This is one of the things that makes baseball in general a lot of fun.
I only caught the very end of Marichals career, when he was very average.
I did get to see a bit of Perry and Niekro, and lots of Wakefield, another knuckleballer.
One of the things that makes them hard to compare is pitching style. Perry and pretty much any knuckleball pitcher will have fairly long careers barring injury or lack of desire to continue. It's just not as taxing on the arm as being a hard thrower.
I've grown away from using wins as an important stat for pitchers. There's so much that goes into getting a lot of wins, they have to be good to begin with, but a good pitcher on a team that can't score or a team without much of a bullpen will lose a lot of wins. The same goes for a lot of the traditional stats. Poor fielding behind the pitcher can hurt a lot.
So the three are - for me- very hard to compare.
Marichal played for some really good teams, and to my thinking was a great pitcher. Lots of pitches, and a decent bit of power too. Just the sort of pitcher who will strike out a lot of batters, especially with excellent control.
Perry - The spitter/ splitter/ maybe maybe not and a bunch of other pitches as well but not a great fastball. The sort of pitcher who looks to get a lot of ground balls. He played for some good teams, and some not so good teams.
Niekro - Knuckleball pitchers are so different it's futile to make comparisons. And sometimes their value to the team is in stuff that won't show up well in stats. Add in the inconsistency of the pitch and you get a pitcher who can be amazing one day and shelled the next without doing anything differently. I didn't pay enough attention to Niekro to know for sure, but if he was managed similarly to Wakefield there would have been a few times during the season when the relievers needed a rest and the knuckleball pitcher is called on to give them that whether the pitch is working well or not. Terrible for any stats, but good for the team. I'd guess that with the Braves being pretty bad a lot of the time he was needed to eat up innings more than a regular pitcher. Wakefield did a lot of that, even more if it was just a couple innings to take some work off the middle relievers. And I think once started two games in a row and maybe three in the same week (Maybe one was a very long relief, like 8 innings? I don't recall for sure.)
So overall I'd say it depends.
If I have all three in their prime and need to win one game ?
Marichal followed by either of the others depending on who else is on the team.
If I'm picking guys for a team?
Probably Niekro for the flexibility I'd get. If I had a great infield, I might opt for Perry.
Steve B
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