IOW, Hunter gave up one more earned run per month over 15 seasons.

If you account for his increased HRA per 9 when given run support, I'm not sure that's even a point.

In fact, I'd say "It's not".

People are welcome to their opinions but I am astonished anyone seriously thinks Jim Hunter was as good as Steve Carlton.  I think someone is having a good laugh leading the Hunter "sheep" through this conversation.

For me, the great pitchers of the era were always Seaver, Palmer and Carlton.  Hunter?  He came up with Gaylord Perry and Ferguson Jenkins in the conversation.

Stats, I will only give you this.  Steve Carlton has four Cy Young Awards and Hunter has one.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics.  You can always produce the desired result twisting the numbers as you like.

That is all I have to say on the matter.

AGREED

CARLTON>>>>>>>>>> HUNTER

Posted by tecwrg on 2/21/2012 2:54:00 PM (view original):
If it was "fairly obvious", would you have other people posting in agreement with you?

Where are they?

Well, there's a couple right above.

I'll go back to Nolan Ryan.   As a kid in the 70s, he was the most awesome pitcher ever.  Threw the ball so hard that the batters couldn't hit it.   100 MPH, they say.

Dave Kingman was fun to watch.  Kong could put balls into orbit.   Man, that was fun to watch.

But weren't there a lot better pitchers and hitters?   Hunter got batters out and prevented runs.   One could argue that he was Greg Maddux before Greg Maddux.  Both limited hits and walks while not striking out very many either.   Pretty similar ERA.   Again, if you want to knock Hunter, it's his ability to give up homers.  But, as tsnoke pointed out, he gave up homers at a much greater rate when given some runs to work with.   Finally, while many players as lesser in the playoffs(tougher competition), that's not true with Hunter.

Posted by 1899_spiders on 2/12/2012 12:15:00 PM (view original):
Ooh, speaking of money pitchers, I'm tossing Chief Bender out too. Ha!

Hunter is the poster boy of why won-loss records are a team-dependent stat that is unreliable to rate pitchers. He never had a dominant season, and outside that five-year peak, he was a very 'meh' pitcher. Heck, in 1973, he was basically average, if one is willing to look beyond the weak won-loss stat.

Finally, he had a medium length career with a 105 ERA+. And that's despite have some of the best career defensive support in history. This is a pitcher whose overall performance looks very average. The best I could give him is a spot in the Hall of Very Good, and he wouldn't be one of the top pitchers there.

Hunter was one of the most highly regarded pitchers of his day, because at his best he won a lot of games, and several times he was the best pitcher on a championship team. His case is extremely team dependent, and to put him in my personal Hall, I'd need an outdated approach to evaluating players. I couldn't possibly bring myself to do that.

Tec - this guy doesn't think much of Hunter either.

Posted by jrd_x on 2/21/2012 2:52:00 PM (view original):
In cases like this, where it's fairly obvious who had the better career (hence, was the better pitcher), I don't need to have watched them pitch. And it really doesn't matter what people thought of them.

We know what happened. For roughly 3200 innings, Hunter allowed 3.26 earned runs per 9 IP. he didn't strike batters out at a high rate, and his ERA was lower than it would have been had he played in front of an average defense.

For roughly 3200 innings, Carlton allowed 3.04 earned runs per nine, struck out batters at a very high rate, and didn't benefit as much from a great defense. He then went on to pitch another 1800 innings, continuing to strike batters out at a high rate, and increased his ERA to 3.22, still lower than Hunter.

What would watching them pitch tell me?

Let's look at it a different way - Hunter was an effective-to-great pitcher every year but his last. Carlton was garbage his first two years and his last 5. Maybe he was just padding his stats, as far as K's, IP and wins go.  Who gets to choose which 3,200 IP of Carlton's career we use? Since you're touting his longevity, perhaps we should use the last 3,200 IP of each of their careers.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/22/2012 9:51:00 AM (view original):

Posted by jrd_x on 2/21/2012 2:52:00 PM (view original):
In cases like this, where it's fairly obvious who had the better career (hence, was the better pitcher), I don't need to have watched them pitch. And it really doesn't matter what people thought of them.

