The Best of the ’90’s Nine
Upon looking back at the best pitchers of the 1990s, whose careers continued into the Y2K era, a general concensus seems to exist involving which ones sit atop the totem pole. The order of these pitchers may differ from list to list but, based on several articles written by some smart and reliable writers, that list tends to include: Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Tom Glavine, Curt Schilling, John Smoltz, Kevin Brown, and Mike Mussina.
Some feel all nine of these pitchers are Hall of Fame-worthy. Others draw the line after Smoltz. Some more say all but Brown are deserving. Regardless, it does seem that these nine pitchers had the most impact on the game from a starting pitching standpoint, especially in the statistical department. With that in mind, I went to each of their profile pages and isolated, using WPA/LI, their best seasons. Below they are ranked by these context-neutral wins:
Pedro Martinez (00): 8.09 WPA/LI, 1.74 ERA/2.16 FIP, 0.74 WHIP, 32 BB/284 K
Greg Maddux (95): 6.86 WPA/LI, 1.63 ERA/2.25 FIP, 0.81 WHIP, 23 BB/181 K
Roger Clemens (97): 6.23 WPA/LI, 2.05 ERA/2.25 FIP, 1.03 WHIP, 68 BB/292 K
Randy Johnson (95): 6.15 WPA/LI, 2.48 ERA/2.08 FIP, 1.05 WHIP, 65 BB/294 K
Curt Schilling (02): 6.07 WPA/LI, 3.23 ERA/2.40 FIP, 0.97 WHIP, 33 BB/316 K
John Smoltz (96): 5.23 WPA/LI, 2.94 ERA/2.64 FIP, 1.00 WHIP, 55 BB/276 K
Kevin Brown (98): 5.08 WPA/LI, 2.38 ERA/2.23 FIP, 1.07 WHIP, 49 BB/257 K
Mike Mussina (01): 4.28 WPA/LI, 3.15 ERA/2.91 FIP, 1.07 WHIP, 42 BB/214 K
Tom Glavine (91): 4.13 WPA/LI, 2.55 ERA/3.05 FIP, 1.09 WHIP, 69 BB/192 K
First, some commonalities. Nobody here had a WHIP 1.10+ in their best season; the highest ERA, 3.23, belongs to Schilling, who actually had the biggest E-F discrepancy at -0.83. Nobody had an FIP higher than 3 except Glavine, who also had the highest WHIP, most walks, and second lowest amount of strikeouts. Okay, so it seems that Glavine had the worst best-year of this group and Pedro’s 2000 (as well as his 1999 campaign) just might be the best pitched season in the history of the sport, but I’m curious to know your thoughts on the rankings of these best seasons and how you would rank their careers overall.
Would you stick with the WPA/LI in ranking their top seasons? Does this order represent the order for their overall careers?
While I have a feeling the top four will remain the same it should be very interesting to see some takes on how the bottom five are ranked with some reasoning behind it. With enough of a vote we’ll be able to see if any real concensus exists with regards to their order of effectiveness.
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It all depends on what you mean by “peak seasons”. 2, 3, 5, 8 ? Consecutive or Best? Etc.
In my opinion, “career value” is more important than “peak value” but it’s not a clear cut thing. You can make a reasonable argument that “peak value” is more important.
Anyway…I’m ignoring the top 3. Too difficult and a lot of things to consider.
Johnson, Glavine, Smoltz, Mussina, Schiling and Brown.
Obviously unit is head and shoulders ahead of this pitchers.
Glavine’s longetivity, Smoltz’s dual threath, Mussina’s consistency, Schilling’s big moment’s and “The uncomfortable truth” Kevin Brown. In that order.
Schilling and Mussina are interesting — Mussina had more good year, but Schilling had more great years.
In the order you have them listed, the top four guys are certainly well above the other five.
I’d like to see some WPA/LI totals over the best three seasons, five seasons, and ten seasons (minimum to qualify for HoF).
Guillermo, the “Big Four” are Pedro, RJ, Maddux, and Clemens… all four are head and shoulders above the other five. How we rank them is interesting, though, and how we rank the bottom five is what I’m really interested in knowing.
Sky, here are their best three consecutive seasons via WPA/LI:
Pedro: 1998-00, 18.19
Maddux: 1994-96, 17.52
Clemens: 1986-88, 15.65
Johnson: 1999-01, 15.29
Schilling: 2002-04, 14.16
Brown: 1998-00, 14.16
Smoltz: 1996-96, 10.92
Glavine: 1996-98, 10.46
Mussina: 1999-01, 9.37
I think, both from having watched them play, and now looking back at the statistics that after the Top 4. The order is probably:
Smoltz, Glavine, Schilling, Mussina, Brown.
I’d rank Smoltz ahead of the other two because of his adaptability. I think it was really impressive to see him reinvent himself. I am a firm believer in not watering down the Hall of Fame however and thus I think Glavine, because he hit the magical 300 win plateau, should be the last player on the list to qualify.
