was in a hitter friendly park, he would have still been great, but I doubt he'd be considered to be nearly as great.

As far as better 5-6 year peak's go, I don't think there's a long list, but I'll go with Pedro, Maddux, Walter Johnson, Mordecai Brown, Mattewson, Grove, and Randy Johnson. I say overrated because it seems like many think he's had the best peak ever.

Even Kevin Brown had a comparable peak.

Yes, we can play the what if game with Sandy, if had stayed healthy, maybe he would have had another 5 years as good as his best year, who knows, but I'm not going to evaluate him as if he had. I will however, put him above many guys that pitched longer, and had more career value, because he had a better peak and I'll take 5 great years over 10 good one's when ranking players.

About the PS part, Hendrix is arguably the best guitarist ever, his guitar skills are not overrated at all imo, but if he stayed around and started putting out mediocre music like most musicians do, it would have tarnished his image some among many. I definitely think going out on top leads to being being remembered better than fading away does. Do you disagree with that?

Edit: Just saw your points on ERA+, that's interesting and I hadn't thought of that, I would like to see what someone like Drungo, 1970, etc say on that. So maybe ERA+ isn't totally fair, not sure, but I still think it's one of the best stats to use to compare pitchers from different era's since it does factor in league average and parks. It's much better than just using ERA.

[mweb]

Well, according to Baseball Reference, of the 20 pitchers with the best all-time ERA+, 6 pitched in 2007 and another retired in 2005.

The problem with buying into that too much is Pedro, Webb, Oswalt, and Santana are very likely to end up with a worse ERA+ when their career ends due to likely declining in their 30's. And the guy who retired is a reliever(Franco), so that leaves Roger at #8, and RJ tied for 18th. Pedro is currently first, so I'd assume he'll remain in the top 20.