Write On Sports LLC - "The Best Pitcher of All Time (Part Two)" by Troy Somero

The Best Pitcher of All Time (Part Two)

2007-06-06 00:43:19 | By: Troy Somero

In Part One of my study to determine who the best pitcher of all time is I concluded that Walter Johnson is the greatest pitcher to ever play the game in terms of statistical longevity and statistical superiority. While Cy Young may hold more all-time records than Walter Johnson, and while Pedro Martinez may have a more impressive career ERA and WHIP than Walter Johnson, no pitcher in history has exhibited a better combination of these two types of statistics than The Big Train.

Despite Johnson's impressive career statistics, it is still very difficult to compare his statistics to anyone in this study other than Grover Cleveland Alexander, Christy Mathewson, Joe Wood and Cy Young, as each of these pitchers were contemporaries of Johnson. Likewise, how can anyone evenly compare Roger Clemens' seven Cy Young Award winning seasons to the seasons of pitchers who played against Cy Young himself?

There is an alternative way to compare the statistics of each of these great pitchers in order to negate the effects from the time periods in which they played. Baseball-reference.com has a collection of statistics called "162 Game Average". As the name implies, this stat line lists the various statistics that a pitcher would have collected over a 162 game season if all other variables (ballpark, opposing offense, defense, etc.) were controlled. Quite simply, this statistic helps to answer the question of what statistics each pitcher in this study would earn over the course of an entire season with all variables equal. If a baseball fan could have one pitcher start one game in an imaginary season, who would be the pitcher most apt for the job? Part Two of my study attempts to answer this question in the quest to determine who the best pitcher of all time is.

Below is a chart that details the estimated 162 game averages for the 16 pitchers in this study across nine statistical categories: wins, losses, innings pitched, hits allowed, strikeouts, strikeouts-to-walks ratio, ERA, adjusted ERA, and WHIP. Losses and hits allowed were chosen in place of the winning percentage statistic that I used in Part One because these two statistics are very dependant on the defense behind a pitcher – with the defense neutralized in this case, these statistics can be more fairly compared between pitchers. In a similar manner to the previous comparisons, the "Rank" columns beside each of the statistical columns demonstrate where each pitcher's statistic ranks in comparison to the other pitchers in the study. The final two columns in red are an average number and subsequent rank calculated when averaging all of the *Ranks* together.

CHART 3

162 Game Average	Wins	Rank	Losses	Rank	IP	Rank	Hits	Rank	K	Rank
Bob Gibson	16	11	11	11	261.3	5	220	10	209	6
Christy Mathewson	21	1	10	10	274	2	241	13	143	12
Cy Young	20	2	12	14	290.3	1	280	16	110	16
Greg Maddux	16	11	10	6	232	13	216	8	159	11
Grover Alexander	19	4	10	6	272.3	4	255	15	115	15
Joe Wood	20	2	10	6	255	6	202	6	175	9
Lefty Grove	19	4	8	2	249.7	8	243	14	143	12
Nolan Ryan	13	16	12	14	231.7	14	168	3	245	3
Pedro Martinez	17	7	7	1	220	16	167	1	249	2
Randy Johnson	17	7	9	5	234	12	185	4	280	1
Roger Clemens	17	7	8	2	237	11	201	5	226	5
Sandy Koufax	15	14	8	2	222	15	167	1	229	4
Steve Carlton	15	14	11	11	244.7	10	219	9	193	7
Tom Seaver	16	11	10	6	249.3	9	207	7	189	8
Walter Johnson	19	4	12	14	273.7	3	227	11	162	10
Warren Spahn	17	7	11	11	251.7	7	232	12	124	14
162 Game Average	K:BB	Rank	ERA	Rank	Adjusted ERA	Rank	WHIP	Rank	Average Rank Across All Categories	Index
Bob Gibson	2.35	10	2.91	9	127	11	1.188	12	8.667	10
Christy Mathewson	2.98	4	2.88	8	135	7	1.059	3	5.887	2
Cy Young	2.30	12	2.63	4	138	5	1.13	8	9.333	12
Greg Maddux	3.38	2	3.08	11	135	7	1.137	9	8.667	10
Grover Alexander	2.35	10	2.56	3	135	7	1.121	6	8	9
Joe Wood	2.36	9	2.03	1	146	3	1.085	4	6.222	3
Lefty Grove	1.91	15	3.06	10	148	2	1.278	16	11.333	16
Nolan Ryan	2.04	14	3.19	14	112TD>	16	1.247	14	9.333	12
Pedro Martinez	4.29	1	2.81	6	160	1	1.026	2	5.778	1
Randy Johnson	3.26	3	3.23	16	137	6	1.164	10	7.556	6
Roger Clemens	2.97	5	3.1	13	144	4	1.17	11	7.889	7
Sandy Koufax	2.94	6	2.76	5	131	10	1.106	5	6.444	4
Steve Carlton	2.27	13	3.22	15	115	15	1.247	14	10.667	14
Tom Seaver	2.63	7	2.86	7	127	11	1.121	6	7.333	5
Walter Johnson	2.57	8	2.17	2	116	14	1.061	1	7.889 TD>	7
Warren Spahn	1.82	16	3.09	12	118	13	1.195	13	10.556TD>	14

While the statistics above are important to consider in order to point out how the final rankings are totaled, this chart will be easier to understand by looking at it alongside the chart below. The chart below takes the last two columns in the first chart and re-organizes the rankings in order from the pitcher with the overall best ranking average to the pitcher with the overall worst ranking average.

CHART 4

Player	Average Rank Across All Categories	Index
Pedro Martinez	5.778	1
Christy Mathewson	5.887	2
Joe Wood	6.222	3
Sandy Koufax	6.444	4
Tom Seaver	7.333	5
Randy Johnson	7.556	6
Roger ClemensTD>	7.889	7
Walter Johnson	7.889	7
Grover Alexander	8	9
Bob Gibson	8.667	10
Greg Maddux	8.667	10
Nolan Ryan	9.333	12
Cy Young	9.333	12
Warren Spahn	10.556	14
Steve Carlton	10.667	14
Lefty Grove	11.333	16

According to the results above, in a perfect pitcher's world with all variables held equal, it appears that Pedro Martinez would be considered the greatest pitcher of all time over the course of a given imaginary season. Martinez ranks first or second in six of the nine categories highlighted above: losses (1st), hits allowed (1st), strikeouts (2nd), strikeouts-to-walks ratio (1st), adjusted ERA (1st), WHIP (2nd). No other pitcher in the study ranked this highly in more than two statistical categories. Perhaps the most striking result relating to Martinez in this study is the season-long stat line he theoretically would put up in this experimental season: a 17-7 record with 82 more strikeouts than hits allowed (249 versus 167), an astronomical 4.29 strikeouts for every walk, and a 2.81ERA with a staggering 1.026 WHIP. If a pitcher ever put up a 162 game stat line like that he would without question be considered the greatest pitcher of all time, and with respect to Part Two of this study there is no pitcher greater than Pedro Martinez.

Another interesting conclusion from this part of the study is that the top pitchers of all time, according to the 162 game averages, are all from various eras in baseball history. Amongst active pitchers only Martinez is in the top five. Christy Mathewson and Joe Wood both had careers that fell between 1900 and 1930. Sandy Koufax pitched in the late 1950s and 1960s, while Tom Seaver pitched in the 1970s and 1980s. The variety of eras represented at the top of this chart indicates that the study does not have a bias towards one era over another. Had the results been biased based on time span, there is no conceivable way that Greg Maddux and Cy Young would rank so much lower than their respective contemporaries.

Despite the lack of time period bias, there is one bias that seems to peak its way through the results outlined above: pitchers that had relatively short careers seem to fair better than those that had longer careers in this study. Martinez, Wood and Koufax all ranked in the top five for Part Two of this study, but they also had the three lowest numbers of total innings pitched throughout their careers, as exemplified in Part One. Obviously, a pitcher like Wood or Koufax that retired at the top of his game will have a more impressive 162 game season via his career stats than a pitcher like Roger Clemens, Cy Young, or Tom Seaver, all of whom pitched throughout multiple decades and well into their 40s.

Although there is a minute bias in these results (as there would be in any similar analysis), the fact remains that in a theoretical, pitcher-perfect baseball season no pitcher would have a better shot at the Cy Young Award than Pedro Martinez, including Cy Young himself. However, the focus on season-long success is only half of the answer to our question of who is the best pitcher of all time. The other half of the answer was introduced yesterday. Therefore, what we need to conclude the study is a methodology that will enable us to equally weigh career-long statistics and season-long statistics into a finite ranking system, allowing the question of who is the best pitcher of all time to be answered once and for all. This concluding analysis will take place in Part Three.