Quote:
Originally Posted by G1911
Many other lefties were formidable. Many other lefties were champions. Many others had batters of their era in awe of them. It was a deadball era, look at the league ERA. It is frequently referred to as the "second deadball era".
It is not revisionist history to say he is not the greatest lefty of all time. He has never been the consensus pick (there isn't a consensus pick at all, really).
|
Low E.R.A. doesn't mean the ball was dead. If you miss the ball completely, it doesn't matter how live or dead it is! But as pointed out earlier by rats60, there were a lot of great hitters in the N.L. who hit a lot of home runs, and hit for high averages. And if the league E.R.A. was low during that time, I'd like to see how some of today's hitters would have fared against the likes of Koufax, Gibson, etc. Maybe the the E.R.A. would have been even lower!
Again, my original advocating for Koufax was not to definitively say he was the greatest lefty of all time. It's really impossible to say who was "the best". Why do we have to have a "best" anyway? At any rate, you have the different eras and so many different factors affecting how the players performed. I just think there was a bit of disparagement toward Koufax on the thread, and that Koufax wasn't getting his due.