But, back to Koufax …. as I previously stated, the best I’ve ever seen. Here’s my “greatness” test: if martians land in the USA, and watch Koufax pitch, without even knowing what baseball is, they would conclude that he does whatever he’s doing better than anyone else does it.

But his IP totals harken back to the “different era” argument. He started every 4 days, and finished his starts. It’s the way it was.

Check Dick Raddatz’ totals from 1963 -1965. If Mariano were to pitch that much, he’d have been done 8 years ago. But Mariano’s in a different era, and generally considered the best reliever of all time.

The moral: not fair to cherry-pick standards from another era and apply them across generations; you really have to stay within the generational stovepipes.

e.g. Are today’s NFL players worse than the old-timers because they don’t go both ways (offense/defense, not bi-sexual)?

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In those four years (62-65), Radatz was the nastiest relief pitcher in history. Unbelivable. He was nastier than Gossage, Charleton, Myers and Dibble. Threw nothing but fastballs and sliders. Fasball reaching near 10 MPH. The only relief pitcher to put up those numbers was Mike Marsall in the 70s with the Dodgers and Twins.

True. Sandy Koufax threw 2324 innings in his career and Walter Johnson threw 5,915. (Pedro by the way has thrown 2800 innings in his career.)

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Oddly, Koufax’ arthritis in his elbow wasn’t the result of pitching. He said that he never had a twinge until the summer of 1962 when he slid into 2nd base and banged his elbow on the ground. He said it was never the same after that. It happened in early July and he missed all of August and most of September, losing his last 3 decisions in 4 starts. That’s when the arthritis started.

But, back to Koufax …. as I previously stated, the best I’ve ever seen. Here’s my “greatness” test: if martians land in the USA, and watch Koufax pitch, without even knowing what baseball is, they would conclude that he does whatever he’s doing better than anyone else does it.

But his IP totals harken back to the “different era” argument. He started every 4 days, and finished his starts. It’s the way it was.

Check Dick Raddatz’ totals from 1963 -1965. If Mariano were to pitch that much, he’d have been done 8 years ago. But Mariano’s in a different era, and generally considered the best reliever of all time.

The moral: not fair to cherry-pick standards from another era and apply them across generations; you really have to stay within the generational stovepipes.

e.g. Are today’s NFL players worse than the old-timers because they don’t go both ways (offense/defense, not bi-sexual)?

True. Sandy Koufax threw 2324 innings in his career and Walter Johnson threw 5,915. (Pedro by the way has thrown 2800 innings in his career.)

True pitchers from the 50′s and 60′s threw more innings than they do now in the 5 man rotation.

But it’s equally as true that the pitchers in the 50′s and 60′s generally threw fewer innings than the pitchers from the 20′s and 30′s.

Of the 500 highest innings total in a season only around 10 took place after 1950.

Ultimately, Koufax couldn’t handle the kind of workload over his career that Johnson did and he did “break.”

Johnson had a career ERA of 2.17. Koufax had an ERA of 2.76.

I’m still waiting for anyone to explain how Koufax is better than Johnson other than the fact that no one happened to see Johnson pitch or some kind of relative argument that says that Koufax in his ERA was better than Johnson in his.

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Hunter had 328 innings and 39 starts, 30 complete games. Martin had zero sense when handling pitchers. Hunter was never the same after that year. He destroyed two pitching staffs in Oakland, too.

…and cb, thanks for the detailed explanation of ERA+ and the difficulty of using it for different eras.

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Imagine wht his yearly pitch totals had to be. He took it easy in his next start, 4 days later. Only 6 innings, hits, 0 runs, 3 walks and 7 strikeouts…against the Yankees.