Posted by sjpoker on 5/27/2016 9:11:00 PM (view original):
Posted by dahsdebater on 5/27/2016 4:50:00 PM (view original):
I never said he has middle-of-the-road stuff. I said he doesn't have 3 plus-plus pitches. I'm saying he has Zach Greinke stuff, not Clayton Kershaw stuff.
If anything, the Cliff Lee comp makes my point for me. I think most fans would agree that he basically made something very close to the most he could have out of his arm. Cliff Lee won 1 Cy Young award and, barring a wildly unexpected career renaissance, is likely not a HOF candidate. He has 143 career wins and that's likely it for him.
Again, those numbers are good. But I think if you asked a bunch of Dodgers fans how they'd feel about Urias winning 143 games in his career, they'd mostly think you were horribly lowballing the guy. I'm not saying I don't like him, but I think people get too excited about prospects. They're called prospects for a reason, and the highest-touted guys fail to live up to expectations far more often than not. This seems like a particularly egregious case because of the relatively limited upside to Urias relative to a lot of top pitching prospects.
Again. Dahsebedeter says Urias doesn't have 3 ++ pitches but the people who know say he does.
And you say you 'feel' like he's gonna be average. But - again - others in the know say he's special. He has a feel for the zone.
That said, I generally agree with what you are saying. But your fixation on wins is retarded. If you don't think so, google "Nolan Ryan 1987' and then get back to me about how great wins are.
And this is for BL - you're ******* right if you think that if dahs comes back with anything about 'Nolan Ryan 1987' I will absolutely make the argument that he was the best pitcher in baseball that year - no matter what WAR and ERA+ say about it.
Show me where I said he's going to be average. I don't know if you're being intentionally dense or if you're really this dumb.
Also, I've made the exact same 1987 Nolan Ryan argument, in this forum, discussing Cy Young contenders. But over larger sample sizes wins are a reasonable quick and dirty approximation for how much value a pitcher contributed. If you know a starting pitcher had well under 200 wins you know there would have to be fairly exceptional circumstances for him to be a HOFer. Sandy Koufax makes sense - he retired at 30 from injury but had 3 Cys in his last 4 seasons. Cliff Lee got pushed out due to injury at what, 37 or so? And 1 Cy.
Sure, win counting doesn't necessarily inherently say how good you were. But it contains information. Given that there are no 20th-century SPs with as few wins as Cliff Lee in the HOF, it certainly feels significant. There are 57 guys, if you include Cy Young and not Dennis Eckersley. They all won at least 150 games. Even Eck won 197 games. In fact, of the 57 guys, only Koufax, Joss, and Dizzy Dean won fewer than 189 games. They were all basically out of MLB before their 31st birthdays for varying reasons. Dean, at least, probably shouldn't be in at all.
Cliff Lee's career wins are significant in a discussion of how close he was to being HOF-worthy, whether you like it or not. They don't inherently disqualify him, but they're a huge hint.