As Greg Maddux flies under the radar in his quest for 300 wins, hopefully it will revive the discussions from five to ten years ago as to who is the greatest pitcher of the current era, Maddux or Clemens. I personally prefer Clemens but am open to the debate. The Rocket's foray into New York and ensuing media circuses (circi?) from his pursuit of 300 as well as the FOX-favorite beaning of/bat-tossing at Mike Piazza, have helped to cement Clemens as the favorite. It seems that Maddux has lagged behind Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez in the court of public opinion over the last few years.

Maddux was once the thinking fan's favorite pitcher and the darling of all the TV analysts and baseball cognoscenti. Even though he has had slow starts over the last few years his only sub-par season, for him, was last year: 3.96 ERA, only 5% better than the park-adjusted league average, and a 16-11 record. With the Yankees Clemens registered one season with an ERA worse than average (1999-3% worse) and one about average (1% better in 2002). Maddux actually leads Clemens in career adjusted ERA: 143 to 140. I guess it's easy to overlook a pitcher who hasn't won twenty games in eleven seasons.

One thing that intrigues me about Maddux's career are the consistently low walk totals and the resulting low WHIPs. I was surprised when I looked it up that Maddux is just 35th in career WHIP (1.13), just ahead of some dude named Cy Young. Here are the top 20 in career WHIP (to three decimal places, min. 1000 IP):

Or in other words, Pedro Martinez, Sandy Koufax, and a bunch of old guys. If you want a complete list, B-R.com has it here (based on walks plus hits per nine inning).

I didn't feel that this list was in actuality representative of the quality of the pitchers involved, but rather was a result of the era in which a pitcher pitched. Therefore, I set about to study a version of WHIP that was adjusted per league and era. I calculated the pitcher's actual walks and hits totals and then the expected walks/hits total based on the league's average WHIP for that season multiplied by the pitcher's innings. If one sums that across a pitcher's career, a more complete picture of how much better than average of the course of his career the pitcher actually was (at least at allowing walks and hits).

Maddux improves to ninth. Here are the top 25 (ranked by career walks and hits below expected, "BB+H B Exp"; Note: data through 2003, min. 1000 IP):

That's a much better group of pitchers. However, the ceding is affected by how many innings a pitcher threw, since the totals are cumulative. Of course, ye olde-tyme pitchers threw many more innings per year. So I broke down the data based walks and hits below expectation per inning. Here are the results:

Maddux is in a virtual tie for eighth all-time (with the legendary Tiny Bonham). He is, however, ahead of Clemens, but it is dang close. Of course, there are a number of modern players near the top, but they may drop as they age. Pedro Martinez is ridiculously ahead of the pack. It will be interesting to see how he ages and what it will do to his stats (and also if he decides to ever toss Don Zimmer again).

By the way, for those of you who don't remember Tiny Bonham except as maybe a name Bart Simpson used to prank Moe's Tavern, Bonham was a Yankee pitcher who was highly successful during World War II. He was one of the first to use a forkball successfully, wasn't tiny at all (6'2" 215), had chronic back problems that hurt his career more than the troops returning to the baseball field, and died from complications from an appendectomy only two weeks after his last game while with the Pirates (Thanks to Baseball-Library.com for the details). He was also a two-time All-Star who finished with an ERA 20 points better than the park-adjusted league average.

By the way, here are the worst pitchers of all time based on total walks plus hits above expected:

And per inning: