All-time greatest World Series pitchers

Bill James has noted that Whitey Ford's lifetime .690 (that's .690!) won lost record is all the more remarkable when one considers that Stengel was holding him out to pitch against the Yankees' toughest rivals. Ford was .690 while pitching for much of his career primarily against the upper division.

When Houk got hold of Whitey he just ran him out there every 4th day. Ford had seasons of 25-4 and 24-7 under Houk, but his arm was ready to fall off by 1966, when he was only 37. So there may have been some method in Casey's madness. It's hard to argue with Casey's overall record with the Yanks from 1949-1960. I think part of that was that he was kind of a genius when it came to pitching match ups. Don Larsen's pre-Yankee records were 7-12 and 3-21. Then he went 9-2, 11-5 and 10-4 for the Yanks, in part because Casey spotted Larsen in where he thought he could succeed.

That said, Stengel's handling of Ford in the 1960 Series is hard to understand. Whitey pitched relief in a meaningless game on the last day of the season--which might have barred him from game 1. And Ford didn't actually appear in th WS until game 3, at which point he got going on his famous streak of scoreless innings.

It's interesting to consider the Lolich / Gibson pairing of "greatest" WS pitchers. These two guys appeared in the same Series, and in the final game pudgy Lolich managed to get the best of HOFer Gibson, and on short rest, too. Pretty awesome.

I don't have his stats, nor do I need to look them up. For one big game the best ever was Koufax....end of discussion.

I had conversation with no other than The Biomechanical Man (Dr. Fleisig) about this last year at the Saber Seminar.
My theory is that the longer time of game (primarily because of TV) prevents pitchers from pitching more innings. It is probably less fatiguing to throw 120 pitches in 100 minutes than it is to throw 100 pitches spread over three hours. The pitcher's arm tires from the longer warmup and cooldown cycles.
Even in the 1960s, I remember announcers saying pitchers arms would suffer when they returned to the mound after their team had a big inning.
Of course, managers usually bring in a fresh pitcher after a rain delay, too.

Anyway, Tommy John, obviously from the old school of pitching, said that more innings pitched actually helps make arms stronger. He said that pitch counts are a much bigger factor today than they were when he came to the big leagues in the '60s, where a starting pitcher was left in the game as long as he was effective and told the manager he wasn't tired. Nowadays, more often than not, a pitcher is removed from the game around 100 pitches, regardless of how he feels. It would be interesting to know how 100 pitches was chosen as the magic number, if there was some objective test that showed pitchers started to lose effectiveness at that pitch count or if it was just arbitrarily chosen because it was a nice round number to use. Tommy John blamed the agents for reducing innings pitched, saying that the thought was that it would extend careers, meaning more money for a pitcher in his lifetime.
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lolich!