Rather have Kershaw or Bumgarner?

[klaiggeb]

Rog:

It would help Madison if he could show some of his postseason dominance in a couple of regular seasons. A Cy Young Award or two would really help

***boly says****

Great, GREAT points, Rog!

Madison has NOT been that dominante in the regular season.

Not that he hasn't excelled, he has, but he has never shown the same domination.


Another pitcher I'd add to that list of DOMINANTE in the post season, but not necessarily in the regular season, would be Whitey Ford.

At one point in Post Season play, he held the record for the most consecutive, shut out innings.

Like Bum, he had a couple of awesome seasons, but on THOSE run scoring, High Winning Percentage Yankee teams, he only won 20,+ twice.

And though his lifetime ERA is an outstanding 2.75, he really wasn't DOMINANTE during the regular season, 1961 being the exception.

boly

[Rog]

Whitey certainly wasn't dominant in terms of strikeouts, averaging just 5.6 K's per nine innings. And I agree that he didn't seem that dominant to me, making me surprised when I found out that he had the lowest career ERA and highest winning percentage of any pitcher who pitched during my lifetime.

But I think he was "sneaky dominant." I think a lot of that was because he was used more like today's pitchers and less like the pitchers of his day. Whitey averaged just under 200 innings per season in an era when Sandy Koufax, for instance, averaged over 270 innings per season in the last six seasons of his career. Sandy likely would have averaged over 300 if not for injury.

So it was tougher for Whitey to build up high win totals, despite pitching for the high-scoring Yankees, since his innings weren't that high. That made it hard to find "dominant" seasons from him.

As an example, you cited 1961 as his dominant season, and indeed his 25-4 record was amazing. But his ERA was 3.21, nearly half a run higher than his career average. It was his 5.74 runs of support from the heavy-hitting Yankees that gave him that record.

He was even better in 1963. His 24-7 record was still outstanding, and his 2.74 ERA was nearly half a run lower than in 1961 -- and right in line with his career mark of 2.75. His won-loss record wasn't quite as good as in 1961 solely because he received more than a run less support (4.62 runs).

The funny thing is that in what was actually Whitey's most dominant season, he won only 14 games. He started only 30 contests and posted a 14-7 record despite a career-low 2.01 ERA. That's more in line with today's game, and indeed he threw only 219 innings. In 1961 and 1963 he started a league-leading 39 and 37 games and threw the most and second-most innings of his career.

In 1958 Whitey led the league in shutouts for one of the two times in his career, and he also led in WHIP for the only time.

Whitey had several other exceptional seasons, and as Boly pointed out, he won the Cy Young Award in that dominant 1961 season.

The comparison of Whitey to Madison is a good one, in part because neither is/was a big strikeout guy. Madison has broken the strikeout per inning barrier the past two seasons though and appears to be just reaching his prime.

It may seem strange that Whitey won only one Cy Young Award (and finished third one other time, the only two times he received Cy Young votes), but let's not forget that there were many great pitchers then, some of whom alternated spectacular seasons, and for many of Whitey's seasons, there was only one award, not one for each league.

Here's is what strikes me most in the Cy Young voting. Juan Marichal was a spectacular pitcher, and yet he received only one Cy Young vote in his career. And that was a third-place vote. The bad publicity of the Roseboro incident may have played a role. But can we imagine? Only a single Cy Young vote in the career of one of baseball's truly great pitchers. And a third-place vote at that. Other pitchers just kept having spectacular seasons.

Here's a question about Madison. He's likely entering his prime. Can he wind up being a better pitcher than Ford? My guess is no, since his ERA+ thus far is "just" 118, while Whitey's career 133 was above even Sandy Koufax's 131.

Regarding Koufax, I have mentioned that I believe he was a better pitcher in his non-Dodger Stadium seasons than he was given credit for. Indeed his ERA was around four during those seven seasons, but his ERA+ was easily over 100 (average). Sandy certainly wasn't as great as he would be in later seasons, but he was already better than he was given credit for.

[klaiggeb]

Whitey really never got the credit he deserved, and Rog, your calling him "sneaky" dominant, IMHO, is right on the mark.

Dominant, to me, means 2 things:

1-Most of the time, the games in which he pitches are never in doubt.

2-Teams fear facing him.

Now to # 1, for Whitey, the games weren't often in doubt not so much because of Whitey, but because his teams were usually so much better than the teams they were playing.

But teams didn't fear to face Whitey. In fact, from all that I've read, other teams were frustrated because they couldn't figure him out, or figure out how he beat them.

boly

[Rog]

Whitey was somewhat like Warren Spahn in that he kept hitters off balance.

[klaiggeb]

He was, Rog, I agree.

Difference was two fold:

Earlier in his career, Warren threw harader, and (2) I think he had over all better stuff and command.

boly

[Rog]

You're right about Warren, Boly. I learned quite a bit about him when I read the book about Warren and Juan, starting from the premise of their 16-inning 1-0 battle in the early 1960's.

[klaiggeb]

My wife had a chance to meet Sphan back in 1977 when she was the commissioner of a "Tee" ball league.

What a nice, NICE man he was, too!

She also knew Bob Gibson, and she had NOTHING but nice things to say about Gibson.

She couldn't believe his in-game demeanor was so different!

boly