Roger Clemens: Greatest Pitcher Ever?

[Outta Leftfield]

I was looking at the baseball-reference.com page on Roger Clemens and the page's sponsor made this claim: "Greatest. Pitcher. Ever." I guess he must have meant "greatest pitcher, period," since there are periods after all three words—but anyway, I found myself looking at Rocket's record and thinking, "Hey, that's a pretty reasonable claim."

Since this is "Back to the '80s" and that was one of his career's three great decades (how many other pitchers can say THAT?), I thought I'd ask you. Was Rocket the greatest pitcher of all time? I guess the challenge is to compare pitchers of different eras: Walter Johnson, Cy Young, Pete Alexander, Matthewson, Lefty Grove, Warren Spahn, Koufax, Feller...maybe a few others.

Facts in Roger's favor: still pitching well at 42; 343 wins is tops for his era; his career ERA is amazing for his time; career w/l % of .665 is amazing given the length of his career. His adjusted ERA is right there with Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove (and Randy Johnson)--it's amazing how close together the top guys are. The only guy ahead of this pack is Pedro Martinez. Nobody is except Roger is near the top in all the major categories that are more or less useable across eras: adjusted ERA, w/l %, total wins (as long as nobody has to match Cy Young), and strikeouts.

Anyway, my personal top three would probably be Clemens, Johnson and Grove in that order (with Pedro having a good chance to enter the circle if he keeps pitching well.) But I wouldn't get to upset with anyone who changed the order around or wanted to include Alexander or Matthewson (or Koufax over a shorter stretch.)

What do YOU think?

[The Conndor]

Without having career numbers in front of me, I would definitely put Clemens in my all-time top 5. I would also include both Johnsons in that top 5, plus probably Pedro as my 4th assuming he chips in 2 or 3 more quality seasons. That makes 4.
But my 5th, and my ultimate choice if I get pinned down to pick a best of all time: Bob Gibson.

[LMBombers]

Who is the highest salaried 80's pitcher? Roger Clemens
Who is the highest salaried pitcher in the 2006 SOM game? Roger Clemens

What does that tell you? That is pretty impressive especially considering that I don't think any of the other BTT 80's pitchers are even playing any longer much less dominating (at least through 2005).

[nycalderon]

also without having career numbers if i had to come up with a choice I would say clemens...

walter johnson, tom seaver, lefty grove, alexander, matthewson, martinez, gibson and others would all figure in the discussion but none I think displayed clemens' dominance over such a long period.

I think for most stat heads there really isn't much debate about the matter.

[yak1407]

Gibson also benefitted from an era where the rules were in favour of the pitcher, a higher mound, grass infields, etc. Who knows what Clemens would have done?
Of course, the converse is that Clemens has benefitted from expansion and a watered down product, pitching every five days instead of four, the rise of the bullpen closer.
Talk about durability, Gibson was not only pitching every fourth day, he was pitching 300 innings a year. And, guys back then pitched without the medical care, training regimes and so on that we see today. I suspect Gibson Drysdale, Juan Marichal, Whitey Ford, pitched with arm injurles that would disable some starters these days.
So who is to say.
What, however, would Koufax have done if he had pitched longer?
And as far as durability and pitching over a long period of time, where's Warren Spahn (Spahn and Sain and a day of rain!)

[baracus68]

I'd make a case for Lefty Grove on the strength of his excellent career record highlighted by a long dominant stretch that just happened to be during a time when batters were KILLING pitchers. Also, his career numbers would be even better if he hadn't spent several early years as a well-paid member of the great Baltimore Orioles minor league squad.

But if I had to pick a pitcher for a five-year stretch, I'm going with my landsman Sandy Koufax.

And if I had to win one game I'm going with Bob Gibson--and definitely NOT Roger Clemens. The "just one game" criteria is the one in which he falls the shortest, IMO. Maybe this is not so much a factor in his later career, but with the Red Sox he always seemed to get too pumped up to be effective in a big game. That said, I can't really argue too hard with anybody who makes the case for him as putting together the best numbers, all things considered, of any pitcher ever.

Then again, if I had to win just one game, maybe I'd put young Babe Ruth on the hill and bat him cleanup. :wink:

[PillPop]

I believe Bill James has shown that Tom Seaver has the greatest record vs. the record of his teams of any pitcher. That should put him among the greatest of all time. Is Roger Clemens the best? Perhaps. He does have the benefit of today's training methods. It would appear he has availed himself of today's performance-enhancing drugs too.

[MARKWEAVER]

Just to be different, I'm going to throw Carlton's name into this mix. I would probably agree with those supporting the case that Clemens is the best ever (and there's a relatively new book called Clearing the Bases that supports this with an ad hoc analysis), however I would have Carlton in my top 5, perhaps even at the top as a lefty. Mostly I'm just making this argument because I think he gets short-changed in conversations like this one. The big things that he has going against him is that he played about 4 years too long and he played for some very bad Phillies teams in the early 70s (this really makes his 1972 season, in which he went 27-10 for a Phillies team that only won 59 games, really stand out). However, he was pitching 300+ or close to 300 innings well into the era of 5-man rotations. His strikeout to walk ratio was often high 2's to low 3's.

Anyway, here are his numbers, you decide:
[url]http://www.baseball-reference.com/c/carltst01.shtml[/url]

Or, go to this page and compare Clemens and Carlton... they have fairly similar numbers, especially there "162-game" averages (just forget the fact that Clemens is still rocking into his 40s):
[url]http://www.baseball-reference.com/compare.cgi[/url]

[m1aman]

i like mathewson or koufax

[yak1407]

One other point about Carlton that probably has hurt his reputation is that he was a miserable SOB who refused to talk to the media.