A couple of nights ago, on spur of moment, I challenged Keith Law to do a little Twitter Co-Chat at some point in the future. I didn't even know what Twitter co-chat meant and neither did he. But Keith, being Keith, promptly decided to get one started. I'd say we answered 40 or 50 questions before basically every one of my followers got disgusted and unfollowed me, which was a wise move on their part.
Anyway, one of the questions was something like this: If you could invent the perfect pitcher, how would you do it? This was not exactly the question, but that's how I read it. See: Years ago, when I worked at The Augusta Chronicle, the supremely talented artist Rick McKee and I worked on a project we called "Frankengolfer," where we tried to create the perfect golfer (Jack Nicklaus' head … Ben Crenshaw's putter … Tom Watson's short game … Ben Hogan's irons … I can't really remember what we did).
Anyway, that was one of my favorite projects in Augusta and this question reminded me of that. So, off the top of my head, I tried came up with something like a perfect pitcher. And then, after a couple of nights and a long drive to think about it, I've come up with something more detailed: Frankenpitcher vs. Frankenpitcher -- an all-time pitcher composite facing off against a current pitcher composite. Which one is the more perfect pitcher?
Of course, if I simply wanted the perfect pitcher I could have just said: Pedro Martinez circa 1999.
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All-time fastball: Satchel Paige
-- I'm going on faith here, obviously, but think about this: Satchel Paige became a legendary pitcher even though (1) He spent his prime playing in Negro Leagues where few media members saw him; (2) He really did not throw anything but a fastball. The second part is what's so intriguing: Paige named his pitches -- Bat Dodger, Midnight Creeper and so on -- but best anyone can tell they were all fastballs thrown at various speeds and with remarkable command. When Paige was asked about how he changed his grips, he would scoff and say he just grabbed the baseball and threw it. I don't know that it was quite THAT casual, but I do think Paige basically threw fastballs and only fastballs until later in his career. Basically every player who faced that fastball -- from DiMaggio on down -- said it was unlike anything they had ever faced, that it was on top of them before they could react, that it was by them before they could blink. And his control was exalted; the story went that he would warm up by throwing fastballs over stick of chewing gum.
I sometimes wonder, by the way, if Paige's fastball was a lot like Mariano Rivera's cutter.
Active fastball: Justin Verlander
-- The thing I love about Verlander's fastball is that he often seems to hold back the 99 or 100 mph fastball until late in the game. I don't know if that's because he really is holding back or if it's the power of adrenaline or if his body loosens as the day goes on. But we've all seen it enough times. He will be throwing his fastballs 94, 95, 96 mph in the early innings (which really is fast enough when combined with Verlander's great breaking stuff and command) and then later in the game, sometimes even in the ninth inning, that thing will jump to 99 or 100.
It's way, way too early to say this, but I"ll throw it out there now. I'd say Nolan Ryan threw harder than any starting pitcher in major league history. Unless Walter Johnson did. Or Bob Feller. Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson had remarkable fastballs, so did the young Tom Seaver and Bob Gibson. Lefty Grove. Sam McDowell. Roger Clemens. You know the list. But it's possible -- possible -- that (assuming Verlander pitches at this level for the next few years) when you combine power, speed, movement, durability, command, control and consistency Justin Verlander might go down as having the best fastball in Major League history. We have to see how it plays out, but it's worth watching.
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All-time curveball: Sandy Koufax
-- Well, for me, this came down to Koufax and Bert Blyleven, and I was leaning toward Blyleven's curve because he threw several varieties and basically lived off it for much of his career while Koufax blended his curveball with one of the best fastballs in baseball history. But for Frankenpitcher, I'm only concerned with the pure quality of the pitch. And Koufax's 12-to-6 curve (especially coming down from that high mound in Los Angeles) is as unhittable a pitch as any in baseball history.
I also considered Dwight Gooden's curveball from his early years, a pitch so dazzling that Tim McCarver began to call it "Lord Charles" because the typical curveball name "Uncle Charlie" wasn't nearly regal enough.
Active curveball: Adam Wainwright
-- I guess it depends if you consider Wainwright "active," since he has been out all year. If you want to talk 2011, it's probably Roy Halladay, who is so good that the curveball is probably his third best pitch (assuming you can separate his fastball and cutter) and it's still the best thing going.
Few successful pitchers throw the great curveball these days, which is a shame because watching a hitter buckle is still one of the great baseball moments. Wandy Rodriguez can buckle hitters from time to time. A.J. Burnett, when the moon is full, can do it. But in recent years you had some pretty fabulous curveballers -- Barry Zito at his best, Darryl Kile, David Wells and so on -- and now you hear baseball people all the time lamenting the disappearance of the classic 12-6 curveball. Wainwright's curve is the best in the game, and I certainly hope it's as good a pitch when he returns.
