I'm still right on this and all other posts pro HOF are irrelevant.

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That was a curious move and I remember being surprised by it at the time. I thought for sure we were going to hear some story that he did something criminal or otherwise awful and he was checking himself in to get ahead of the story, but that never came.

We're not looking at just the number of wins. We're looking at the W/L record. I assume you can figure the percentage pretty easily. That's exactly why, if we could only see one single stat to judge a starting pitcher, career W/L record is by far the best choice. If you pick ERA you have no idea if the guy pitched two innings or 2000. If you pick strikeouts you have no idea how many walks the guy had to offset that (Nolan Ryan). A career W/L record gives you at least a rough idea of how many innings a guy pitched.

Baseball is a game of time and repetition. Anyone can get on base five times in a game like John Paciorek did (although no one else ever did just that and ended his career). You can't tell the difference between Babe Ruth and Daniel Palka in four- or even 400- at-bats. There can be a twenty game stretch where Ronald Acuna is better than Lou Gehrig. (That goes to my point that the difference between two big league offenses in the minute space of nine innings is immeasurable.)

Regarding Pedro Martinez and Koufax, Martinez has enough of a body of work at a brilliant level to make his induction in the Hall unquestionable. Koufax is a little different- a short career guy who burned very bright. The comp for him would be Dizzy Dean. But an argument cold easily be made that Dwight Gooden's first eight seasons were at least the equal of those two guys. So in effect, Gooden may have pitched his way out of the Hall of Fame. That doesn't seem right, does it?

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

No, it doesn't seem right. But, you know what else doesn't seem right? A pitcher going from one team that gives starters free reign to another team that keeps them on a tight leash, and then that pitcher instantly becoming a lesser pitcher under your model because he wont get the same amount of wins. I don't necessarily disagree with you that if we were going to limit ourselves to one stat, then wins aren't a bad one. But. if you'll just give me two, I'll take ERA and innings pitched over wins every day of the week.

If I asked you to list your top ten greatest starting pitchers in the history of the MLB, is it really going to track the wins list? For convenience sake, here is top the 10 wins list:

1. Cy Young+ (22) 511
2. Walter Johnson+ (21) 417
3. Pete Alexander+ (20) 373
Christy Mathewson+ (17) 373
5. Pud Galvin+ (15) 365
6. Warren Spahn+ (21) 363
7. Kid Nichols+ (15) 361
8. Greg Maddux+ (23) 355
9. Roger Clemens (24) 354
10. Tim Keefe+ (14) 342

As a counterpoint, I'm going to dig out my Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract from 2000. Here are the top ten in that treatise:

1. Walter Johnson
2. Lefty Grove
3. Pete Alexander
4. Cy Young
5. Warren Spahn
6. Tom Seaver
7. Christy Mathewson
8. Bob Gibson
9. Kid Nichols
10. Sany Koufax

Mind you, six guys are on each list, but 40% of the guys on the win list are not on Bill James' list. Further, three guys with substantially less wins than Cy Young are above him. I'm not saying Bill James is the final word, on the quality of a baseball player, but he is an intelligent, studied, and keen observer of the game. What does it say about wins, when it fails to identify 40% of the people on his list. What does it say about wins, if your list differs from the top 10 win leaders? Also, if you really thinks wins are the end all be all, you would have to think Cy Young is head and shoulders the greatest pitcher who ever lived. I hear very few people saying that.

There's obviously some line in there where a guy has enough of a body of work for consideration. Guys like Gullett and Guidry fall short. If you're going to have a minimal amount of wins you better be utterly brilliant like Koufax or Dean.

I don't like James's list at all. On my list Gibson is somewhere in the 20s right near Marichal and Jenkins. Great as he was, Gibson is probably the most overrated pitcher, probably because of 1968. Whitey Ford is criminally underrated. Lower ERA and better winning percentage than Gibson.

Also, your "short leash" argument is a modern concern. It doesn't really apply to guys in the last century.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Your comments about the "short leash" argument are entirely my point. The second you have to discount wins, or explain away a lack of wins due to the era in which someone pitches you admit that wins are something that's relative and not absolute. The win stat is too dependent on factors outside of the pitcher's control to use as the ultimate arbiter of a pitcher's quality.

You can say the same about any stat across eras though. Bob Gibson wasn't going to post a 1.12 ERA in the 30s.

Anyway, up until relatively recently a reliever was just that- a guy who relieved the starter when necessary rather than as part of a game plan. If your argument is that a starter's W/L record is less important when starters only go 5-6 innings, I agree.

But I'll say this- in the era of the 6 inning starter we should expect the top pitchers to have higher winning percentages because they should exit with the lead most of the time and unlike Spahn or Ford, etc., they aren't going to lose one late.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

We've beat it to death. You a mounted a vigorous and intelligent defense of wins, but I don't think I'm going to change my mind anytime soon.

In 2015 Kluber went 9-16(leading the league in losses) for the Indians. He led the AL in complete games, was top 5 in K’s, top 10 in hits per 9IP, top 5 in BB per 9IP, 2nd in the league in IP. He finished in the top 10 in Cy voting. He’s also got a career winning percentage north of .600. The year prior to 2015 he had a winning percentage of .667, the year after of .667. Do you think he just didn’t compete or give shit in 2015? Not likely, he had a good year. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen where a sp has a good year with a poor W/L record.

the baseball writers signaled their willingness to look beyond W-L records when voting on player honors when they awarded 13-12 King Felix the AL Cy Young in 2010. Felix Hernández demotion to the bullpen doesn't bode well for his HoF chances.

Kluber wins any more Cy Young awards and he'll probably get in--every eligible pitcher with 3 or more Cy Young wins is in the HoF. Scherzer and Kershaw are the only active players with 3 Cy Young awards.

King Felix was great.. I empathize with him..it be like Sale being stuck in White Sox Shit show for his whole career.

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I think he got outpitched in 2015. Why is that difficult to admit? The other guys are big league pitchers too. I'm pretty sure Kluber himself would tell you he didn't have a great year in 2015. By definition, 9-16 is a bad season.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

It be nothing like that. The 2010 Seattle team had an historically atrocious offense. They scored 100 runs less than the next to worst offensive team. That really doesn't happen very often, if at all. And Felix still had a winning record.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

He still had a decent year for a contemporary starter. He also seems to have learned something, as he became dominant after that season. I realize that he had a good season the year before, but maybe losing those games in 2015 taught him something. I have no idea if he mastered a pitch (or worked to master a pitch) that year. Looks like they had the AL Central in interleague that year.

Yes, during a season it happens. A guy who is near .500 for his career is likely not going to have really good across the board stats. It goes back to the question Jorr posed initially- can you name a HOF starting pitcher with a .500 career record?

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Ted Lyons and Nolan Ryan are the only ones I can think of who are close.

Joel Horlen may be the best starter with a losing career record.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Even those two guys are 32 games and 30 games over for their career. Lyons also had nearly 100 relief appearances and 25 career saves. He also started 5 games, going 1-4, at 45 years old after missing three seasons in WWII.

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A “good season” the year before?

He won the Cy Young fuckhead.

He may be the best if you chose to ignore guys like Matt Cain, Jon Matlak, Mark Gubiscza, Bobo Newsom and a dozen or so more guys.

Bobo Newsom was the perennial loss leader in the AL. Murry Dickson is his NL counterpart. Yeah, they played on shitty teams- partly because Newsom and Dickson were their best pitchers.

Matt Cain. 104-118 with a 3.68 ERA. He must have been a great pitcher! Yeah, put him in the Hall of Fame.

I saw Gubiscza's [sic] entire career and he was the very definition of ordinary.

You can make an argument for Matlack. I wouldn't say he was better than Horlen, but I'm not going to argue too much if you insist he was.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I have to agree that I am a "fuckhead." That word--well, it's just so damn descriptive.

Kluber became dominant the year after his 9-16 campaign. That was my point. I think I mentioned it in another post.

I wonder if any HoF starters have less than 30 wins above .500?

Just quote where I said that Cain or any of those other guys belong in the HoF. Just use the quote function.

All I did is submit a few guys who had objectively better careers than Horlen. There are a handful of guys out there that were good pitchers and had good careers that ended up with more losses than wins. It happens, not often but it does. With over 120 years of baseball you are going to have statistical oddities. It happens. All of those guys had better careers than Horlen.

You also stated that he had a “good season” the year before, that is just flat out disingenuous. He won the Cy Young award, and it wasn’t some bullshit Mark Davis/ Steve Bedrosian 1980s junk.

It was a great season, Kluber’s 2014 campaign. It is just disingenuous to state anything less.

Eckersley does, but I don’t think that works for obvious reasons.

Zaaaaaaamn. One Post trying to make a name for himself. I didn't read what chu wrote, but I think Ima call you One Testicle from now on, since you seem to have something to prove. Maybe you can be the Pete Gray of dudes with your particular challenges.