Is Clayton Kershaw on Pace to Become the Best Pitcher in the Last 100 Years??

At first glance, I’m sure most of you will chuckle at the name of this article.   You can throw names like Seaver, Spahn, Gibson, Pedro or Maddux at me, and if you look at some basic stats you may be right to think those guys are better.   We can discuss the ole “different game, different era” discussion until the next time Omar Infante walks twice in a game (spoiler alert, you’ll be waiting a very long time, 258 games and counting).       However, we will never really see how Walter Johnson or Spahn or Whitey Ford would do today, just like we will never be able to see how Pujols, Trout or Miggy would do against Jack Coombs, Chief Bender and the rest of the ridiculous 1910 Philadelphia Athletics rotation. 

So with any historical analysis, we need a few rules and a few caveats.    First, I opted to look at all pitchers from 1920 forward.    The “Ruthian” era is always a decent place to start in my mind.   Second, I’ve chosen to use some basic statistical analyses because even though I actually do have an M.B.A., using layered in-depth regression statistical reviews…. well, it loses something for the reader and it’s just not fun.   And we all know…. this is supposed to be fun.   There have been some brilliant baseball articles that I’ve read which have lock-down conclusions based upon calculus-driven mathematical formulae; and even though I may understand about 80% of how the analysis was performed by the time I get to the end I simply no longer care about the results.   I take my hat off to those widely intelligent well-researched articles, but heck at the end of the way I want to simply enjoy reading why Richie Ashburn was a better defensive outfielder than Ken Griffey, Jr., or vice-versa.   

I also have to start this piece by ‘once-again’ giving great praise to my baseball chatting partner and all around awesome dude Earl (@verdantdude), founder and my co-host of our (sort of) weekly podcast “Just Talking to the Cornfield” (http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=95365&cmd=tc) .   You see, Earl and I have these random debates about once every two months, and he’s got about a .950 batting average against me, and it may even be higher than that.   But one debate that he completely railed me on was ‘Who will have a better career, Clayton Kershaw or Tim Lincecum.”   Guess which dill-hole picked Lincecum.    For all the time I have studied and read about baseball, I just have it locked in my head that righties have an advantage over left-handers.    Perhaps I looked at the development, or lack thereof, in the careers of Barry Zito, Fernando Valenzuela, or Brooklyn’s own “High Times-magazine poster-boy” John Candelaria.    Each of these guys careers flat-lined in the mid-to-late 20’s, and while there are many others, and a whole slew of right-handers as well, it’s just my own perception that lefties get ‘figured-out’, or they lose their best pitch and don’t have the secondary arsenal to continue their success.   I appear to have mistakenly put Kershaw in with that group.     While he’s still far too young to make a real conclusion, the results thus far are awesome.   No, they are better than that, they are FUN.

To do my basic review, I opted to use a few simple statistics.   ERA+, WHIP, K/9Inn and some things I calculated myself (ut oh!!), HR+, WHIP+ and K+ (will explain later).   I also chose to try and be fair by only looking at starting pitchers cumulative statistics prior to reaching the age of 30.   Here’s why.   If I run a Play-Index query on Sean Forman’s awesome site www.Baseball-Reference.com (respect), and for all Starting Pitchers who after the age of 30 pitched 500 innings, had ERA+ greater than 130 and WHIP’s less than 1.20 you will get a handful of names (Spud Chandler, Randy Johnson, Kevin Brown and the always underrated John Tudor).   However, if you do the same query for pitchers under the age of 30, none of those guys make the list.   Schilling, Kevin Brown, Tudor and even the Big Unit were remarkably better after the age of the 30 than before.   So why exclude them??    Well, the point is that Kershaw is on such an amazing pace that it’s FUN to imagine him becoming the best of the bunch.

Let’s go to the other side of the coin and look at pitchers who achieved those stats prior to the age of 26.   Well, now you have names like Seaver, Blyleven, Pedro, Clemens, Lon Warneke, Kershaw, and hey lookie-there, Tim Lincecum.     Obviously many of these guys went on to Hall of Fame Careers, but at the same point in their careers, was Kershaw better; or in other words…. will Kershaw be better??!!

