Let's talk starting pitching: What organizations get wrong about starters in 2025, pitchers with a legit claim as best starter ever, and the highest height a starting pitcher has ever reached

Saturday 10/11/25

There have been a number of sports entries on here lately. Many art-related ones are coming, and also a great many publishing-related entries. This isn't willy-nilly. I know what I want to do and how I want to do it and how I will do it. And the stairs? What is going on with the stairs. And the drinking. Are stairs still happening? Is drinking still not happening? I know there are many people who would like to read that no stairs are being run and I can hardly move and am giving up, and I'm on the drink and can't stop, etc., but, alas, the usual is occurring instead, and I'll get into that more specifically soon enough.

But we will talk a little baseball now.

If pitch count is so sacrosanct, then striking out lots of hitters isn't the most effective way to pitch. Look at Skubal last night--dominant. Strikes out thirteen in six innings, and has to leave--again, after only six--because of it.

Why does it feel like I'm the only person who gets this? I haven't encountered this commentary anywhere else. I thought maximum efficiency was supposed to be the thing these days? It isn't, of course; it's more like the opposite. But that is how everything--including everything in sports--is presented.

Ironically, I'm sure all of these teams want their starting pitchers to strike out the most batters possible, which also means they want them not to go that deeply into games, which, of course, is not what they actually want.

I'm happy for the city of Seattle. Those fans have had some tough times. I think it's a travesty that the SuperSonics ever left. How often does it happen that a team with a championship leaves their city? When that happens, it's like the people who were there can't look back on it fondly, or at least not as they would have.

The Mariners or the Jays will represent the AL in the World Series. New blood.

I'd written that I thought something was off with the Dodgers this year and I didn't believe they'd repeat, but they are looking strong and like the team to beat. You have to wonder how much of that has to do with Mookie Betts transforming back into regular Mookie Betts.

It was nice to see a fifteen inning game. All of those extra innings and a proper long game. We don't have them anymore with the so-called ghost runner in the regular season. And I guess that's okay for the regular season, but these extended tilts have this other level--or form, if you prefer--of built-in drama to them. Teams start running out of pitching, and it's in the back of your mind as the game goes along that maybe they'll run out of pitchers entirely. Then what? Managers have to decide whether to use someone, when the game could go twenty innings. But if you don't use that pitcher earlier, he may be wasted.

I saw someone ask the question on a baseball history forum if Satchel Paige was underrated. The answer is an emphatic yes. There's an argument to be made for Paige--and I sort of did this in an op-ed for the New York Daily News--as the greatest pitcher of all-time. Unfortunately, we don't know as much about him because of the opportunities he was denied for so long. (It's amazing that there was a time when people weren't allowed to play a sport because of the color of their skin. To someone born after a certain date--whatever that date may be--it's scarcely believable, and yet this happened in America.)

These are the pitchers that I believe have a case as the best pitcher ever:

Cy Young

Christy Mathewson

Walter Johnson

Lefty Grove

Satchel Paige

Roger Clemens

That's it. I believe that Walter Johnson is comfortably the answer.

But we can also play a different kind of game, and try to determine who, at any given point, was the best a pitcher had ever been. (And I don't mean for one game, so settle down everyone who wants to say Don Larsen. Besides: no-hitters and perfect games are overrated and almost always involve a degree of luck.)

See the difference?

What pitcher reached the highest single height, and could say, "No one has ever been better at the craft of pitching than I have lately been.

With this second exercise, we lose Clemens, Grove, and Young for certain. Paige we don't know. Walter Johnson had his 1913 season. Was that the highest height for a pitcher ever? Christy Mathewson could say, "But what of my 1905 World Series?"

All he did was throw three shutouts, with a WHIP of .556.

People are going to want to say Bob Gibson in 1968, but I won't. Why? Well, Gibson--great as he was--didn't separate himself from the rest of the best to the degree that you might expect looking back. Luis Tiant was in shouting distance of him, for example.

And while I love Tiant, we don't think of him as this elite of the elite type of pitcher. He was a gamer and crafty later on, and was more fun the more he had to rely on guile. Early in his career, though, he was what we now call "filthy." Should be in the Hall of Fame. But not terribly different from Gibson in 1968. Obviously Gibson had one of the best seasons a big leaguer has ever had, but I don't think it represents the epitome of pitching, as in "the best a pitcher has ever been."

Now is when we can talk about Pedro Martinez in 2000. When you could have an ERA in the fours and be among the league leaders in that category, Martinez was runs--plural--lower than anybody else. Martinez's ERA+ that year was even higher than Walter Johnson's in 1913. My qualm with Martinez is that he didn't strike me as durable. He could get hurt at any time. But there were nights he went out there when he may have been the best a pitcher has ever been. He has a strong case to be the winner here.

I often lean towards Dwight Gooden in 1985 as the best a pitcher has ever been, but then again he was a bit like Bob Gibson in 1968. John Tudor was nearly as good as Gooden. So...what? You think other factors are at play, rather than how dominant someone was, because what are the chances of the two best pitching seasons ever--or close to it--happening in the same league at the same time? You're incredulous. Which isn't to say it's impossible.

At the least, Gooden has to be top five, and you can't go wrong with having him at number one. Dwight Gooden in 1985 might have been the best a pitcher has ever been. Such a shame what happened with him after. He was pretty good in 1986, but if you watch the World Series when he's on the mound, you'll notice that the broadcasters talk about him like he had a bad year, which he didn't at all. He was really good. It's just that in 1985, he'd been otherworldly, and very few people had seen anyone as good as he was that year, if anyone. Sandy Koufax didn't have a season like that. Not Tom Seaver. Bob Feller. Lefty Grove. Some people would have said Bob Gibson, but besides him, you'd be going back to before World War I.