Manley: Greinke: How’s this for HOF credentials?

Z for Zackary…the explosion continues.

Dead Ball vs Live Blood

The other thing that is interesting in looking at these 20 pitchers is that 9 of the 20 are in the first 20 years of the century. It is also true that 9 of the 20 are in the last 20 years. For the 70 years in between, only two pitchers are on this list – Koufax (1963) and Seaver (1971). What’s the explanation?

Well, of course, the “dead ball era” (up to around 1920) covers nine of these. And, the 1960’s - early 70’s were pitcher-dominated as well. So, that explains 11 of the 20 on this list. But, what about the nine in the last 20 seasons?

I call that the “Iive blood era”. Who knows who started taking what and when and how much it improved their performance? Because I don’t know and neither do you, I have no choice except to paint a broad brush over the entire group. It’s doubtful if Saberhagen, as early as 1989, had anything going, but after that you have this inexplicable bunch of historically great pitching performances - despite it being during an era when balls were flying out of the park left and right. If anyone wants to believe that is coincidence or “training”, then I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

Back to Greinke

In any event, those are the stats. Based on ERA, SO/BB ratio and HR’s, Greinke could slip a lot the rest of the season and he still would make it on this list of 20. In fact, average innings pitched being equal, he could go the rest of the season with an ERA of 2.81, 1.1 HR/G and SO/BB ratio of only 3.3 and he would still be in this group of 20 – make that 21.