There’s an old baseball story that I love, though it’s more than likely apocryphal. The story I heard was that (66-year old) Rogers Hornsby was in Florida in the spring of 1962 as a coach for Casey
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| Hit better than .400 over 5 years. |
Casey thought for a few seconds and said, "I don’t know probably around .320 or so."
"Only .320 Casey, isn’t that a knock against the players from back then?"
"Well, " Casey said, "you gotta allow for him being 66 years old, doncha?"
A couple of days ago there was a story that drew comparisons between 2011 National League Cy Young award winner, LA Dodger Clayton Kershaw, and a former Dodger, 3-time Cy Young award winner, and Hall of Famer, Sandy Koufax.
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| One day, he may be better than Sandy? |
I guess the comparison was inevitable because they are similarly built and dominant left-handed flame-throwers, but that’s where the comparison ends. And how can we really compare two pitchers whose careers are separated by 45 years?
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| "The left hand of God" |
We can do this because it’s what baseball fans have always done – holding never-ending and pointless arguments about who is/was/will be better is life blood to the game.
So, lets talk about Kershaw and Koufax, then I will tell you why Montreal Expo and Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez was probably the best pitcher to ever play major league baseball.
The voluble and accessible Kershaw was born in Dallas, just turned 25 in March, and has already enjoyed 4 excellent seasons. The minimum MLB salary for 2013 is $490.000. Kershaw will make about $7.5 million this year
The private and always soft-spoken Koufax was born in Brooklyn, and didn’t have his first good season with the Dodgers until 1961, when he was 25 years old. He had been used sparingly after being signed as a 19-year old "Bonus Baby" out of high school. MLB rules at the time (1955) demanded that any player signed to a bonus of $50,000 or more must spend 2-years with his major league team or become a free agent. Counting his bonus, in Sandy’s career, he earned about $481,000, total.
During Sandy’s first 6 seasons he was 36-40, with an ERA over 4.0, and walked about half as many batters as he struck out, walking around 100 batters in 3 different seasons.
Then, beginning in 1961 it all began to click, and Koufax won 18 games, lowered his ERA to 3.5, and led the majors (by 48) in strikeouts.
In 1962, the Dodgers led the NL almost all the way, but Koufax (who led the league in ERA, and struck out 4 for every walk) got hurt, and the Giants caught LA, beat them (and Sandy) in a playoff, and went on the World Series.
After that, Sandy was simply the best pitcher in baseball for 4 straight seasons. During these 4 years Koufax averaged 25 wins, 8 shutouts, 22 complete games, 298 innings, and 307 strikeouts, with a 1.86 ERA.
In those four seasons Sandy Koufax won 3 Cy Young awards and one Most Valuable Player. He missed about 12 starts in 1964 and still finished 3rd in the Cy Young voting after winning 19 games and leading the league in ERA. It doesn’t take much of an argument to say the Dodgers would have won 5 straight NL pennants had Koufax not been hurt in 1962 & 1964.
Koufax was better in the World Series, with an ERA of 0.95, and 61 strikeouts in 57 innings, though his won/lost record was only 4-3.
Koufax felt he had no choice but to retire after the 1966 season, as his left arm had been giving almost unrelenting pain from a traumatic arthritic condition in his elbow for more than 2 years. He was 30 years old.
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| At 77, you look great Sandy. |
So, Clayton Kershaw already has a nice head start in years on Sandy, but he will have to produce at least 3 or 4 more years like the last 2 he’s had, to get into the conversation. He may, he may not. He absolutely has the talent to do so.
Sandy Koufax was the best I ever saw, or so I thought.
In recent years we have found out about all the cheating that was going on for about 10-years (1993-2003) or so with PED usage in sports, and particularly in MLB. Record amounts of runs and home runs were being accumulated by dozens of hitters, and more dozens of records were falling every year.
Back in the final 5 years of Koufax’s career (1962 to 1966), the National League’s average ERA’s were: 3.97; 3.63; 3.63; 3.46; 3.44.
Koufax was anywhere from 1.42 to 1.79 better than the league average during those 5 seasons, which is truly outstanding.
If we take Pedro Martinez’s 7 year run from 1997 through 2003, in the dead heart of the "steroid era," Pedro beat the average ERA is his league by: 3.04; 1.77; 2.80; 3.18; 2.08; 2.21, and 2.31, which is truly astounding!
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| Was Martinez really better than Koufax? |
I am not so naïve to think Martinez was clean of PED’s during this time, but he was a pretty slight guy at 5’11" and 170, and after tossing 233.2 innings in 1998 (his first in the AL) he never had more than 217 in any season. Martinez was 25 years old in 1997, when he started his fantastic 7-year run, just as Koufax was 25 in 1962. Pedro always seemed to be getting rested a bit more than one might expect, and only had 21 complete games in the six years after 1997. As stated earlier, Sandy averaged 22 complete games a year in his last 4 seasons. I don’t know, maybe Pedro was using something, maybe not, but if he was, why weren’t the other pitchers of the era following suit? Why don’t we see more numbers like Martinez put up from other starting pitchers during those years?
Another piece of information tells us that in Koufax’s final 4 seasons, the league average runs-scored per-team was around 4 per game.
In Pedro’s six seasons from 1998 through 2003, the league averaged 5-runs or better three times, and 4.8 or better in the other three seasons. Martinez did not have the luxury, as Koufax did, of facing the opposing pitcher as a batter 1-4 times per game.
Pedro matched Sandy’s 3 Cy Young awards, and though he never managed to win an MVP, he did finish second once, and fifth one other time. He also had two second-place and one third-place in the Cy Young balloting.
Pedro matches Sandy with 3 ERA titles and 3 times leading in strikeouts. Pedro had a higher strikeout-per-inning ratio than Sandy, but it the MLB average in that department has been going up steadily for decades. Both men had similar and excellent WHIP’s (walks+hits/innings).
Koufax hit a total of 18 men with a pitch in his career. Sometimes it seemed as though Martinez hit that many in a month, and actually had 6 seasons in which he hit 10 or more batters, but only twice during his 7-year run of excellence. Part of Pedro’s success has to be attributed to his brush back pitch, and his willingness to throw at a batter. Koufax left that stuff to teammate Don Drysdale. Sandy would just snap off one of his patented 12-to-6 curveballs and strike a guy out.
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| "Down goes Zimmer!" Zim was Sandy's teammate for 4 years. |
So, in that respect, I have to give the nod to Pedro.
I don’t know how Sandy would fare today, pitching in the majors. If I had to guess, he only win 15-18 a year, and strike out somewhere around 220 in 210 innings, with an ERA in the 2.75 range. Very good, but not great.
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| The "Rajah." |
Okay, hold it, before any of you Sandy Koufax fans get all riled up and mad at me please remember that I have always been a big fan of his too, and that Sandy is 77-years old.
And Rogers has been dead for 50 years, and could still hit .315.
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