We know what happened. For roughly 3200 innings, Hunter allowed 3.26 earned runs per 9 IP. he didn't strike batters out at a high rate, and his ERA was lower than it would have been had he played in front of an average defense.

For roughly 3200 innings, Carlton allowed 3.04 earned runs per nine, struck out batters at a very high rate, and didn't benefit as much from a great defense. He then went on to pitch another 1800 innings, continuing to strike batters out at a high rate, and increased his ERA to 3.22, still lower than Hunter.

What would watching them pitch tell me?

Let's look at it a different way - Hunter was an effective-to-great pitcher every year but his last. Carlton was garbage his first two years and his last 5. Maybe he was just padding his stats, as far as K's, IP and wins go.  Who gets to choose which 3,200 IP of Carlton's career we use? Since you're touting his longevity, perhaps we should use the last 3,200 IP of each of their careers.

I said 3200 but I should have said 3400 (typing on my phone, didn't double check). The stats are right though.  Hunter only pitched 3400 innings so I used the first 3400 innings of both or their careers.

I ask again, why do you get to choose? Why can't we use the last 3,400 of their careers? I'm guessing it' sbecause at least 700 of Carlton's additional innings were trash.

I don't really care about the rest of this comparison, but if you use the last 3400 innings of their career, you're comparing innings that Carlton pitched at age 40 to those Hunter pitched at 30.   If you're going to do that sort of comparison, of course you compare the first part of Carlton's career to Hunter's.  It's the part that overlaps, and in the case of these guys, it overlaps pretty much exactly.

And by what standards do you come up with 700+ innings of garbage at the end of Carlton's career?  He was terrible in 86-88, that's about 335 innings.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/22/2012 12:11:00 PM (view original):
I ask again, why do you get to choose? Why can't we use the last 3,400 of their careers? I'm guessing it' sbecause at least 700 of Carlton's additional innings were trash.

It's not that I get to choose, if you are going to compare a set of innings, it doesn't make any sense to compare anything but the first 3400 innings of their careers because Hunter only pitched 3400 innings.

Sorry, I lumped '84 in there for some reason. 85-88 = 430 IP. Still not 700, but 4 seasons of crap just to pad certain stats. Hunter walked away closer to his prime than Carlton did. You could argue that Hunter left plenty on the table. There's obviously no way to prove that, but I think it's a fair assumption.

Anyway, I totally agree that Carlton had a much better career - only a fool would dispute that. And I do believe he was a better pitcher than Hunter, but I think it's marginal at best. Nowhere near as far apart as their career stats might suggest.

Posted by Jtpsops on 2/22/2012 12:48:00 PM (view original):
Sorry, I lumped '84 in there for some reason. 85-88 = 430 IP. Still not 700, but 4 seasons of crap just to pad certain stats. Hunter walked away closer to his prime than Carlton did. You could argue that Hunter left plenty on the table. There's obviously no way to prove that, but I think it's a fair assumption.

Anyway, I totally agree that Carlton had a much better career - only a fool would dispute that. And I do believe he was a better pitcher than Hunter, but I think it's marginal at best. Nowhere near as far apart as their career stats might suggest.

Hunter had a 4.52 ERA in ~360 innings pitched over his last 3 seasons.  This was from a guy who had been consistently around 300 IP in a season for most of his career.

It would be generous to call the idea that he left plenty on the table a stretch. 

I don't think Hunter left anything on the table.  He pitched 143, 118, and 103 innings his last three years with a combined ERA of over 4.50.  I think tec mentioned that he was sick or something.

I think the career numbers are an accurate reflection of the difference in value between the two.

Yeah, I think they were pretty similar pitchers in terms of their value at their peak, but there's a pretty significant gulf in terms of the overall value of their careers just because Carlton was able to stay near at/near his peak in pitching for so much longer.

Whether that makes Carlton a lock for the HOF and Hunter questionable really depends on what you're trying to honor.