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All-time slider: Randy Johnson
-- Unit had his first great season when he was 29 years old. He had his last great season when he was 38 (though he was pretty great at 40, but go with me on this one). In those 10 years, he went 175-58 with a 170 ERA+, he averaged 12 strikeouts per nine innings and almost 300 strikeouts per year. He won five Cy Young Awards and might have deserved six or seven. And he missed almost one full season there with injuries. A lot of times here, I will talk about "peak." I think the greatest peak in baseball history belongs to Pedro Martinez from 1997 to 2003 or so. Of course, you could argue it's Koufax from 1963 to '66, or Greg Maddux from 1992-98, or Bob Gibson from 1968 to '72 and so on. But when it comes to a TEN-YEAR peak, Johnson from ages 29-to-38 is about as good as it gets.
People often laughed at how frightened lefty-hitters were to face Unit -- they hit .199 against him over a whole career -- and the general line was that no lefty wanted to stand in against a 6-foot-9 pitcher throwing 99-mph from that angle. I'm sure that's true. But I think the slider scared them even more because it could turn them into Little Leaguers.
Other siders in consideration: Steve Carlton's, of course; Bob Gibson; Ron Guidry, Dave Stieb.
Active slider: Clayton Kershaw
-- Isn't it crazy that the Dodgers have a legitimate MVP candidate and a legitimate Cy Young candidate and they are still under .500? Oh yeah, that's right, it's not crazy because baseball is a team sport and one or two guys cannot make a team win no matter how the MVP voting might go. OK, sorry, had to get that rant out there one more time. Kershaw's slider is dazzling … it might be THE swing-and-miss pitch in baseball at the moment. I'd say it's that or Cole Hamels change-up, which we will get to in a moment.
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All-time change-up: Pedro Martinez
-- I have always loved what Bill James said about Pedro Martinez; he basically said that Pedro was a testament to the exponential power of numbers. Ten plus ten is only 20. Ten times ten is only 100. But 10 to the 10th power is 10,000,000,000, which is 10 billion. Martinez at his best had a great fastball, a great slider, a great curveball, a great change-up. Each individually was good enough to make him effective. Multiplied by each other, well, Pedro, as mentioned above, Pedro was really great from 1997 to 2003. But in 1999 and 2000, he was something beyond great -- 41-10 with a 1.90 ERA and, I love this, a 597-69 strikeout to walk ratio. And this was in the height of the offensive madness. That ERA+, if case you are wondering, was 265. All those pitches were great, but it probably was the change-up that made it all work.
Jamie Moyer, Trevor Hoffman, Tom Glavine and one of my heroes, Doug Jones, also drew consideration.
Active change-up: Cole Hamels
-- The change-up always felt like a trick pitch to me when I was a kid. You pretend to throw it really hard but you actually throw it kind of soft -- something about that felt slippery, flukish, a con man's game. But after a while you come to realize that the change-up is actually a devastating pitch; in some ways even more devastating than a fastball. It makes hitters do something that even the most absurd fastball often cannot: It can make them swing and miss and look terrible. Hamels struck out 200 in 2010, he might strike out 200 again this year, and it's basically because that change-up is so ridiculously good. It looks like a fastball comes out of his hand, it drifts side to side like a driver who doesn't use the rear view mirror, it leaves the best hitters on earth crumpled. Tim Lincecum and Felix Hernandez also throw searing change-ups.
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All-time split-fingered fastball: Roger Clemens
There is some disagreement about how the forkball became the split-fingered fastball and who deserves the credit for it -- you can read all about this in Rob Neyer's excellent chapter in the excellent Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers -- but for this I'm not interested in the progression of the pitch. I just want the best pitch. I'd say the best split-fingered fastballs ever thrown could be by Bruce Sutter in the late 1970s or Mike Scott in 1986. But I'll still take Roger Clemens' split.
Purely by the numbers -- and I'm only talking numbers -- Roger Clemens might be the best pitcher of all time. He was an incredible pitcher from 1986 to 1992. Won three Cy Youngs. Led the league in ERA+ four times. And so on. Then, of course, he was supposedly in the twilight of his career, and he went to Toronto where he won back-to-back Cy Young Awards in 1996 and 1997 and actually struck out MORE hitters than he had in his supposed prime. This, I think, was largely due to his increased use of the split-fingered fastball. His already legendary fastball suddenly would drop out of sight just as it hit the plate. He would win two more Cy Young Awards throwing a lot of splitters (though, really, his own teammate Mike Mussina was noticeably better in 2001 and Clemens only won it because of his gaudy-looking 20-3 won-loss record).
