Quote:
Originally Posted by brewing
No I didn't. While no hitters are impressive having them vs not having them isn't that big of a deal to me. Just like championships in a team sport.
Koufax was amazing during the World Series. I never said Koufax wasn't great. Even if Kershaw has been pedestrian like in the playoffs, the far superior regular season performance of over 2200 innings means more to me.
I did forget to leave out his ERA+ which helps highlight the different eras they pitched in.
Kershaw is 157 2nd highest All Time
Koufax is 131
Others mentioned
Grove 148
Randy Johnson 135
Plank 122
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When you can’t pitch well against the best teams in the postseason, you shouldn’t even be in the discussion in my opinion. The only thing that matters is winning championships, not dominating bad teams pitching 6 or 7 innings. Kershaw has only has 25 complete games in 12 seasons. Koufax pitched 27 complete games in 1965 alone. Then he pitched 27 more complete games in 1966. Kershaw’s regular season really isn’t even superior since he is letting someone else pitch the most difficult innings when a pitcher is tiring. Make Kershaw pitch 27 complete games in a season and let’s see what his ERA would be.
The pitcher controls the ball on defense. Despite being a team sport, it is the pitcher that can win a championship. Just look at 1965 when the World Series was tied at 2-2. Koufax went out and pitched shutouts in game 5 and game 7. Why can’t Kershaw do that even once to bring the Dodgers a championship? The Dodgers have been good enough to make the postseason 9 times and are 0-9 because Kershaw has pitched poorly.
ERA+ just tells me how weak the pitching was in those eras. They weren’t competing against Spahn, Gibson, Marichal, Bunning, Perry and Sutton.