10 Best Pitchers of All Time

Who are the 10 Best Starting Pitchers in Baseball History?

That’s the question that came up recently while chatting with my weekend coffee group. Others in the group aren’t especially big sports fans, but they know that I’m a baseball geek and politely try to include me in conversation. So when this question came up, my response was: “Hmm… that will take some research, let me get back to you at our next coffee klatch” (giving me a week to come up with an answer).

I also told them that for me, growing up, the best starting pitcher was Detroit’s Jack Morris; partly because I saw him pitch a no-hitter; partly because of his extraordinary World Series success with the Tigers, Blue Jays, and Twins; and partly because the mention of his name was a way to get my dad to drive us to Detroit for a game–if he was pitching on a weekend, especially in a traditional double-header, that got our wheels on the road. I also love that Jack Morris has the highest ERA of any Hall-of-Fame pitcher and makes no bones about it in a famous quote where he says something to the effect of: “If I’d known the goal was to have a low ERA, I would have had a low ERA… but I thought the goal was to win games!”

Which Players to Include?

With that challenge put before me, my next question to the group was: “Should I consider questionable characters like Gaylord Perry (and his infamous doctored baseballs) and Roger Clemens (accusations of steroid use)”–we agreed I should. My next thought was, “how will I go about figuring out who the best pitchers are in baseball’s long history–do I include players from the 1800s and what about the Negro Leagues?”. I decided to cast as wide a net as possible, especially since one of my friends had specifically asked if I thought Satchel Paige would make the list of the very best.

Stats Categories to Include

I didn’t want to rely on a single statistic, like Wins Above Replacement (WAR) and instead wanted to use several different statistical categories to include a large circle of candidates for the best pitchers in baseball history. So, I settled on four categories (below) and considered a fifth–the Cy Young Share (a measure of the number of votes received for that award) but since the Cy Young has only been awarded since 1956 it skewed the list too heavily in favor of more recent players.

1. WAR (Wins Above Replacement. How much better was this pitcher than a replacement level player, think a triple-A type of player.)
2. Innings Pitched (Total innings pitched during their career. A mark of longevity, frequency of the pitching rotation, and valuable in saving arms in the bullpen.)
3. Adjusted ERA+ (Great for comparing pitchers from different time periods, ERA plus shows how much better a pitcher’s earned run average was compared to their peers.)
4. WPA (Win Probability Added. Assuming an average team, the probability of this pitcher increasing the number of team wins).

Acknowledgement: Many thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for access to the statistics used in this evaluation.

How I Determined My Top 10 Pitchers of All Time

I started with the top 50 starting pitchers in each category above, eliminating relievers (more than half their games pitched in relief, like Dennis Eckersley) which resulted in 107 different pitchers. Then I awarded 50 points for 1st place in a category, 49 points for 2nd place and so on down to 1 point for 50th place. From there I added the total points together across the 4 categories–meaning each category counted toward 25% of the total, so doing well in 3 or more categories led to a high ranking. (Out of the 107 pitchers ranked, Jack Morris, came in at #106 as the only category for which he finished in the top 50 was innings pitched.)

If I had included Cy Young Share, the list would have expanded from 107 to 130 pitchers. A few names that would have done well using that statistic, but otherwise fell off the list, were: Corey Kluber, Félix Hernández, David Price, and Catfish Hunter.

1800’s, early 1900’s, and Negro Leagues

The statistic of ERA+ was most favorable to players from the 1800’s, early 1900’s and the Negro Leagues. More than half (12) of the top 20 pitchers in ERA+ were from those periods. I don’t have a reason for that other than to surmise that the very best pitchers during those times were far and away superior to the average pitcher, while in more modern times the differences, in Earned Run Average at least, tend to be less pronounced. 

In fact, Satchel Paige (7th in ERA+) was bested by two other Negro League players, Bill Foster (1st) and Bullet Rogan (2nd) in ERA+. Bill Foster, who played from 1923-37 had a spectacular career ERA+ of 164, a whopping 64% better than average compared to his peers, for a career earned run average of just 2.63. He won at least 110 games while pitching primarily for the Chicago American Giants. I say “at least 110 games” since statistics from the Negro Leagues are likely incomplete and tend to under-report the career statistics of such noteworthy players.

Given that, I’m certain players like Satchel Paige (tied for #43 overall in my rankings with John Smoltz), Bill Foster (tied for #36 with Curt Schilling), and Charles Wilber “Bullet” Rogan (at #38 his nickname says it all) would have fared considerably better overall if complete statistics were available.

10 Best Pitchers in Baseball History

So now that you’ve waded through all of my meandering introductions and methodologies, here is my list of the 10 best pitchers in the history of baseball along with their overall rank in the categories on which I chose to base my evaluation. Remember, they only received credit if they finished in the top 50 of a particular category. Any rank below 50 is shown for informational purposes only. (Scroll right to see the full list of categories.)

Summary

My feeling is this top 10 list of pitchers includes a good mix of traditional old-timers (Walter Johnson, Grover Alexander, Lefty Grove, Cy Young), one mid-century player (Warren Spahn, of the famous saying “Spahn, and Sain, and pray for rain”), and many modern-era players (Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, Tom Seaver). Of course there is one controversial inclusion, that of Roger Clemens who is the only one not in the Hall of Fame (indicated by “HoF”). I included him both for debate and because Clemens most certainly was one of the best pitchers ever, the question is should the likelihood of his having used performance enhancing drugs downgrade his overall ranking; I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Oh, and one last thing, the other questionable character I mentioned earlier, Gaylord Perry, just missed the top 10 coming in as the 13th best pitcher in baseball history! I’ll publish my full list of the top 100 pitchers in a future post.

See also: Podcast on the 10 Best Pitchers, Ohtani is Real, Brewers Tempt Fate, Miggy Hotline, Scherzer/Verlander Duel.

Photo Credit

Photo by Clayton Cardinalli on Unsplash