
Winningest Pitcher Ever, A Modern Interpretation
Warning! Baseball ramblings to follow. Not everything can be celebrities and excavation, you know.
I have been thinking a bit about Greg Maddux and his career wins total, which presently stands at 330 (against 200 losses). This places him in sole possession of 10th best wins all time. He is 40 years old and while he is not the pitcher he was in the early 90s, he still is managing to put together some nice outings.
In direct competition for greatest pitcher of their generation, is Roger Clemens with a lifetime record of 347-176. Clemens is 4 years older. Their lifetime ERAs are almost identical (Maddux's is 3.06 vs Clemens' 3.11). Clemens was a strikeout expert and has 4575 strikeouts to Maddux's still impressive 3151. I think once you take into account that Clemens pitched mostly in the American League, you probably have to give him the nod. We will also have to see how they end their careers, as Clemens is still pitching at 44 and is arguably still one of the best pitchers in the league.
Before moving on I should give an honorable mention to Pedro Martinez, who is a bit younger than these two. My suspicion is that his arm is going to explode and fall off, preventing him from amassing the stats Maddux and Clemens have managed. He has made a career of defying those who believe his arm is going to come off at any moment, so if he is still mowing people down in 6-7 years, this issue can be revisited.
Now it may be unfair to place too much emphasis on wins and/or win percentage, as pitching is only half the equation. A pitcher can not control how good his team is at scoring. This has led to the baseball-geek controversy about Bert Blyleven, who had 287 career wins with some fairly mediocre teams. He is not presently in the Hall of Fame and probably should be, if it were not for his missing the arbitrary 300 wins total that many use to grant one HOF immortality.
Having said all that, the main purpose of any starting pitcher is to win games. Many pitchers seem to alter their game depending on the score. With big leads they are either careless or feel they should challenge pitchers more. I am not entirely sure what the logic of that is, except that they feel they are increasing the odds of 3 quick outs at the cost of increasing the risks of a home run. In a close game it is not worth the risk, in a blow out it is. Anyway, the point of all that blathering is that one can argue that ERA or WHIP or some similar stat may miss this fact, so a pitcher on a particularly good or bad team could have inflated these stats that are supposedly independent of team quality. My suspicion is this is a small effect at best, but there it is. I am sure someone has gone through and tried to gather ERA in close vs blow out games, but this has some fairly obvious biases that might be difficult to take into account.
OK, I am meandering. It is hard to think of something more masturbatory than baseball stats. Except maybe masturbation. On to my point, such as it is.
Let's say we are going to judge greatest pitcher of all time by his Wins alone. Probably not the best metric, but far from the worst.
The all-time wins leader is Cy Young at 511 wins. That blows Clemens and Maddux away. However, it should probably be noted that Cy also had 316 losses, giving him a winning percentage below both Maddux and Clemens. This would also be a good time to mention Cy played from 1890-1911, an era where baseball was so different from the modern day it hardly deserves to be called the same game. Pitchers pitched every few games and good ones generally pitched the entire game, removing the "No Decision" which costs so many pitchers wins (and losses) in the modern era. Cy Young pitched 749 complete games, for God's sakes! While the greatest of his day, it seems absurd to compare him to modern players.
Of the top ten pitchers in Wins (excluding Clemens and Maddux), 5 played at least half their career in the 19th centruy. [Cy Young(511), Pud Galvin(364), Kid Nichols(361), Tim Keefe(342), & John Clarkson(328)]. Another three played in the 1910s and 20s, only partially overlapping with the time of Babe Ruth, the true dawn of the age of modern homerun-driven baseball [Walter Johnson(417), Pete Alexander(373), & Christie Mathewson(373)].
It is commonly argued that one can not start to compare players across eras until the integration of baseball, starting roughly in 1947 with Jackie Robinson. That leaves only two in the top ten that can really be compared: Warren Spahn (363 wins 1946-1965) and Steve Carlton (329 wins 1965-1986). While Young, Johnson, Mathewson and the rest were great players of immense historical importance, it is really these win totals that a modern player needs to surpass to be the "winning-est" pitcher of all time.
Both Maddux and Clemens have already surpassed Carlton, meaning only Spahn lies between them and the modern "Wins" title. Clemens could give us another season, which would likely get him there. Physically he still seems up to it. Amazing. I think Nolan Ryan (324 lifetime wins, btw) slipped him some youth juice.
Maddux is 4 years younger, but it is unclear if he has the longevity of Clemens. His numbers seem to indicate some deterioration, although he has been quite good since his most recent trade to the Dodgers (ERA ~2.37). Small number statistics, but he may have been floundering partially because he was playing games for the Cubs that didn't mean anything. I also think the Dodgers are being more careful with his pitch count, stopping him in the 80s instead of the 100s more typical for younger pitchers. He is 33 wins from Spahn, a realistic total for 3 more years (pitching until 43) if his abilities don't fall off a cliff and, of course, he wants to keep pitching.
Be nice to see him do it in a Dodger uniform, especially if he keeps pitching like he has been...