Worthless and Weak

Sometimes, people do things that piss me off. And I don't like them when they do that. But if they stop doing the thing that pisses me off, I'll like them again. And it happened just recently. Yes, I'm talking about Roger Clemens.

Roger left the evil empire to play for Jimmy Williams and the Houston Astros. He is truly one of the greatest pitchers ever, and having one heck of a season so far. So I'm gonna devote an entire week of posts to Roger Clemens.

Today, I'll share the results of a Blyleven test. What is a Blyleven test you asK? Well, its genereally done to compare borderline hall of famers to other borderline hall of famers, to see if they deserve enshrinement. It was first used on one Bert Blyleven. There are huge holes in it, but I kinda invented it, so I'm gonna use it here for Roger.

The way it works is basically ranks players in differnet categories (ERA, 20 win seasons, career K/9IP rates, etc), and then adds up the ranks in a specific way to give a final score, the lower the better. Well, the pitchers I used were Roger Clemens, Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, Greg Maddux, Nolan Ryan, Gaylord Perry and Bob Feller. These are all hall of fame (or future hall of fame) pitchers, all pretty similar (you really can't use a Byleven test to compare players of radically different eras. Trying to put Walter Johnson and Cy Young on the same spreadsheet as Clemens doesn't really work), all (except Feller) played at some point in the 80's, a couple of them even played on the same team at a point in time.

Also, several things should be noted. First, it doesn't include this seasons stats. (Clemens has passed Carlton on the career K list this year, and Seaver and Perry on the all time wins list).

Secondly, one of the categories is how many Cy Young Awards the pitcher has one, and there was no Cy Young Award when Feller pitched, so I estimated the number of awards he would have won. And there are a few really bizarre players that you should never include in a Byleven test, because they are so weird that they just screw up the results. One of those players is Nolan Ryan, who is by far the best all time at the most important thing a pitcher does (strike out batters) but is the worst all time at the second most important thing a pitcher does (not walk people). So you should never do a Blyleven test with people like Ryan. Which I did. But, anyway, here are the results.

1. Tom Seaver 95.58
2. Steve Carlton 95.66
3. Roger Clemens 99.40
4. Nolan Ryan 111.52
5. Greg Maddux 120.28
6. Gaylord Perry 129.79
7. Bob Feller 136.76


Now, if you switch around a couple of numbers to account for Rogers wins and strikeouts this year, he comes out on top. But, it shows that Roger is close enough to Seaver/Carlton to say that the difference isn't important.

Well, there's the intro to Roger, and tomorrow, I will tackle the question, "Is Roger Clemens the greatest pitcher who ever lived?"