Pitching Continued

Sorry to do this to all of you again, but because of a few discussions I had yesterday, I felt the need to defend myself. Hopefully this will be the last one; I don't want to lose any more readers than I already have.

Anyway, before I start, I said I would transcribe my brother's comment:
"Not that I agree (or disagree) with Ryan being in there, but I think you overlooked the "Bob's" as in Feller (1939 - 1948) and Gibson (1964 - 1973)."

Before I respond to that, I will explain a little bit of my methodology for choosing my players. At first, I browsed some stat lists and the Hall of Fame list to make my initial player list. Then I looked up their relevant stats. I immediately removed about six players from that initial list, az I was down to 34. Some of the 19 I chose from the 34 were obvious (Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, etc.), but others were very difficult. Right at the outset I should have said that many of the people on the bottom of the 19 are interchangeable with some that I left off the list; it's really a matter of preference. I imagine that the 19th and 20th greatest pitchers of all time were similarly successful. Anyway, here are the pitchers that were on the preliminary list but did not make the top 19:

Warren Spahn: 363 Ws, 382 CGs, 63 Shutouts, 3.09 ERA, 118 ERA+, 1.195 WHIP
Steve Carlton: 329 Ws, 254 CGs, 55 Shutouts, 4136 Ks, 7.135 K/9, 3.22 ERA, 115 ERA+, 1,247 WHIP
Gaylord Perry: 314 Ws, 303 CGs, 53 Shutouts, 3534 Ks, 3.11 ERA, 117 ERA+, 1.181 WHIP
Lefty Grove: 300 Ws, 298 CGs, 35 Shutouts, 3.06 ERA, 148 ERA+, 1.278 WHIP
Jim Palmer: 268 Ws, 211 CGs, 53 Shutouts, 2.86 ERA, 125 ERA+, 1.18 WHIP
Bob Feller: 266 Ws, 279 CGs, 44 Shutouts, 6.070 K/9, 3.25 ERA, 122 ERA+, 1.316 WHIP
Carl Hubbell: 253 Ws, 260 CGs, 36 Shutouts, 2.98 ERA, 130 ERA+, 1.166 WHIP
Bob Gibson: 251 Ws, 255 CGs, 56 Shutouts, 3117 Ks, 7.223 K/9, 2.91 ERA, 127 ERA+, 1.188 WHIP
Juan Marichal: 243 Ws, 244 CGs, 52 Shutouts, 2.89 ERA, 122 ERA+, 1.101 WHIP
Whitey Ford: 236 Ws, 156 CGs, 45 Shutouts, 2.75 ERA, 132 ERA+, 1.215 WHIP
Don Drysdale: 209 Ws, 167 CGs, 49 Shutouts, 2.95 ERA, 121 ERA+, 1.148 WHIP
John Smoltz: 207 Ws, 53 CGs, 16 Shutouts, 154 Saves, 2975 Ks, 7.952 K/9, 3.26 ERA, 127 ERA+, 1.170 WHIP
Dennis Eckersley: 197 Ws, 100 CGs, 20 Shutouts, 390 Saves, 3.50 ERA, 116 ERA+, 1.161 WHIP
Roy Oswalt: 112 Wins, 12 CGs, 4 Shutouts, 7.452 K/9, 3.07 ERA, 142 ERA+, 1.201 WHIP

As I mentioned to my friend last night, I would like to add a pitcher to my top 19. I put Babe Ruth on there because I thought it would be fun; now I'll put a real dude there. I admit I missed the boat on this one because I had never heard much about him:
Ed Walsh: 195 Ws, 250 CGs, 57 Shutouts, 1736 Ks, 5.271 K/9, 1.82 ERA, 146 ERA+, 1.000 WHIP

Here's the deal: the purpose of this post was not to list the 19 pitchers I would most want to pitch one game 7 of the World Series at their peak. I wanted to compile a list of the pitchers who had the best careers of all time. This is the crux of the argument I had with my friend last night. He would argue, based on yesterday's post, that Sandy Koufax, Addie Joss, Jack Chesbro, and Rube Waddell do not belong on my list. I will admit that Chesbro was a poor selection; I very much wanted to take note of his one ridiculous season. Chesbro's closing career line of 3.931 K/9 and 110 ERA+ are very pedestrian. I would like to retroactively remove him from the list.

That being said, I would like to explain why the other three should remain on the list. My friend maintains that a pitcher like Steve Carlton should be on the list because he was a terrific pitcher for 16 years. He claims that the last five-six years of his career should count less because he was older and was deteriorating. My argument is that if he plays poorly for long enough that his overall stats suffer, then he should be penalized for it. I think that if Carlton had retired in the early 80s instead of sticking around until 1988, he would be on the list. That's five full years of sub-par baseball forever attached to Carlton's stat line. My friend would argue that the other players I mentioned (Koufax, Joss, Waddell) got "lucky" that they never deteriorated or never had the opportunity to have those few bad seasons before they retired. I wouldn't exactly call Addie Joss lucky; he died of tubercular meningitis when he was 31. Waddell was "lucky" enough to learn and perfect pitching while outside of the Major Leagues, so he never went through a development stage. And Koufax literally destroyed his arm during the 1965 season, and despite the advice of his team physician he went out to pitch in 1966 and had another unbelievable year. He was forced to retire after that season even though he was at the peak of his performance.

Now, my friend would like to say that these pitchers would have worse career stats if they had played late into their 30s, and this is entirely possible. But I choose not to penalize players for the what-might-have-beens. In "Moneyball," Michael Lewis conveys Billy Beane's preference to draft players who have been successful; he doesn't go for the guys who have a lot of upside potential. I choose to do the same thing here. I don't care about what those guys might have done if they had played ten more years; I care about how they performed when they did play. And Koufax played to the tune of a 2.76 ERA, a 1.106 WHIP, and 9.278 K/9. Some of those other guys who played a long time have worse stats, mostly because they stuck around for too long. Carlton finished his career with a 3.22 ERA. Feller finished his career with a 1.316 WHIP, the highest on my list.

The only player I'm really penalizing for something out if his control is Bob Gibson. By all measures he deserves to be on my top 19. The reason I am penalizing him is because for only the 1968 season the pitcher's mound was raised, and pitchers as a whole enjoyed a season of success. The league ERA was 2.90 that year. The next lowest league ERA during Gibson's career was 3.27. Gibson enjoyed this season most of all:
22 Ws, 28 CGs, 13 Shutouts, 268 Ks, 1.12 ERA, 258 ERA+, 0.853 WHIP
Let's look at what happens to his career stats when you remove the 1968 season: his WHIP rises from 1.188 to 1.217, and his ERA rises from 2.91 to 3.07.
That's still a very nice career, but definitely less super-human. I guess I'm not being entirely fair; I really should replace that season with an average Gibson season, but that's too much work.

Anyway, keep your thoughts coming; I've already finished my work for the month, and there are still five business days to go. I'll need something to keep me occupied.