May 12, 2008

Well, congratulations to him, not just because he may be the last pitcher any of us see reach the 350-win mark, but also, hey, a happy Maddux means maybe a little less killin'.

posted by chicobangs at 8:56 AM CDT on May 12

I hope for the sake of Hobo Nation that you're wrong, but you have brought back the fear to me. So, y'know, thanks for that.

If anyone needs me, I'll be in my bunker.

posted by chicobangs at 11:23 AM CDT on May 12

Congrats to Greg Maddux on winning his 350th game....but did he really need to take out the entire prostitute population in Colorado, afterwards to celebrate?

posted by BornIcon at 12:02 PM CDT on May 12

The guy is one of the greatest pitchers in history and we can't have a thread without a mention of hooker slayings.

Mr. chicobangs also mentioned hobos.

posted by THX-1138 at 12:42 PM CDT on May 12

And now that you mention it, where is the beef, anyway? Because this doesn't taste like any beef I've ever had.

In fact, this looks like... the liver of a rookie catcher, fresh from the minors; slightly road-worn, but still tender. Maddux might be a rampaging serial killer in the witching hours, but by gum he sure can put together a fine spread.

Hey, anyone need more chianti?

posted by chicobangs at 1:18 PM CDT on May 12

Too bad he's with the Padres, or he probably would have arrived a fair bit sooner. Five tries to get this win.

posted by opel70 at 1:49 PM CDT on May 12

there is a set of train tracks right outside Safeco that has trains running during the games

No hobo would be safe during the 7th inning stretch.

posted by irunfromclones at 2:07 PM CDT on May 12

As I hear it, Greg has moved on from hookers to first born males ...just a rumor however. His obscene God complex is a fearsome thing to behold.
Oh, BRB someone's knocking at the door.....

posted by Sprdave32 at 5:44 PM CDT on May 12

Heh... you know, Clemens must be stewing that he isn't playing right now; when Clemens last played, he looked like he would retire with the most wins of any pitcher in decades, and more K's than anyone besides his hero, Nolan Ryan. Yet Maddux is going to easily nab his 355th win this year, and Randy Johnson is 5 or so starts from passing him on the K list. Since I suspect Maddux and Johnson are in their last seasons (Maddux has hinted as much, although Johnson may get enough starts that even with a mediocre year he'll be close enough to 300 wins he'll try to get to that total in 2009), I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Clemens hooks on with some team in 2009, refreshed after a season off, and puts up a 10+ win season to close things out and regain the wins and strikeouts leads over Maddux and Johnson.

Maddux, Clemens, and Johnson are all automatic first ballot HoFers- possibly all on the same ballot- and we were lucky to see three of the greatest pitchers in history working in the same era. Anyone leaving them off their ballots should be respectfully removed from HoF voting by the esteemed Hall. The only debate is which one is best: Clemens is probably the greatest by most every statistical standard (wins, strikeouts, ERA, and Cy Young awards), but Maddux has being quietly solid for the longest and spectacular during his 4 year Cy Young run. Johnson is the most dominating when he's on, also having 4-straight Cy wins. It's like a continuum from control to power as a way of winning: Maddux has the pinpoint control, Johnson the blazing speed, and Clemens is a balance of the two.

In any case, congratulations to Maddux for reaching a milestone: he is inarguably one of the three best pitchers of the last 3 decades (but for staying healthy, we'd be putting Pedro Martinez' name in that mix), and I'd suggest in the top 5 greatest pitchers of all time.

posted by Hal Incandenza at 8:26 PM CDT on May 13

Walter Johnson, Cy Young, and Christy Mathewson played in different eras: statistically, Walter Johnson is probably the best pitcher of all time. However, you can't really compare pitching in that era with pitching in the last 30 years, with all the changes in the game, the players, the level and quality of scouting and depth, etc. I've heard it said that analysis of rare footage suggests that despite the presumption that he was a 100mph+ pitcher, "Big Train" really only threw 85mph, tops; it's just that to the booze-addled illiterates that made up the all-white, US-only majors in those days 85mph was enough to get their Kruk-ian softball-league asses out. :) Mathewson was an anomaly simply because who heard of a college boy playing the rough game of baseball?! Well, God doesn't put less lightning bolts into the arms of Bucknell boys as he does into the Dalkowskis and Nuke Lalooshes; but in the early part of the century, those latent talents didn't even play the game, or if they did knew better than to slave away for Comiskey as opposed to having an actual income as an educated professional. Nowadays, the sons of doctors and lawyers that hit 70mph+ in little league are already dreaming of the millions they'll make in the majors.

it's the same reason I say Barry Bonds, BALCO and all, is possibly the greatest hitter that ever lived: his numbers are gaudy against the best pitching in history. Yes, Ruth looks great- on paper. Probably an All-Star if he was born in the modern era, where he would have replaced booze and women with macrobiotic diets, strength condition... and well yes, women. But baseball in 1920 wasn't even the established, every- kid- plays- in- their- youth game it was for the second half of the century. If the money/glory is there, and everyone plays the game, you find talent that was missed. The minor leagues offer players a chance to develop before hitting the bigs, which further improves the level of the big leagues; in today's game Phil Rizzuto wouldn't have had more than a cup of coffee, much less a friggin' plaque (goddamn veteran voters!!!).

Sandy Koufax was great- for a short time. He only played 12 seasons total, barely qualifying for the HoF! He, like Martinez, was insanely good for a short period, but "GOAT" implies some element of longevity. Clemens won the Cy Young/MVP in 86... and then again in 2004. Nolan Ryan leads in strikeouts and no-hitters... but was mediocre in every other respect, finishing barely over .500 for his career. Someone that one-dimensional can't be considered for GOAT.

As for Dave Stieb... is this your way of suggestion that tahoemoj is your sock puppet account? :)


So yes... I'd say that no pitcher in baseball history can lay easy claim to being better than Maddux, Clemens, and possibly Randy Johnson. You can try to justify some others, but I just think it doesn't hold water; sadly, we don't have a good era-to-era metric the way we can compare performace in different home ballparks, etc. Walter Johnson and Cy Young have the sheer numbers, but that's like saying that some guy hitting .440 in 1894 is by definition the greatest hitter in history (and I'll bet almost no Spofite could have named Hugh Duffy from memory). Well, no... hitting .440 then is like hitting .440 today... in double A ball.

posted by Hal Incandenza at 4:15 AM CDT on May 14

It's true that if Walter Johnson were around today, he'd probably be good for 10 wins and 100 strikeouts a year. But that would partly be because he'd be about 120 years old.

posted by chicobangs at 9:14 AM CDT on May 14

What the hell?

Chico seems like a good guy and all that, but I'm no man's sock puppet!

not unless they convict me again!

posted by tahoemoj at 1:16 PM CDT on May 14

I was kidding about the sock puppet- I couldn't figure out why you'd throw Dave Stieb's name in that collection of HoFers, except the fact that tahoemoj mentioned in the Ankiel thread that he played Scruffy Old Man's Softball League with Stieb.

So... on a serious note, do you guys really just not grasp what I'm trying to say, or do you agree but discount it in the same though? Namely, that drastically weaker pools of talent in 1900-1920 meant that the accomplishments of players then, whatever real talent they had, has to be seriously discounted? That when a major leaguer does a rehab stint in the minors and hits .480, you don't consider him to be twice the hitter of Ruth in his prime? That for example there's a big difference between being the smartest kid in your high school, and being at the top of your class at MIT, and say being a three-time Nobel laureate in Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine? Johnson pitched against mostly players who wouldn't have the talent to be AA players in today's game, because the lack of black players, the lack of international scouting and development, and the social climate that prevented baseball- or sports in general- from being seen as a potentially richly rewarding career choice meant that even those players who would be All-Stars today got to play against significantly weaker opposition. Most every late-inning at-bat that Ruth had- maybe 1 in 5 at-bats- was against a tired starting pitcher as opposed to a fresh, fireballing specialist like Hoffman or Papelbon. Think that doesn't boost your average more than "the clear"?

Baseball, due to its rich contracts and signing bonuses as well as its relatively longevity and lack of physical risk, still is the most beckoning sport for any super-talented young athlete in the country today. In a nation of 300 million people, there may be almost none who don't know that professional athletes are incredibly rich. Which means to lead the AL in homeruns today, you have to out-swat not just a bunch of former pickpockets and drunken roustabouts, but the most conditioned, hardest working, naturally gifted people the western hemisphere could churn out. You have to hit the ball against the 150 fastest throwing, most accurate pitchers that could be found in half the globe. There were likely farmboys a-plenty in 1920 who would have, with practice and exposure, thrown far faster than Walter Johnson, but many never even touched a baseball. Today, there is probably almost no child in this country who didn't at least play a little sports as a child- even in gym class- where natural talent would have encouraged more playing, and developing, and if by the age of 11 or 12 they were hurting their father's hands with their fastball, they'd be even more targeted for focused development and training and assistance, and their own motivation to succeed knowing that even the son of millionaires would still want to be a major league baseball player if they had the ability.

The fishing net of baseball talent today has a very fine mesh compared to what existed in 1920.

posted by Hal Incandenza at 12:53 AM CDT on May 15

Thanks! I didn't mean to be pedantic, but yeah- you said in a few words what took me many paragraphs, and I why I'd consider Maddux- along with Clemens and possibly Randy Johnson- to be, in the absolute measurement, a better pitcher than Walter Johnson or Cy Young.

But ain't no one better than the Stieb.

posted by Hal Incandenza at 7:04 PM CDT on May 15

I'm assuming that's ERA+ and not OPS+ for them or OPS+ against.

posted by yerfatma at 7:11 AM CDT on May 16