A fucking pitcher indeed.

I remember watching him when the Sox were sweeping the O's over 4 games in Baltimore shortly after the ASB in 2005. It was the final game of the series, either Sunday afternoon or the wraparound Monday game, and it was one of the first games Rafeal Palmeiro was missing due to testing positive for PEDs. The Sox had a few of their guys HBP that series, and another couple were hit that day. Iguchi for sure I remember was thrown at on purpose. Anybody else may have charged the mound. Close game, two out, noboby on, bottom of the 5th, Buehrle plunks somebody and immediately gets the heave ho. Ozzie flips out and he gets thrown out as well. Buehrle had gone something like 25 consecutive starts throwing at least six innings, and that streak ended with the ejection. Even though his 87mph fastball would barely leave a bruise on the batter, Mark did what he felt he had to do in order to stick up for his teammates.

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You are correct. Very very solid and remarkably consistent. But not HOF great.

Quintana has absolutely sucked the last 4 years, not sure what changed but you could cit his career in half.. One is good and one is bad.

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His uniform

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If Roy Halladay is a HOFer so is Kevin Brown.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Kevin brown is an interesting case.

I think Halladay was better. But Brown is underrated

Brown was great for a 5 year stretch that included a sub-2 ERA title, a World Series championship, and basically pitching the Padres to the NL pennant. He capped it of with another ERA title. He moved around a lot though, and he was a late bloomer. Still was very good until he turned 40.

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Why are only 14 percent of black CPS 11th-graders proficient in English?

Aw shucks, JORR. Catch puts down the fingers and I throw the ball.

Not sure what numbers are really all that remarkable better for Quintana?

ERA: Quintana 3.73, Buehrle 3.81
ERA+: Quintana 110, Buehrle 117
K/9: Quintana 7.9, Buehrle 5.1
BB/9: Quintana 2.5, Buehrle 2.0
WHIP: Quintana 1.26, Buehrle 1.28
HR/9: Quintana .9, Buehrle 1.0

I don't know anyone who would look at those numbers and say that based on that Quintana was better than Buehrle regardless of how much they like or dislike pitcher wins. This says nothing to the fact that Buehrle has more than 2x the number of innings pitched compared to Quintana.

Halladay, yes. Kevin Brown, probably. Of course, the next step after that would be to let Kenny Rogers in, too.

There was another article in the fangraphs piece that discussed this, and also a great piece on Grantland that talked about Buehrle being arguably the best SP in history at both (a) controlling the running game/baserunning, and (b) fielding his position.

He wasn't just good at both of those, he was arguably the best SP (with guys of a career of any duration) at each of those things. Both of those things, the running game especially, are difficult to capture statistically.

The running game thing in particular is almost impossible to measure, and incredibly important. Obviously there was no base stealing on Buehrle, or it was a suicide mission if someone attempted. But moreso, guys were scared shitless to even take secondary leads. There are instances of runners who weren't even trying to steal a base getting picked off by Buehrle. So anyone on base, especially first base, was essentially standing 2 fucking feet from the bag on every pitch. No runners were taking off on 3-2 pitches, no aggressive leads, etc. That's incredibly valuable, especially for a guy knew how to induce a groundball. Sure, somone might say, what difference does 3 feet make on a lead from 1b, and in a particular instance it might not make that much, but over 3,000+ innings, that's a lot of extra bases that weren't taken, DPs that occurred because of crappy leads/not running on the pitch, it really adds up.

The fielding thing is a bit easier to measure, but not by much. Sure he didn't win as many GGs as some other guys - Kaat/Maddux - but as measured by what tools we have, and with the eye test Buehrle was phe-fucking-nominal.

So either of the two attributes above would be amazing to have over 3,000+ IP, but when you combine both together, you've got a ton of skill/value there that is almost unmeasurable.

It's going to be really hard to be a great pitcher and consistent for years on end from here on out. Right now, the K and the shift is saving guys' asses. That's fleeting. Wait until the next generation of animals come up and have that figured out too. Pitchers have run out of options. You can only throw the ball so hard without having your arm fall off, and you can't plunk guys. Trick'em guys like Hendricks can't be great, only good.

If we had posted those numbers blind with Pitcher A and Pitcher B, I'm pretty confident most would say A was the better pitcher. In reality, they aren't even close.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I heard a conversation once about Maddux where some baseball guy said, "The way to get to Maddux is through the running game. He's vulnerable to steals." The other guy said, "That's great. You have to get on base first though."

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

So then does 220 wins get you into the HoF?

I'm equally as confident that if you said guy B threw 3,200+ innings and guy A hasn't thrown 2,000 that it nobody would say guy A.

Sure. That's another reason W/L record is the best single stat for a starting pitcher. It gives you a pretty good idea how many innings the guy has thrown.

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His mind is not for rent to any God or government.

I dunno, man. I just see a dismal future for pitching. Lively bats are pouring into MLB from all over the globe and pitchers are being used up and spit out at an alarming rate. Take a guy like Kopech. Very few of us thinks he's going to be great despite a 100 miler and great advancements in Tommy John. As time goes on, there's just more options for beasts with bats than beasts with arms.

You're right about that. As a fan of pitching more than a fan of hitting, I say raise the mound. (If that would even matter.)

Once the Ks go down and the shifting becomes less effective. 5-10 years. Once everbody starts scoring like the Dodgers do.