[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snowman

WAR is a great statistic for some things, but it's not very useful if you're trying to compare pitchers from different eras. It's normalized by season. Replacement level talent from back when Lefty Grove was pitching probably wasn't much better than the guy in your church softball league who works at the steel plant and who was the 2nd best pitcher in his high school of 400 students. The overwhelming majority of pitchers from that era, possibly even all of them, would not make a major league roster today. They definitely improved by the time Spahn was throwing, but still, even then, replacement level players were far worse than they are today. And they make up the denominator in the WAR calculations. Being 10 wins better than some guy you just grabbed from the coal mines in 1927 is not the same thing as being 10 wins better than some kid who destroyed hitters in Cuba and who throws 99 mph heat but occasionally struggles with control in 2021, so he bounces back and forth between triple A ball and pros. Teleport that Cuban kid back to 1927 and nobody hits him. NOBODY. Not even Ruth. That kid would have a WAR of +25 back then. Just imagine some kid showing up next season throwing the ball 112 mph. Not even Mike Trout could hit him. Could you imagine Randy Johnson in his prime pitching to the hitters in the 1920s? He would probably throw 10 no hitters per year lol. The difference is night and day.

Prove it!

Problem is, you and everyone else has absoluetly no way to do so, so you and others comfortably keep spouting this crap about how players from today's modern era are always so much better than those from long past, and while you can't possibly prove it, nobody can disprove it either, so lucky you.

The argument you and others make is akin to taking an Indy car and driver from today and putting them on a track against cars and drivers from 100 years ago. You completely ignore the different eras in baseball and all the changes in rules, equipment, facilities, training, medical care, and on and on. You want to really and properly compare players from today against those from 75 or 100 years ago, then have your Kershaws, Johnsons, and Koufaxs be born at the same time as those that actually played 75 or 100 years ago, and grew up under the same conditions, training, rules, and so on that those players back then had. Then, and only then, could you possibly have any chance to really compare pitchers from different eras to decide who was the best lefty of all time. But your earlier comments questioning Grove, and especially Spahn, even being in the conversation as the greatest lefty pitcher of all time is hands down the dumbest thing I've seen you say here on Net54, to date. And trust me, you've got a lot of other doozies to your credit.

You mentioned how Grove and Spahn don't even have the statistics to match up with all the other, more recent pitchers on that all time list, but all those statistics are nothing but crap, and don't always truly tell you anything comparable for players across different eras. When people go to a game in person, their favorite sports bar to watch on the big screen, or just turn on the tube at home to watch their team play, they don't care how many strikeouts a pitcher has, or how many hits, walks, and HRs he did or didn't give up. Most all fans, be they 8 or 88, in that present moment in time really only care about one thing, and one thing only, did their team WIN..........PERIOD!!!!!!!! Its after the fact that all the statisticians and analysts run the numbers so they can compare them and argue about who was better and did what, and on and on. But all these statistics are meaningless because all that really matters, all that baseball players are paid to do as their one sole task, is to win. And that is something Grove and Spahn did, was win.

And especially in Spahn's case, he won a lot. More so than any other left handed pitcher in any era, and it really isn't close. Yet you said he was just an above average pitcher (probably the next dumbest thing you've ever said on this forum so far), and downplayed his entire career as just being long and how that apparently doesn't count much towards him possiblly being the best lefty pitcher ever. Well there's an old sport's cliche' (and cliche's are cliche's because they are inherently so true) and that's - "The best ability, is availabity". And Spahn was around and available to rack up more wins than anyone else on that all time lefty list. And to top it off, Spahn did that losing three of his prime pitching years while in the service, and pitching on some not so hot teams early on in his career. In fact, at one time there was an old saying that the Braves fans had popularized that I don't know if you're familiar with - "Spahn and Sain, and pray for rain". I don't think any other lefty on the list was ever immortalized in a saying like that showing just how important he was to his team. And yet despite the so-called statistical shortcomings you were pointing out, Spahn had some unmeasurable, intangible talent or ability that still allowed him to inspire his teammates to thrive and do their utmost to help the team win behind the confidence he obviously instilled in them whenever he pitched. And if that isn't a sign and testament to somebody's greatness, then I don't know what is, but it sure ain't something you just pull off a stat sheet.

And don't try pulling that crap about how Spahn can't be that great because he didn't win all kinds of championships and MVP and Cy Young awards. He was 1 for 3 in World Series, being a world champ only once, with an overall WS record of 4-3 I believe. He won the Cy Young award just once, but believe he was an all star 14 times. And though never actually winning the MVP award, he got votes for the honor in 15 different years. Arguably in baseball, your starting pitcher probably has the greatest impact of any single player on whether their team will win or lose a game. But of all the major U.S. sports, baseball is the only one where a star player, in this case the starting pitcher, doesn't get to play in every game. In fact, realistically, a starting pitcher usually only gets to pitch in about every fourth or fifth game a team plays. Even if a starter were to win every single game he starts during a season, he still can't single handedly carry his team to the playoffs and the World Series. So again, don't even think about going there.

Also in talking about this greatest lefty argument, a lot of you ignore a pitcher's entire career and focus just on some arbitrary peak period when they were at the absolute best. Talk about meaningless stats, this is a timeless move by statisticians and analysts to mine a statistical database to select just the arbitrary period or information that reinforces or validates the argument or theory they are putting forth, and not necessarily the correct or true answer. You had mentioned Johnson not really starting to take off till it was already later in his career. Well Koufax was a rookie in '55, but didn't hit his peak till the early '60s, before finally retiring a few years later while still fairly young, for health reasons. So he was somewhat of a late bloomer as well. And over the first six years (exactly half) of Koufax's career, he had a cumulative losing won-loss record. Meanwile, Johnson had a similar overall losing record over his first seven years in the majors, accounting for about a third of his career. So when you then go to determine an all time greatest left hander, why would you even consider two pitchers who couldn't even have an overall winning record for major portions of their careers, and at the start of their careers no less? That makes absolutely no sense at all. All people are doing is cherry picking these pitcher's best years to make their arguments, and ignoring entire careers. I thought the question was best left handed pitcher of all time, not most dominant left handed pitcher for a specific, arbitrary period of time during their career that someone gets to pick and choose at their discretion. IMO those are two entirely different questions. And if it is the latter question, I could reasonably argue that the best, most dominant thing any pitcher can do is pitch a perfect game, so maybe we just look to LHPs that threw one, which interestingly enough includes both Koufax and Johnson. But then many others would argue there are other LHPs, like Dallas Braden or Tom Browning, who have also pitched perfect games, but would never be thought of as the greatest or most dominant ever lefty pitcher. So one game is too short, then why not one particular year, or even two? Why instead pick a five or seven year period then, unless maybe one of the reasons is it helps the person doing the period selection to better make the argument for whom they want to be considered as the all time best?

Again, the question was ALL TIME best lefty, not just best or most dominant lefty for a randomly selected portion of their career. Perhaps another way to approach this was through the question someone posed to possibly help decide this greatest lefty of all time issue, and that was - "If you're a GM starting a team today, who is the first lefthander you would select for your team?". But there people go using that modern bias of today and forcing the old time pitchers to suddenly come up to start against today's players, without giving them the same benefits as growing up with all the modern advancements and advantages that someone like Kershaw had. At least if you're going to do that, let pitchers like Spahn and Grove be born the same year as Kershaw was so they get a chance, the same as Kershaw, to learn and develop knowing the modern game they're going to be asked to pitch in. Otherwise its going to be like taking a 1930 or 1950 Indy car driver, AND HIS CAR, and just dropping them into the 2022 Indy 500 race. It is not a fair comparison, and they won't stand a chance.

But maybe we should ask that question a different way, remembering that we're looking for the ALL TIME greatest left hander, and not just the greatest left hander pitching against today's modern players. So instead of a GM picking a lefty for a team today, how about you're a GM picking a team in 1942, the same year Spahn was a rookie and first played in the majors!!!!!! It's easy to tell how Spahn would do and that he'd end up with 363 wins, but how would pitchers like Johnson, Kershaw, and Koufax do back then, what with different rules, equipment, training, facilities, medical care, pitching so many more innings, and especially losing three years to the service. Would those lost years especially push Koufax and Johnson to being even older before finally figuring out what they were doing as pitchers to become the studs they were, and thereby maybe dramatically change for the worse how their careers ultimately turned out? Do any of them even come close to Spahn's 363 career wins? Who knows? Given that scenario, would you really expect any other lefty on that list to equal, or better, what Spahn achieved. I'm guessing there may be a lot of people that would be inclined to select Spahn, in that case.

And speaking of how players from older eras are often automatically being assumed to not be able to fare well at all against modern players, what if you could bring Grove and Spahn forward in time to pitch against today's modern players, what makes you so sure they wouldn't do well. Remember, Koufax and Johnson started their careers with six and seven years of so-so/lousy pitching, respectively. Well, I feel Grove and Spahn were pitchers more than hurlers, so who's to say that if you transferred them both to pitch in today's modern game that they wouldn't be able to pretty quickly figure out how to adapt and change the way they pitch so they could consistently win, at least a lot faster than the years it actually took Koufax and Johnson to finally figure out they were doing wrong and finally get their you-know-what together. Doesn't seem like you may have ever considered that distinct and viable possibility.

I don't honestly know who I'd say the greatest left handed pitcher of all time is, to date, but to not consider how modern lefties would have fared as pitchers had they grown up and pitched in different, earlier eras is just shortsighted and fails to consider and account for the ALL TIME aspect of the question. But to even suggest that Grove, and especially Spahn, couldn't possibly succeed in pitching against modern players, and didn't at least belong in that conversation, is again as I said above, one of the dumbest things you've ever said on this forum!