Active split-fingered fastball: Dan Haren
It seems to me that not many people throw the splitter anymore. I don't know why, but I have a guess: I think the splitter became the boutique pitch in baseball for a while, and hitters caught up with it, recognized it and started teeing off. A bad split-fingered fastball is a home run pitch. There also was some talk about it being a health hazard, which it may be. In any case, Halladay throws one from time to time, and it's as effective as everything else he throws. Some relievers like J.J. Putz, Joel Peralta, Jose Valverde, Jonathan Papelbon mess around with it. But it seems to have lost its place as a dominant pitch -- even Dan Haren doesn't throw it nearly as much anymore. But it can still be a great pitch when he does.
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All-time specialty pitch: Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckleball
-- It's unfair to throw a great knuckleball into this assortment of pitches, but hey, why not. Wilhelm's knuckleball was virtually unhittable AND virtually uncatchable. From 1961 to 1969, Wilhelm allowed 6.2 hits per nine innings. That's even better than Nolan Ryan's career mark, which is of course the best in baseball history. Over that same time, his catchers had 119 passed balls. I'm just imagining throwing Satchel Paige's fastball, following it up with Koufax's curve and then, for kicks, throwing Hoyt Wilhelm's knuckler. Hitters everywhere would suddenly look for jobs in insurance.
I did consider Phil Niekro's knuckleball, Gaylord Perry's spitter, Carl Hubbell's screwball and Dan Quisenberry's sinkerball, but I'll go with Wilhelm.
Active specialty pitch: Mariano Rivers's cutter
-- It's not REALLY a specialty pitch -- lots of people throw the cutter -- but it has grown mystical through the years. He just throws it again and again and again to the same spots, and even though it has lost some speed, it's just as devastating a pitch at 41 as it was at 27. How about this one: This year, Mariano Rivera's strikeout-to-walk is 48-to-5. That's not quite the 77-to-6 he had in 2008, but it's pretty impressive.
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All-time mind for pitching: Greg Maddux
-- I'm still waiting for Maddux to call me to write that book about pitching. He will have to wait now because I'm kind of working on another project at the moment -- if you see someone who looks like me wandering around State College, that's because it is me -- but I still think that nobody in the history of the game has ever understood the patterns and rhythms and shortcuts and pitfalls of pitching better than Maddux. I'm sure many of the stories are apocryphal, but one of my favorites was that supposedly Maddux was sitting in the dugout watching the game when suddenly he turned to a teammate and said "watch out." And on the next pitch, the batter hit a line drive into the dugout exactly where that teammate is standing.
Like with all Maddux stories, I don't want to know that it's not true.
Others who were considered: Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Walter Johnson, Jim Palmer.
Active mind for pitching: Roy Halladay
-- I think Halladay does it very differently from Maddux. I think he simplifies. Everything he throws he throws with conviction, which is an amazing skill. You can't break his concentration, can't upset his rhythm, can't wait for him to make a mistake, because it's likely that mistake will never come.
I think Mark Buehrle is another guy with a great mind for pitching.
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All-time windup: Tom Seaver
-- It was a toss-up between Seaver's windup and Nolan Ryan's, but I went with Seaver because I think more kids tried to copy that windup, complete with the dirt-on-the-knee finish than any windup ever. It was sheer perfection. I also considered Juan Marichal's wind-up, which was perfect in its own way.
Active windup: Tim Lincecum
-- I picked Lincecum's windup because it is so much a part of who he is. Of course, Halladay's windup is so good that Pittsburgh's Charlie Morton had some success just copying it frame-by-frame. Zack Greinke has a great, compact windup, and C.C. Sabathia's windup is awesome in the truest sense of the word -- it's like watching a mountain wind up and pitch. But I'll go with Lincecum.
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And so, we end up with this.
The all-time pitcher throws like Seaver, thinks like Maddux, has Paige's fastball, Clemens' split, Koufax's curve, Unit's slider, Pedro's change-up and mixes in a Wilhelm knuckler to keep people honest and the catcher aware.
The active pitcher throws like Lincecum, thinks like Halladay, has Verlander's fastball which he complements with Mariano's cutter, Wainwright's curve, Kershaw's slider, Haren's splitter (or whatever it is he's throwing these days that dives down) and baffles everyone by throwing Cole Hamel's change-up.
Both pretty good pitchers. I'll say that All-Time Frankenpitcher's team wins 1-0 when Ted Williams hits a solo homer off Wainwight's curveball in the 14th inning. The active team did have a runner on third with one out in the 12th, but all-time Frankenpitcher got out of it, in in part by using Bob Gibson's glare.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
