As I'm sure you know Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn, the winningest lefty of all time and the last man to win 350 games, died on Monday. In the process, he passed the mantle of winningest living pitcher appropriately to another lefty, Steve Carlton (329).

Spahn was a truly remarkable pitcher with a remarkable delivery and a remarkable career. For me, someone who was born after Spahn's career was over, he was of those monolithic immortals that one learns from rote in one's baseball nascency. However, his career is much more interesting than the sepia-tinged—or better yet unnaturally kodachromic—pictures from his career, photographs and the raw numbers that have served to ossify our image of the man. However, that's where I'll start.

Spahn was sixth all-time in wins. Here is the list of 300-game winners:

He is also the winningest pitcher since World War II, to which Spahn sacrificed about three and one half years of his career. He are the pitchers with the most wins since 1945:

Spahn was also remarkable for his longevity. Stan Musial once said of him, "I don't think Spahn will ever get into the Hall of Fame. He'll never stop pitching." He had already won 20 games four times when he logged arguably his finest season in the Braves' inaugural season in Milwaukee, 1953, at the age of 32. He was 23-7 with a 2.10 ERA (88% better than the adjusted league average) and finished fifth in MVP voting (the Cy Young award did not come about until 1956 and he won the award in its second year with a demonstrably inferior record to 1953). That was when he became "Warren Spahn". From age 32 on, he won 20 games nine times. Actually he won twenty games in nine of the next eleven seasons. He also lead the league in complete games for seven straight seasons, from 1957 at age 36 to 1963 at age 42.

Here are the all-time winningest pitchers from age 32 on (i.e., the season in which he was 32 for the majority of the year):

Spahn also leads pitchers all-time for All-Star game appearances with 14:

Spahn also is the NL all-time leader in home runs for a pitcher. Here are is the all-time list for home runs by a pitcher (pitcher being defined as player who pitches in at least three games in the given year). Guess who's first:

All this from a pitcher whose first complete game, of the 382 he would collect in his career, came on September 26, 1942 when a riot at the Polo Grounds started by young cranks who had been admitted in exchange for scrap metal in a war drive caused the Giants to forfeit in the eighth. Spahn was losing 5-2 at the time.

Spahn was actually signed by the Boston "Bees" the name that the Braves adopted for five years from 1936-1940, and missed playing for the Braves in all three locations, Boston, Milwaukee, and Atlanta, by just two years.

Warren Spahn was also well known for his incisive and often humorous comments on the game. Spahn's first and last managers in the majors were the same man, Casey Stengel, prompting Spahn to famously quip, "I'm probably the only guy who worked for Stengel before and after he was a genius." He also coined the oft-quoted, "Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing." Some others:

"A pitcher needs two pitches, one they're looking for and one to cross them up."

"What is life, after all, but a challenge? And what better challenge can there be than the one between the pitcher and the hitter."

(On Willie May's first home run) "For the first 60 feet it was a hell of a pitch."

(And) "He was something like zero for twenty-one the first time I saw him. His first major league hit was a home run off me and I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie forever if I'd only struck him out."

"Roger (Clemens) likes to win and he's been a very prolific pitcher. I talked to him earlier this year and last year, and he told me how much he wanted to win 300 games. What pitcher doesn't want to win 300?"

"Once Musial timed your fastball, your infielders were in jeopardy."

"When I throw a ground ball, I expect it to be an out, maybe two."

"You don't just throw the ball - you propel it."

"Every time I went out and pitched, I was hoping to maintain my spot in the rotation. You've got to keep winning to maintain your spot."

"Did I want to win 400 games? Sure, but age got in the way."

Lefty

As I said earlier, Spahn is the all-time winningest lefty. He certainly is one of a handful of the best left-handed pitchers in baseball history though Sandy Koufax's and Lefty Grove's names always seem to top the list whenever the topic is discussed. I thought it would be fun to run a quick comparison of left-handed pitchers.

First, here are the 14 left-handed pitchers in the Hall of Fame:

Warren Spahn
Steve Carlton
Eddie Plank
Lefty Grove
Eppa Rixey
Carl Hubbell
Herb Pennock
Whitey Ford
Hal Newhouser
Rube Marquard
Rube Waddell
Lefty Gomez
Sandy Koufax
Babe Ruth (though for other things as well)

Next, here are the left-handers who have won 200 or more games:

Here's a comparison of various stats with the next 50 winningest lefties of all time (stats through 2002):

Now just to put it in context, here they are again with the same stats as a percentage of the individual's stats as a percentage of their teams' stats:

You can see from this why Spahn usually is listed after Koufax, Grove, and Randy Johnson. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that Spahn didn't strike out as many men per nine innings as his teammates. Spahn did strike out as many as 191 in a season (in 1950 in 293 innings). Spahn is sixth all-time in strikeouts for a left-hander (with 2583), but given that he is first in innings (5243.2), that's not too impressive. Steve Carlton trailed him by 26.1 innings but had over 1500 more strikeouts. Randy Johnson has about 1300 more strikeouts in over 2000 fewer innings. Of course, those pitchers represent different eras, but Spahn was not a strikeout specialist even in his era.

It's not that it tarnishes his stellar career, but I think that's the biggest reason that analysts list him below the top two or three. Additionally, it is interesting to note that Koufax, Grove, and Johnson blossomed late and had shorter periods of excellence. However, even though their peaks may have been shorter, they were arguably higher than Spahn's. People tend not to argue for sustained excellence over shorter but greater bursts. I guess it's human nature.

Pray for Rain

There are only two songs in me and I just wrote the third.

—Number Three by They Might Be Giants

Perhaps the most famous statement that was said of Spahn, at least indirectly, was "Spahn and Sain and pray for rain", an assessment of the Braves starting rotation in their 1948 pennant drive. From 1946 to 1951, Spahn and Johnny Sain formed a formidable pair of starters and became the archetype for a two-headed staff. In those years each won twenty games four times. They even made their major-league debut in 1942 within one week of each other, Spahn on April 19 and Sain on April 24. The duo was split up on August 28, 1951 when Sain was traded to the Yankees for rookie Lew Burdette and $50 K. Sain eventually became the dean of pitching coaches: if coaches start getting voted into the Hall of Fame, I'm sure his name will be among the first. Burdette went on to fulfill the "And Sain" role longer than Sain himself, winning 20 games twice and 19 games twice as well and pitching 13 years for the Braves.

Here is a rundown of the other white meat, the Braves' number three starters during Spahn's tenure (Based on games and innings. Note that one could argue that Spahn himself was the number three pitcher in his first and last seasons with the Braves. For the sake of this study, I gave him his props and assumed he was the staff leader throughout):

The prototypical number three pitcher in this period was Bob Buhl, who had some very good years. Overall, the Braves' number three pitcher in this era appears to have gotten a bum rap. They were on average better than the league average ERA for the given year and over their careers. Even in the year that the saying became immortal, 1948, Bill Voiselle was 6% better than the league average. Spahn himself was only 3% better that year.

When one considers that the rest of the rotation was Vern Bickford (ERA 17% better than the league average), Red Barrett (5% better), and Nels Potter (65% better in just seven games) and that Spahn had the highest ERA on the staff for anyone who started more than two games, it's remarkable that the sublime saying ever even came into being.

Finally, here is a table of Spahn's Braves teammates who won 10 or more games, listed by wins: