The Best Pitcher of the Last 50 Years

Sometimes, I feel the need to ask big questions with no clear answers.  Today the question is, who is the best pitcher of the last 50 years?  For starters, let’s set a quick ground rule.  In order to qualify, a pitcher needs to have pitched the best part of his career in the last 50 years.  So pitchers like Warren Spahn, who pitched until 1965, are eliminated from consideration.  Second, my primary concern is career value.  Dwight Gooden had a stunning peak from 1984-87, but his career does not measure up.  The same will eliminate Sandy Koufax.  In his prime he may have been as good as anyone to throw the ball, but the prime is too short to measure up.  For purposes of this blog post, I’ll talk about primes only as they illustrate larger career value and dominance.

I think most fans would give one of three answers: Tom Seaver, Roger Clemens, and Greg Maddux. All are good picks, and you can’t go wrong with any of these answers. For my purposes, I want to set Clemens aside, because I don’t want the entire post to devolve into a discussion of steroids. I think if you can look past the steroids, he is the right answer. For purposes of this post, I am not looking past steroids. That leaves Seaver and Maddux. Who’s better?

	WAR	Wins	K/9	BB/9	ERA	ERA+	HR/9	Cy	WHIP
Seaver	105.3	311	6.8	2.6	2.86	128	0.7	3	1.12
Maddux	96.8	355	6.1	1.8	3.16	132	0.6	4	1.14

This is a quick overview of each player’s career. By Wins Above Replacement, ERA, K/9, and WHIP, take Seaver. By Wins, ERA+, BB/9, HR/9, and Cy Youngs, take Maddux. Seaver also won a Rookie of the Year to even out the award debate. The closeness of these numbers reflect the closeness of the debate. Depending on which stat you weight the most heavily, either pitcher can be favored. Next, let’s consider dominance by era.

	Wins	ERA	K	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	WHIP	ERA+
Seaver	3	3	5	6	0	0	3	3
Maddux	3	4	0	0	9	4	4	5

The number reflects the number of times each led the league in that category. Again you see a close race. Seaver leads in K, K/9, and ties in Wins.  Maddux leads in ERA, ERA+, BB/9, HR/9, and WHIP, though the WHIP and ERA leads are minuscule.  This chart, I think, highlights the difficulties in comparing each player.  Seaver was an incredibly effective power pitcher, as the K totals reflect.  His three WHIP titles, I think, highlight his broader effectiveness by noting how few baserunners he allowed even without a  single BB/9 title.  Maddux, in contrast, is arguably the best control pitcher in major league history.  He led the league in fewest BB/9 an unheard of 9 times.  He rarely gave up the longball, and he allowed minimal baserunners.  Though not the strikeout pitcher of Tom Seaver’s class, he still had good K numbers.  So who’s better?

A final complicating factor is team quality. Each pitcher won a single World Series. Seaver’s teams made it twice, and Maddux made it 3 times. Maddux made the playoffs 13 times, in an era of expanded playoffs and smaller divisions, while Seaver made the playoffs only 3 times. Maddux clearly had better teams behind him, but the Braves were defined by their pitching, not their hitting. In this context, I am not sure how much Maddux’s stats rely on team quality. Andruw Jones is the only elite fielder who spent the bulk of his career backing up either pitcher, though each had a number of good fielders come through.

I lean toward Greg Maddux. My leanings likely are affected by how many more times I saw Maddux than Seaver, but I still lean that direction. The number of single season titles, I think, point to a slightly more dominant pitcher, and the career numbers are so close as to be indistinguishable. There is my case for Maddux. What do you think? Who is the best pitcher of the last 50 years? Please make your case in the comments, because I would love to hear it.

The Strange Career of Jim Palmer

How did Jim Palmer become one of the great pitchers of his generation? Consider this chart briefly:

Wins	ERA	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	Cy	IP/162
268	2.86	5	3	0.7	3	249
284	3.34	6.4	2	1	1	243
329	3.22	7.1	3.2	0.7	4	245
287	3.31	6.7	2.4	0.8	0	245
224	3.26	5.2	2.5	1	1	240
324	3.19	9.5	4.7	0.5	0	232
314	3.11	5.9	2.3	0.7	2	248
318	3.35	5.6	3	0.8	0	233

The number of Cy Young awards probably give away who is who, but just in case they are, in order, Palmer, Ferguson Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Bert Blyleven, Catfish Hunter, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry, and Phil Niekro.

Palmer sticks out for three reasons. First, he averages the heaviest workload, though only slightly. Second he has by far the lowest ERA. And most importantly for my question at the top, he has an atrocious set of strikeout/walk numbers. Palmer has the lowest K/9 of anyone in the group, and he has the worst K/BB ratio of anyone on the list by a decent margin. How do you get from that to the Hall of Fame career of Jim Palmer?

Let’s start by disposing of the most obvious explanation. Palmer’s component stats are not a result of a long decline phase. He peaks at 6.4 K/9 in 1966, his second season, and he only tops 6.0 in two other seasons. For his prime, from 1969-1977, Palmer averages 5.4 K/9 and 2.9 BB/9, a 1.88 K/BB ratio. That ratio brings him even with Phil Niekro for his career, and Niekro had the second worst ratio, behind Palmer, on the chart above. Yet in that stretch Palmer is putting up 275 innings per season with a 2.53 ERA. Even at his peak, Palmer was a great pitcher who walked a lot and did not strike out many, unlike basically anyone else since WW2.

Second, the Orioles played in a slight pitcher’s park. Memorial Stadium, where they played for Palmer’s entire career. The multi-year park factor for the park hovered in the mid-90’s, artificially depressing Palmer’s ERA by a bit, but not by much. He is not pitching at Dodger Stadium in the 1960s with a park factor near 90.

Third, and this is the key, Palmer played in front of the best left side of the infield in baseball history. As one bit of proof, consider career Total Zone Runs, a measure of how many runs a particular player saved with their glove. #1 on the list? Orioles 3rd baseman Brooks Robinson. #2? Orioles shortstop Mark Belanger. Combine that with #10, Orioles center fielder Paul Blair, and you have the perfect environment for a low strikeout pitcher to succeed. For this reason, Palmer’s ERA is much lower than his FIP, 2.86 to 3.50, and his BABIP for his career is an astonishingly tiny .255 (Greg Maddux, for example, is at .295).

Why was Jim Palmer a great pitcher? He fit his team perfectly. Nolan Ryan would have been wasted on the Orioles. When you are backed by superior fielders like Robinson, Belanger, and Blair, contact is acceptable or even desirable. I can’t think of a pitcher more suited to his team than Palmer, and that carried him to three Cy Young Awards, 3 World Series championships, and the Hall of Fame.