There is no completely fair way to do a comparison.   I can’t simply compare Kershaw’s to how these guys performed before or after age 25, so rather what I will do is take these guys and lock their stats at the season in their career when they passed the 1,000 inning barrier, as Kershaw just has.    I have a lot of faith in two basic statistics to pare down the otherwise massive list of pitchers to review, ERA+ and WHIP.    WHIP is easier to explain, as it’s simply Walks + Hits divided by Innings pitched.   It makes sense to review pitchers who control the amount of runners that simply get on base against them.     Yet WHIP is not the only true measure of quality, because a player can have a low WHIP but give up a great deal of home runs.   Josh “Control” Towers was a pitcher who had a very good ratio of 1.5 BB’s per 9 innings, but his control was so good it rarely fooled hitters, and he ended up his career giving up a 1.5 Home Runs per 9 innings.   Pretty awful stuff.    

One of my favorite stats is ERA+, but it’s better explain by “The Hardball Times” than by myself:

ERA+ is ERA measured against the league average, and adjusted for ballpark factors. An ERA+ over 100 is better than average, less than 100 is below average. The specific formula divides the league ERA by the pitcher's ERA (and adjusts for ballpark). So an ERA+ of 125, for instance, means that the league ERA was 25% higher than the pitcher's ERA (which means that the pitcher's ERA was 80% of the league ERA)

For my analysis, I used the same theory and calculated WHIP+, K+ and HR+ as way to determine who each pitcher on my list compared to the average pitcher in his league, per year.   As an example, for Orel Hershiser I would benchmark his stats versus the average National Leaguer in 1983-1988.   The reason I chose to use these stats is to attempt to have a truer comparison.   For example, Lefty Grove gave up 0.29 HR per 9 innings, while King Felix gives up 0.76.    However, in Grove’s first ‘1000-innings’, the entire league gave up 0.40 HR/9 Inning compared to Felix’s seasons in which the league’s pitchers gave up 1.05; so Lefty’s HR+ is 136 while Felix Hernandez came in at a better score of 139.   In other words, while Felix gives up more home runs per 9 innings than Grove, Felix Hernandez is better than Grove compared to the league when each pitcher pitched.

Thus, the list of pitchers, who since 1920 had an ERA+ of 130 or more, and a WHIP of less than 1.20, and 1,000 innings before their 31^st birthday are:

Carl Hubbell, Tex Hughson, Sandy Koufax, Gary Peters, Juan Marichal, Wilbur Wood, Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Ron Guidry, Orel Hershiser, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Pedro Martinez, Johan Santana,  Roy Oswalt and of course Clayton Kershaw

Pretty impressive, and as you can see, the list does capture most of the greatest pitchers of the last 40 years.   And keep in mind, even though names like Feller, Randy Johnson & Bob Gibson are missing from this list, the theme of this article is weather Kershaw is on his way to being the best pitcher in (modern) history.    One of the best ways to win that title is getting a good head start. 

Just as a side note, I was sort of astounded at the lack of pitchers from my query who pitched between 1920 and 1960, so I did a quick review of all of those pitchers who earned 200 wins in that span.    That’s when names like Waite Hoyt, Spahn and Bob Lemon showed up, but what was more eye-opening was how each of their ERA+ were all below 130.   Just seems that even though there were pitchers with a lot of longevity and wins, very few distinguished themselves in that specific 40-year era.    Two names did pop up next to Carl Hubbell’s in the ERA+ >130 crowd, Hal Newhouser and Lefty Grove.    Newhouser simply walked too many people in his career, and even though he had two stellar seasons in the 40’s it just wasn’t enough to push him onto the list.   Lefty Grove however missed the WHIP category, as did Whitey Ford and Brandon Webb, but their ERA+ were so outstanding (145, 140 and 142 respectively) so I had to add them.    Finally, even though it breaks from the criteria I set, I simply had to add Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, King Felix, Adam Wainwright and Verlander, just ‘cause as my friend would say, they’re ‘sofukingood’.

