Joe Posnanski thinks so. I concur (and not just because Joe has a Polish sounding last name, although that is often reason enough). See his post Lefty. Grove did very poorly in a recent opinion poll on who was the greatest lefthanded pitcher ever.
I have written several articles that show Grove may have been the best ever. I took park effects into account, normalized to the league average, used fielding independent ERA, and calculated wins above replacement level. I also looked at the best 5-year performances and Grove almost always comes out on top. In fact, he often had 2 distinct 5-year periods among the leaders. Here are the articles:
The Best Five-Year Pitching Performances
The Best Five-Year Pitching Performances Since 1920 Based on Fielding Independent ERA
The Best Pitchers Since 1920
The All-Time Leaders in Park-Adjusted Pitching Wins Above Replacement Level
Grove appears to be the top lefty on this last one, although if 2006 through today were counted, Randy Johnson might be better. But through last year, Randy Johnson was still 133 runs saved behind Grove in about 100 more IP (adjusting for park effects and league average, from the Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Could not agree more, the greatest insult is when he gets rated behind Nolan Ryn who is probably the most over-rated pitcher f al time. No serious list should rate him behind any pitcher excep Walter Johnson and possibly Roger Clemens.. If you compare context Grove is like a leviathan and most of those often rated ahead of him are minnows. The proof of your assertion is that nobody has posted on this very good blog.
Thanks for commenting again. He did get some votes for MVP and did win one. But he only got 76.4% of the Hall of Fame vote in 1947 in his 4th year of eligibility. Hubbell, in the same year, in his 3rd year of eligibility, got 87%.
Grove led in WAR for pitchers 8 times and is 6th all-time with 113. Hubbell is only 31st in career WAR for pitchers with 68.9 and only 2 first place finishes.
What were the writers thinking back then?
Post a Comment