Posted by sjpoker on 4/23/2017 8:14:00 PM (view original):
Posted by thejuice6 on 4/23/2017 8:03:00 PM (view original):
As great as Willie Mays was, someone could make an argument for Christy Mathewson as well. Granted, Baseball-Reference.com isn't the beat-all-end-all of argument solvers but still...
Mays: 12 times was the teams best player - went to three World Series - won one.
Mathewson: 10 times was the teams best player - went to five World Series - won one (includes 1904 when there was no World Series but the Giants would have been the N.L. representative).
I still think Mays wins this one but to me it's closer than some may think...
Agreed. Mathewson was considered the best pitcher of his time. You could argue he STILL is the greatest pitcher ever.
Was he, though? About 60% of Mathewson's career coincided with Walter Johnson's early dominance of the AL. By a few years into that I think most people thought Walter Johnson was the best pitcher going.
Moreover, evaluating players primarily by how they were perceived in their own time and ignoring what we know about baseball now is somewhat negligent. Mathewson pitched for the best team in baseball at a time when wins and losses were considered the most important pitching stats. On the basis of run prevention, Mathewson is not on par with Johnson, Ed Walsh, Joss, Cy Young, Smoky Joe Wood, or even Mordecai Brown. You might still rank him ahead of some of those guys because of his longevity, but he wasn't really a standout pitcher at the time. He was one of the best but not an outlier. You compare that to guys like Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, Tom Seaver, Pedro, or Kershaw who were for at least portions of their career clearly head-and-shoulders better than the rest of the league and I don't see much of an argument for him as the "greatest pitcher ever." Or even the top 10.