On the surface, it’s clear to say that pitchers like Wilbur Wood and Gary Peters can not logically be considered to be the greatest pitchers in the last 100 years, but as they made the cut I will include them for FUN.    Thus, here is the final tally, using the stats I opted to use:

All players, careers to date up to seasons in which they crossed the “1,000 inning barrier”:

Player	ERA	HR/9	K/9	WHIP
Clemens	3.05	0.66	8.60	1.12
Johan	3.20	0.92	9.48	1.10
Kershaw	2.72	0.58	9.23	1.12
Pedro	2.98	0.77	9.61	1.10
Guidry	2.74	0.63	7.56	1.13
Grove	3.09	0.29	6.01	1.31
Oswalt	3.05	0.74	7.62	1.18
Webb	3.23	0.64	7.28	1.25
Gary Peters	2.51	0.57	6.49	1.13
King Felix	3.20	0.76	8.13	1.23
Seaver	2.50	0.65	7.14	1.07
Ford	2.73	0.56	5.11	1.27
Orel	2.77	0.50	6.25	1.14
Hubbell	3.13	0.53	4.26	1.18
Wilbur	2.68	0.61	5.17	1.17
Hughson	2.67	0.45	4.40	1.14
Wainwright	3.16	0.66	7.62	1.21
Gibson	3.33	0.65	7.38	1.30
Mussina	3.57	0.93	6.02	1.18
Verlander	3.81	0.80	8.17	1.26
Marichal	2.91	0.87	6.35	1.12
Randy Johnson	3.92	0.77	9.18	1.38
Palmer	2.88	0.68	6.05	1.21
Maddux	3.61	0.58	5.66	1.31

And the calculations and ranking:

						Rank	Rank	Rank	Rank
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+		ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+	Sum
Clemens	145	150	155	123		7	6	4	3	20
Johan	152	123	151	128		2	15	5	1	23
Kershaw	147	165	126	119		5	2	9	9	25
Pedro	153	122	150	124		1	16	6	2	25
Guidry	149	122	161	120		4	17	3	8	32
Grove	142	136	212	112		10	11	1	17	39
Oswalt	145	147	113	117		8	7	16	10	41
Webb	145	166	109	112		6	1	19	18	44
Gary Peters	136	157	116	115		14	3	15	13	45
King Felix	141	139	124	113		11	9	11	16	47
Seaver	142	111	121	120		9	19	13	7	48
Ford	139	139	122	113		12	10	12	14	48
Orel	135	151	109	115		15	4	18	12	49
Hubbell	134	101	140	123		18	22	7	4	51
Wilbur	149	143	90	110		3	8	24	19	54
Hughson	136	101	120	120		13	23	14	6	56
Wainwright	135	151	108	113		16	5	20	15	56
Gibson	125	133	132	101		20	13	8	22	63
Mussina	134	108	102	121		17	20	22	5	64
Verlander	119	132	124	110		22	14	10	20	66
Marichal	125	99	113	117		19	24	17	11	71
Randy Johnson	107	104	163	98		24	21	2	24	71
Palmer	124	118	105	106		21	18	21	21	81
Maddux	112	133	96	100		23	12	23	23	81

Just to keep things simple, I merely added up the rankings of each player and then added up the net unweighted rankings to come up with a total.    ERA+ may be more important (or should be weighted more) than HR+, but let’s just keep it basic for now. 

The first thing that will jump out is how Randy Johnson, Jim Palmer and Greg Maddux are at the bottom of this listing.     Yeah sure, 926 career wins and 10,458 career strikeouts….from the BOTTOM 3 on this list.   However, before I lose you, please recall once again that this article is about whether Kershaw is on his way to be the best pitcher in the last 100 years, and the fact is that compared to their contemporaries, these 3 folks, in their first 1,000 innings were not better than the guys at the top of the list.  And clearly you can see Kershaw is way high on the list.   He and Clemens are the only pitchers who earned a top-10 in all four categories, and admittedly Clemens does have better numbers.    Guidry being so high on the list shocked the heck out of me.   My next step is to look at the top 5, in 1000 inning career increments.   Since Guidry’s career leveled out, I am expanding this to the top 6, to include ole Lefty Grove.   I am also going to include Maddux and Randy Johnson, as their career numbers combined with their longevity was astounding.  

