And Greinke had to face at least one significantly better batter (2-3 times) each game than did those on the list who pitched in a league without a DH.

Man, Pedro was so nasty at the turn of the century.

It seems Pedro had the 2 best seasons in the last 50 years but a factor should not be ignored is he pitched barely the 200 innings barrier. In contrast, Maddux had the 1994 and 1995 shortened for causes we all know. Specially I may point to the 1994 season when his last game was August 11: 25 games (all started) with an average of 8.08 innings per game.
Pedro started 29 games in 1999 plus 5 innings of relief work, 7.18 innings per game. In 2000 Pedro started 29 games, 7.48 innings per game.
Considering Maddux pitched 263, 268 and 267 1991-1993, in 37, 35 and 36 games, it's conceivable he would have pitched 277 innings in 1994.
With all these numbers in mind, we should be very careful when saying Pedro's 1999 and 2000 seasons were better than Maddux's 1994.
Regarding Greinke it's really amazing he did it at age 25 (like Pedro in 1997, maybe we could see more brilliant seasons of Greinke in the next 5 years?) and it continues to amaze me Gooden was only 20 in his 1985 season.

Come on Todd, don't rain on Pedro's parade! We all know how much baseball has changed in even the past ten years when it comes to CGs and innings pitched, so don't go too far in the other direction with Pedro.

The bottom line is that all these seasons were awesome and fun to think about. I'd take any of them, thank you very much.

I'll defend wins as a career statistic. Over fifteen years or whatever, you have to be pretty good to be put in game after game (remember the old saw that you have to be a pretty good pitcher to lose twenty games in a season), plus career wins incorporate longevity, which is important when evaluating a career.

Even for relievers, even with blown saves turned into wins, over a career wins show how often they stopped the losses in a losing game, to give the team a chance to come back, or held the line in a tie game, plus indicates something about how much their manager trusted them.

Games started or Games is a better measure of this stuff, combined with other stats, but over a career wins at least will aggregate a number of measures of effectiveness in one easy to see number. Then you look at the rest of the line.

I agree in a single season wins are pretty meaningless, in fact I thought that even thirty years ago, and I always was amused by how often starting pitchers who have won the magic twenty games beat starting pitchers with much lower ERAs (never mind the other stats) in these ballots.

@Todd - Innings pitched definitely matter. It's why Pedro will go down as merely one of the best 5 pitchers of all time as opposed to the very best. It is still my belief, however, that no starting pitcher has ever been better than Martinez was at his peak.

@Ed - Wins are not necessarily meaningless, it's just that in the presence of a bunch of other, better stats, they tell us nothing at all incremental. Wins do correlate with good pitching, but that's about the extent of their statistical importance.

@Sully: At first, I thought you were saying Pedro would go down as one of the 15 best pichers of all time. I find very interesting you're saying "best 5". I assume you're giving a lot of credit to him for being so good at his peak. While I don't completely share your argument, I can understand your point.
Would you mind to say which pitchers might be in that list of 5 best ever?

Off the top of my head, how about Walter Johnson, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Pedro, Roger Clemens and Lefty Grove in whatever order you would like?

Unit, Maddux, Seaver, Mathewson are all knocking on the door...

I am sure I am omitting some.

Since Pedro Martinez was brought up, here is a link to an article that claims that even with relatively low IP, his 1999 & 2000 seasons are near the top of the greatest seasons ever. Some nutcase wrote it at some obscure website

Click here to read it.

Also, can anyone explain how Bill James gives both Greinke and Hernandez 26 Win Shares?

Great for Zack, he was the clear pick

...but I do find the commentary on the 'bad voters' a bit too much sometimes, it is more likely to entrench opinions than change them.

Verlander is a 'defensible pick' if you don't look too deeply at the numbers, he also pitched with the season on the line if you care about such (I don't, looks like the voter did).

For example
I am a writer, I know Zack, Felix, Verlander, Halliday, CC have been very good.

I like the triple crown stats, I notice that for Wins, ERA and SO that Verlander (jt 1, 6, 1) leads 2 of the cats, Greinke (jt 7, 1, 2) leads 1, ergo I vote Verlander 1.

Cyril - thanks for linking back to your piece. It was a great read, and one of my favorite DH spots.

Paul - I hear you, and was reluctant to do it. But I couldn't resist given Kepner's piece claiming a watershed moment for more progressive statistical analysis while Kornacki was still going with "inspirational horse"...

Sully

Glad you liked it. Thanks.

Cy

slight over reaction on my part :)

didn't realise that the Verlander vote was actually a homer vote and i gave him too much credit.

Happy that the best AL and NL pitchers won the Cy Young, though there is another voter being flamed on the web over the NL votes.

Maybe the CY needs more than 3 place votes, that way when a writer throws a bone to an under appreciated pitcher causing one of the 3 favourites to miss out, then they don't get destroyed online

The move towards a more sabermetric approach to baseball analysis has been and will continue to be controversial, but I also think it's inexorable. Keith Law is being savaged in the comments section at ESPN, but many of the comments are also supporting his decision, and others are lauding him for writing an article that explains his selections.

As we move towards a trend to evaluate players more on the numbers and less on 'feel,' I think it becomes much more important to see voters explain their reasoning for their picks. I look forward to the day when emotional arguments become a rarity and voters hesitate to make picks that they cannot defend without words like "grit" and "pitched to the score" and so on.

RE: ERA +
"Zach's one of the youngest on the list. I bet we see him on here again in the next few seasons"....Yeah, just like Dwight Gooden

The problem with end-of-season awards is that only one player can win. There's something amiss about Verlander and Hernandez, with the great seasons they had, walking home with nothing while Pete Vuckovich still has a CYA in his trophy case.

1999-2000 Pedro was like watching an Olympian who got bored and decided to play baseball for a while.

Greinke had a great year, the voters got it right.