Best you've ever seen (1 Viewer)

[Funkley]

peripherals

 

[whoknew]

I'd imagine Koufax would be the real answer if we'd seen him. Ditto Gibson at his peak. Clemens has been amazing during an age that hitters dominated but if he'd pitched in the 70's he'd have just been in the same group as Ryan, Palmer, Seaver.

Clemens was clearly better than all of those three and Ryan isn't even in the same zip code as Clemens.

Oh, well. Ok then. Clemens fan much?

Not really. But I respect him very much. And he's likely the third or fourth greatest pitcher ever. And Ryan is very overrated by most people.

You've crunched the numbers and have done the analysis for this? He's not quite even the runaway best pitcher of his era let alone alltime. Do I *think* that he is? Probably but Maddux is right on his heels and Pedro was better than him during some of Clemens' best seasons. It's also pretty widely accepted that the best pitching in the modern era of baseball was Koufax from 1961 - 1966 and that the best season was Gibson's 1968 season with Pedro's 1999 season likely #2.

The legend of Clemens has grown given that he can somehow take these half seasons off and come back to pitch like he'd never left but to just claim that Clemens is #3-#4 all time is purely subjective.

Nolan Ryan "very over-rated"? That's just dumb. Looks at the peripherals between the two and you'll notice that Clemens and Ryan are damn near the same pitcher.

That's just not true:Link 1

(from a couple of years ago when Clemens was still building his resume)

Link 2

Link 3

Link 4

There are more available, if you need more. But there's really no doubt Clemens is significantly better than Ryan was and Clemens is one of the top few pitchers of all time.

 

[Funkley]

Nice to see you've done your own thinking on this. Way to go.

 

[whoknew]

Nice to see you've done your own thinking on this. Way to go.

So because someone whose job it is to crunch the numbers has done so, I'm supposed to ignore that? Good reasoning there.

 

[Funkley]

Nice to see you've done your own thinking on this. Way to go.

So because someone whose job it is to crunch the numbers has done so, I'm supposed to ignore that? Good reasoning there.

No. I'd take it and run with it. Or, you could Find only the #### that supports your position and ignore everything else.Bottom 3 links don't work here. I'll have to look at them later but I'm sure they're filled with Clemens unit sucking.

 

[whoknew]

Nice to see you've done your own thinking on this. Way to go.

So because someone whose job it is to crunch the numbers has done so, I'm supposed to ignore that? Good reasoning there.

No. I'd take it and run with it. Or, you could Find only the #### that supports your position and ignore everything else.Bottom 3 links don't work here. I'll have to look at them later but I'm sure they're filled with Clemens unit sucking.

Dude the numbers are objective. If you want to ignore them (for example, Clemens career ERA+ is 144, for Ryan -- 112; Clemens 292 Win Shares Above Bench, 435 Win Shares vs. Ryan's 175 and 335) and say the two are comps, then fine. But that doesn't mean its true.

 

[the moops]

Nice to see you've done your own thinking on this. Way to go.

So because someone whose job it is to crunch the numbers has done so, I'm supposed to ignore that? Good reasoning there.

No. I'd take it and run with it. Or, you could Find only the #### that supports your position and ignore everything else.Bottom 3 links don't work here. I'll have to look at them later but I'm sure they're filled with Clemens unit sucking.

It really isn't even closeClemens >>>>>>> Ryan

 

[Polecat]

Personally speaking, as having watched most of it...one of the best seasons for a starting pitcher playing for a bad team. In 1979, J.R. Richard started 38 games for the Astros. He completed 19 starts, going 18-13 with an ERA of 2.71. He struck out 313 batters and walked less than 100. He finished third in Cy Young balloting to Bruce Sutter.

The following season he started the All Star game after winning almost all his starts with a string of complete games. Shortly after the All-Star game he began complaining about a dead arm. A few weeks later he collapsed during pre-game warmups from a massive stroke. He was never the same.

eta: What one chooses to remember and what actually happened are sometimes different stories completely. I was a huge JR fan, thus I remember him as being bigger than life. As it turns out, in 1979 the Astros won 89 games and finished second behind the Big Red Machine in the NL West. Joe Niekro, also on the Astros, went 21-11 and finished second in the Cy Young voting. Funny, but I didn't remember it that way.