The results:

Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Kershaw	147	165	126	119
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Clemens1	145	150	155	123
Clemens2	169	173	144	123	Peak
Clemens3	157	161	147	120
Clemens4	130	138	143	112
Clemens5	159	151	124	122
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Grove1	142	136	212	112
Grove2	187	177	177	131
Grove3	154	150	121	118
Grove4	147	129	122	112
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Guidry1	149	122	161	120
Guidry2	108	93	114	112
Guidry3	108	83	114	109
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Johan1	152	123	151	128
Johan2	133	78	136	97
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Maddux1	112	133	96	100
Maddux2	210	279	113	142	Peak
Maddux3	167	220	96	130
Maddux4	136	124	91	122
Maddux5	106	120	76	114
Maddux6	92	102	65	115
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Pedro1	153	122	150	124
Pedro2	232	231	186	158	Peak
Pedro3	120	97	130	119
Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Randy Johnson1	107	104	163	98
Randy Johnson2	167	146	192	131
Randy Johnson3	183	133	187	131	Peak
Randy Johnson4	143	105	148	126
Randy Johnson5	110	75	128	111

Conclusions:

I have to admit, Clemens first 1,000 innings were superior to Kershaw.    I would even go so far as to say Johan Santana’s were better as well.   However, Johan and Guidry’s careers did not continue near the pace that they started.    Grove’s strikeout levels declined greatly from his meteoric start, and while his WHIP+ declined towards the end of his career, his ERA+ continued to be tremendous.   Maddux and Randy Johnson had amazing career numbers, and while they declined greatly (in comparison) at the end of their careers, they played so long that it’s unfair to penalize them for their last 1,000-1,500 inning performance.    However, as with Grove, Kershaw’s first 1,000 innings were better, so without the true benefit of knowing how Kershaw’s next 1,000 will go, it could be said that his career MAY end up better than either of those 3.

So that’s leaves two, Clemens and Pedro.     Clemens K+, ERA+, WHIP+ figures were solid wire-to-wire.   I could very easily conclude that he was the best pitcher of the last 100 years.    However….. I have a concern as to how much was Clemens and how much was ‘a little help from my friends.’    Thus, I simply can’t conclude that even though his first 1,000 were stronger, that he was completely on the level for the next 1,000, or 2,000 etc. 

And therefore, that leaves Pedro vs. Kershaw.   I happen to think it’s going to be impossible for a pitcher to achieve Pedro’s numbers over a 1,000 inning span again.    In the post-steroid ERA, Kershaw would need to have a National League ERA of around 1.70 for 5 years, and that’s only been done 5 times in all of MLB since 1970, albeit twice by Maddux in his peak era.    But Pedro’s 3^rd 1,000 inning era was not tremendous by comparison.    Thus, if Kershaw simply maintains close to his current pace, considering how great his start was, he could possibly surpass Pedro’s career numbers in 10 years.   But let’s have some fun and project the following based upon the average decline, or trend of the 7 other pitchers reviewed above, excluding the two peaks by Maddux and Pedro.

Player	ERA+	HR+	K+	WHIP+
Kershaw	147	165	126	119
Average 1k-2k	153	133	152	119
Average 2k-3k	148	141	133	121

Randy Johnson’s massive K+ total throws that comparison out of whack, but the ERA+ and WHIP+ of the remaining ‘greats’ show that Kershaw is indeed on pace to be the greatest pitcher in the last 100 years.   But let me reiterate again, Maddux and Pedro’s peaks were better, but Kershaw’s first 1,000 innings were better.   Thus, if Kershaw merely continues his pace, or heaven-forbid, has a ‘peak’ like Maddux and Pedro did during his second 1,000 innings, it would be hard to argue against him being the best pitcher in last 100 years.

ENJOY!!



@JtttcColonel

SundayColonel@aol.com


http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=95365&cmd=tc