That said, Schilling, Mussina and Brown all had great careers, but…
Schilling’s top seasons were outstanding, as you can tell from the peak seasons above, but in the end I just don’t know about all the other seasons that sit around it. Outside of 2001 and 1997 you don’t see that sort of dominance from him in any other year. Do five great seasons out of 19 makes a Hall of Fame pitcher? I doubt it.
Mussina strikes me as a great compiler. He’s been above-average to well-above-average for a long time, but he never struck me as a Hall of Fame pitcher.
Overall careers, I would rank the bottom 5 like this (in order of effectiveness):
Glavine – longevity, consistency
Mussina – underrated, highest winning % of these 5
Schilling – played for some bad Phillies teams, had some great seasons, and huge Ks
Smoltz – would rank 3rd among Braves big 3, but still really good. Also excelled as closer.
Brown – If picking 1 or 2 seasons, Brown may top this list, but was injured too much, and the waste of $$$ weighs on everybodies minds.
I at first scoffed when I saw that you mentioned Kevin Brown. I never really got into baseball and its statistics until 2002, and was stunned to see how great he was in the late nineties into 2000 when looking at his baseballreference stats page. Now, he does not belong w/ the top 4 in this group, but still rather incredible what he was able to do. Any idea where to find the data on his GB/FB ratio during that time? Would like to see that; I recall him being two things: injured and an extreme groundball pitcher. Will he even get any consideration when his bid for the HoF comes up?
Glavine, Schilling, Mussina, and Smoltz all have an argument to be made; or maybe that is just my shallow mind picking them because they are currently still playing.
Marcus,
Kevin Brown is the perfect example of how the most recent performance and perhaps a bad reputation garnered late in his career (from that punching the wall incident) causes fans to forget what the guy did prior to that.
He was one of the best pitchers of the 90’s, hands down, but I think he will get very little Hall recognition. The top four in this group are without a doubt hall of famers, Glavine’s pretty much a lock as well.
Schilling gets in I think as well, but Mussina and Brown will likely fall short.
So i started looking into WPA/LI for the other 5 and came to a couple of conclusions.
Schilling has the highest total and highest seasonal average. Combine this with his “post season lore” and I’d say he is the best of the group on paper. He clearly doesn’t lose much in terms of longevity even though he has the fewest qualifying seasons out of the group.
The Moose is second in total, average, and standard deviation. If you are second in every metric, you are second on the list.
Smoltz could be higher on this list, but I think becoming a closer hurts his numbers when you only really look at WPA/LI. He averaged a 1.55 WPA/LI for those few seasons and he never crested 2. These seasons are bookended by marks of 2.67 and 3.72, he clearly could have raised his total over that stretch and helped his average. Probably enough to jump the Moose too.
Brown and Glavine are several points back in total and both have deviations greater than their average and it is a toss up as to which gets the nod over the other. I’d lean toward Glavine just because of the win total.
This is a broad view.
Name / Total / Average / StdDev
Schilling /43.88 / 2.74 / 1.79
Smoltz / 39.42 / 2.19 / 1.12
Brown / 32.55 / 1.91 / 2.19
Glavine / 29.33 / 1.47 / 1.51
The following is a table of number of seasons with a WPA/LI of…
Name / <1 / 1-2 / 2-3 / 3-4 / 4+
Schilling / 2 / 4 / 3 / 2 / 5
Smoltz / 2 / 7 / 6 / 2 / 1
Brown / 5 / 5 / 2 / 0 / 4
Moose / 2 / 4 / 5 / 4 / 2
Glavine / 9 / 3 / 4 / 1 / 2
Schilling easily tops the list when you look for peaks of greatness, 5 seasons of being awesome. 10 of 2 or better.
Brown makes his way up there, he was above average for quite some time and threw in 4 great seasons. Only 6 of two or better.
Moose follows a nice distribution, it is just easy on the eyes. 2 great seasons, 4 very good, 5 good. 11 seasons of 2 or better
Smoltz gets “penalized” for being a closer for a few years like i said earlier, but he still does quite well. 9 seasons of 2 or better.
Glavine on the other makes you scratch your head a little. The guy had 9 seasons where he really was not very good. And only 7 where he had a WPA/LI of 2 or better. It is kind of funny he gets the consistency label a lot, because he was consistent but not in a very good way.
I changed my mind, i’d flip Brown and Glavine at the bottom. If i were a GM I’d go for Brown.
If I am ambitious tonight I will try and figure out these guys effective win loss records using the method Tango outlined the other day.
Scappy, that would be great. I’ll be away until tomorrow night but look forward to it.
It’s kind of interesting… the more I see Glavine essentially way at the bottom of all these lists the more I’m questioning how good he really was… I mean I know he was good but what you point out doesn’t lie.
Scrappy,
That was a really revealing way of looking at the WPA/LI. I guess anyone could interpret them however they want, but it looks to me there that Schilling was the best of the “other five.”
When was Mussina great? That’s what I wonder when people talk about him as a Hall of Fame pitcher, but now looking at it, I guess the same could be said for Smoltz.
