Tim Kurkjian is a Dumbass; The Best Pitcher of All Time!

I'm watching ESPN (I guess because I'm a masochist; I have no clue why I continue to subject myself to it), and on comes Tim Kurkjian and whichever dipshit they've got anchoring SportsCenter. Normally, Kurkjian is one of the least idiotic of ESPN's "analysts," but this time he's talking about the AL Cy Young.

He's talking about Cliff Lee and commenting that only 6 times has the winner of the Cy Young Award come from a losing team. He acts all fucking surprised about this, because HE votes for whomever is the best pitcher, regardless of the team the pitch with. He says it just goes to show that maybe it's difficult to win games with a bad team. This surprised me, because I would expect him to follow up with "Well, it should be about whoever does the best job of keeping guys from scoring. Win-Loss is meaningless." But he didn't say that, and instead I'm left to believe that he still votes on Win-Loss.

So, essentially, he's saying he votes for whoever has the best win-loss record, but he doesn't care about which team the guy wins or loses on.

This is monumentally stupid. I mean, the problem with the way the CYA is voted on is clear, because you've got all these old-timers who see pitcher's W-L as somehow meaningful. And they're so caught up in that dumbass stat that they can't pick the best pitcher.

I'm not saying that the CYA should just go to whoever posts the lowest ERA. Considerations have to be made for things like IP and such. That leaves a great deal of a pitcher's "awardability" up to a manager, but it's better than fucking W-L.

What surprises me still is that anyone still believes in pitcher's wins. I mean, we've had all these cases where a spectacular pitcher can pitch 1 or 2 run ball, and then lose because his lineup is so shitty.

And there are at least two cases of that in Astros' history: 1987 and 2005.

1987 must have been a hell of a year for Nolan Ryan. He was still, at the age of 40, one of the best pitchers in the National League. He could still blow pitchers away with his fastball, and he could still strike out 270 hitters in a season. He was the best pitcher on that season's team (sorry, JD). He posted a spectacular 2.76 ERA. Of course, a 2.76 ERA meant a hell of a lot less in 1987 than it does now, but it was still pretty awesome.

But, somehow, he had the worst W-L record amongst the Astros' starters: 8-16. Bob Knepper, posting a 5.56 ERA, went 8-17. Doctor Death went 9-10 with a 3.59 ERA.

On the flip side of this, Jim Deshaies went 11-6 with a 4.62 ERA (75 ERA+). Mike Scott was the only one whose Win-Loss record squares with his ERA, 3.23 and 16-13.

Clearly, Ryan was just getting no run support. The Astros' lineup was mostly a bunch of above-average hitters. Only, sadly, Cheo Cruz and Craig Reynolds were posting OPS+ values below 100. But the overall team's OPS ranked 11th in the league.

There's a story (I think JD tells it during games) where Nolan Ryan is in the clubhouse, looking worriedly at the lineup card and wondering how he's going to win with that kind of support. And Mike Scott or someone comes up and says, "Looks like you've got a bunch of big-league hitters behind you." Which is true. But unfortunately this was not the offensive era of the Astros.

Ryan came in 5th in NL Cy Young Award voting. He lost to reliever Steve Bedrosian. Ryan had the lowest ERA amongst the starters in voting.

In 2005, Roger Clemens had a similar experience. It was nowhere near as bad as Ryan's '87 season, but it was still depressing. He had the best ERA of his career (1.87). He had a 1.008 WHIP. I mean, that's just fantastic. He was the best pitcher in the National League that year.

But he went "only" 13-8 that season. We all know how ridiculously bad that season's lineup was. Of the starters, only Berkman, Ensberg, Biggio, and Lane were above-average at the plate. Simply put, the team was just awful aside from the Pettitte-Oswalt-Clemens combo. Roy went 20-8 with a 2.94 ERA, and he was the weakest of our three ace pitchers.

Clemens came in 3rd in the NL CYA voting. He lost it out to fucking Chris Carpenter. Dontrelle Willis came in 2nd. He had a lower ERA and WHIP than either of the two ahead of him.

Of course,the CYA has no actual criteria. It's just who the BBWAA thinks is most awesome. Carpenter and the D-Train were both good choices that year, but it often appears that the BBWAA pays more attention to the W-L stat than anything else. They seem to understand that a guy with a good W-L record might not be that great of a pitcher, but they still look at it.

Still, Clemens probably deserved a few more Cy Youngs than he got.

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It's fashionable amongst stat guys to say that Nolan Ryan was overrated. I think that's probably true. People seem to think he was the best pitcher EVAR, which isn't true. He was one of the best pitchers EVAR, but not the best. He was a different type from the Greg Madduxes and Roy Oswalts of the world. You knew the fastball was coming when you faced Ryan, but you just couldn't hit it.

There was a time (roughly occupying the 2007 season) when I thought Clemens was overrated. The steroids thing and his inability to come through in the clutch for us in 2005 pissed me off. That was before I gained a more nuanced view of steroids and a more sensible attitude towards Clemens' injuries in the postseason.

Someone (probably Bill James) stated that only in baseball did we think that the best players lived a half century ago. No one would say that Jim Brown was a better running back than Earl Campbell (not seriously, anyways). In basketball and football, there's a realization that current players are probably many times better than those of yesteryear. In baseball, people will seriously say that Three Fingers Brown would have destroyed Barry Bonds. That's idiotic.

So I say in all seriousness that we live in an era when the two best pitchers of all time may have been playing: Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux. I think that no other pitchers have been as good as they have. They posted incredible numbers during the offensive explosion of the 1990s. They had incredibly long careers. They dominated the hitters of their era.

But I think there will be better pitchers. Training will get better, nutrition will improve, and recruitment will expand to a larger number of people. For all we know, the guy who would make the best pitcher of all time is sitting in a hut in Nigeria. Eventually, better pitchers than Mad Dog and the Rocket will be found. And that's pretty cool.