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just curious how Koufax’s brilliant years in terms of ERA+ would compare to Maddux’s noted at the beginning of the article. thank you.

There’s also the issue of whether he could get a patent on a method of throwing a fastball, but I’ll leave that one aside. Wonderful write-up for a wonderful pitcher.

Growing up in Cleveland, Sipe was my first hero. That one broke my heart and it never healed.

That is the most ridiculous statistic I’ve ever seen. (And I mean that in a good way). That’s INSANE! That basically means that every time that year that Maddux went through the lineup a second time, they had NO CHANCE to score against him. None.

A lot of pitchers get markedly worse their second time through the lineup. Maddux probably thought to himself “Okay, shortstop xxxx, Patented, Patended, Curveball, Circle Change outside. Let’s mix things up. I wonder if his wife bought that painting she always wanted?”

And just shut everyone down.

For the (two) people that basically are saying that Maddux was so great because the umpire made him great, please. Do you really think that if he WASN’T getting those calls, he’d keep pitching there? There have been plenty of games where a decent announcer mentions that Maddux or Glavine have gone away from the fastball low outside, because they’re “not getting it today”. By which they mean the ump isn’t calling it for them.

Maddux would always throw one in the first two pitches, to see where the ump was. If he got it, he’d throw one a half inch further outside, right up until the calls changed from strike to ball. Then he’d plant a few more right on that edge to see if he could sneak an extra 1/4 inch on that strikezone. And once he had it established, he’d just pound it.

I won’t disagree that umpires should call that better, but for Maddux (and Glavine) to be able to consistently hit that spot PERFECTLY is amazing.

If an ump wouldn’t give him that call, he’d go back inwards until he found where the edge was. And if there was no edge, he’d just go to work on the bottom half of the plate.

As for Pedro vs Maddux, in my mind Maddux is by far the better pitcher, simply because he didn’t have Pedro’s stuff. If you combined Pedro’s stuff with Maddux control and pitching acumen, you’d have a guy who’d rate 140s in all statistics in a baseball game. (and who would pitch 18 perfect games a year).

Finally, someone said Joe should make copies of that DVD and sell them. I’m not sure if you were kidding, but please be aware that that would land a person in jail. These games are actually copyrighted. (sorry to be a buzzkill…)

As for Maddux benefiting from bad calls, *every* pitcher benefits from bad calls. If he had a robot calling balls and strikes, he’d have to stay on the black instead of outside the black. There’s be fewer called strikeouts, more balls hit weakly, some of which would have gone through the infield for hits, so obviously his WHIP and ERA would have gone up. But the difference is inconsequential. He *still* would have deserved and won his Cy Young awards, he’d still be going into the HOF, and he’d still be one of the best pitchers and analysts of pitching of all time. The only thing that could have changed is that he might have retired a year or two earlier, since his pitch count would have been higher. Remember, not every ump gave Maddux the calls he wanted, and he still managed a mighty fine record. However, there’s an interesting project for somebody with the right access to records: charting Maddux’s career performance by home plate umpire. I bet his 20 or 30 worst umpires are still mighty fine as a group.

His line after the Granderson HR:
7 IP
4 H
0 R
1 BB (intentional, to Pudge Rodriguez batting #8th with a man on second base)
4 K
85 pitches (incl. 3 to Granderson)

He never broke 86 on the radar gun. He looked like he was done. Every one of his pitches looked like it could be clobbered with an aggressive swing. Yet the Tigers were mystified, and every pitch also had some kind of late life or bite to it. It was not as dominant as the ‘97 game Joe mentions, but it was just as awe-inspiring.