Like I said I would do, effective W-L records for the remaining 5.
Name / Real W / Real L / Real % / Eff W / Eff L / Eff %
Schill / 216 / 146 / .597 / 218 / 145 / .601
Smoltz / 210 / 147 / .588 / 248 / 169 / .595
Brown / 211 / 144 / .594 / 219 / 158 / .581
Moose / 265 / 151 / .637 / 232 / 153 / .602
Glavine / 305 / 202 / .602 / 285 / 224 / .560
Smoltz is clearly the winner here, a very competitive winning percentage and the most effective wins, 248. Schilling and the Moose follow closely.
Schilling and Smoltz both gain a few wins increasing their w% by .004 and .007 respectively. The Moose and Glavine take big hits here dropping .035 and .042, with the Moose “losing” 33 wins.
I think when you combine these three methods up that i have thrown at the wall here it boils down to.
Schilling – Floats to the top no matter how you really want to look at it.
Moose – Win totals over rate things a bit, but the guy was consistently good, 11 seasons posting a WPA/LI greater than 2.
Smoltz – The bullpen time really hurts his WPA/LI numbers, but when you look at effective wins it helps level the playing field.
Brown – he had 4 dominant seasons that a lot of people forget about.
Glavine – Out of the 300 game winners he is clearly the worst (though I wouldn’t mind being the worst 300 game winner). His effective winning percentage really isn’t that good. If you really dig into the numbers he is the Lee Smith of wins.
That was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be by the way.
Maddux, Johnson, Pedro (top 3, in my order… Maddux’s peak of 7 seasons with solid seasons on each end of the great run puts him #1 for me)
Clemens (Not in the class of the top 3… But above the next 5. His ‘06/’07 are great but should probably be discredited due to misremembering)
Smoltz, Schilling, Brown (Smoltz should be given credit for his results, which are held down due to closing but should be looked positively upon IMO… Schilling has had some great seasons, as has Brown – but with less consistancy, and more injury ruined ones.)
Mussina, Glavine (Easily my bottom 2 here)
Scappy,
Awesome stuff. Glavine actually has the most Effective Wins in your results, not Smoltz, but his W% takes a huge hit. This Effective W-L looks like it does a really fantastic job since it takes into account Smoltz was a closer for those 3-3.5 years. Here’s another instance of Glavine not really looking that good.
He’s a lock for the HOF regardless of what we find here but his numbers and seasons just don’t really look that good when compared to the rest.
It seems to me that, if we knew nothing about the reputations of these pitchers or anything like that, we all are agreeing that Maddux, Pedro, Clemens, Johnson, Schilling are HOFers, and Mussina, Glavine, Brown are borderline.
Factoring in what we do know about them, however, it would actually seem that Smoltz takes Glavine’s spot in the borderline department. Ultimately I think all but Mussina and Brown are deserving of getting in; I just really feel you can tell the story of the last 20 years without Mike Mussina and we wouldn’t miss much. Guys like Smoltz and Glavine are tied to Maddux as the Big 3 of the 87-straight division title Braves, and need to be there together. Schilling’s “legacy” will enhance his numbers and carry him in. And the big four, are well, the big four.
One thing that should be noted is that Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux accumulated their gaudiest WPA/LI in the strike-shortened ‘95.
I’m not saying he should be there myself, but I guarantee you a lot of fans and baseball writers are going to say Andy Pettite belongs on this list, and I’ll bet he gets closer to the Hall of Fame than Kevin Brown does.
Pettitte is not really close to the rest of these guys. His career win loss record is 213 – 122. Good winning percentage, but not very good overall totals. His effective win loss record is 178-141, not very good.
Kevin Appier and David Cone don’t appreciate being left out Eric.
Oh, and not saying that they have any argument for the hall, but they do have arguments for the 90’s Nine.
I know Pettite isn’t as good. I’m saying that the public and the media don’t understand that, and he’ll get more support than Brown.
Also, Pettite is going to get major props for his 18-7 postseason record. Again, not saying he should, but he will.
Glavine – 4409 innings ERA 118+
Schilling – 3261 Innings ERA 127+
I know that around these parts, these stats are like hieroglyphic writings.
But come on…. 1150 innings difference… If you were a GM, would you really throw the innings “out the window”?
I know that Schilling has the best seasons. But he also pitched a lot less innings, and those innings have value.
Remember you are substituting that 1150 innings difference with a replecement level player. And that 7 ERA+ advantage that Schilling has over Glavine, dissapears.
I think we undervalue the worth of being there, every 5 starts, year after year.
Based on peak value primarily, with some emphasis on longevity/career number, Brown would probably be #6 for me, behind Schilling. Smoltz could edge him out if he sticks around a little more.
Brown, Schilling and Smoltz had several dominating years in succession – Mussina and Glavine had a string of solid years but you’d be hard pressed to find more than one truly dominating year, if that.
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In regards to Glavine, WPA/LI ultimately removes all of the success Glavine had as a situational pitcher. “Clutch” factored back in, and Glavine has a .583 W%, with near 300 wins again.