Where Does Randy Johnson Rate Among the Game's Great Left-Handers?

Now that Randy Johnson has become the sixth left-handed pitcher to win 300 games, where does he rate against the other five?  Here are some basic numbers, starting with won-loss record:

Warren Spahn—363-245

Steve Carlton—329-245

Eddie Plank—326-194

Tom Glavine—305-203

Lefty Grove—300-141

Randy Johnson—300-164

Their other career numbers, like innings pitched, ERAs, strikeouts, and shutouts are too closely tied to the eras each pitcher played in to have much meaning for comparison purposes. 

A better way to compare the players is how many times they lead their league in the major pitching categories.  Here are the numbers:

Winning Percentage:  Grove 5, Johnson 4, Carlton 1, Spahn 1, Plank 1

ERA:  Grove 9, Johnson 4, Spahn 3, Carlton 1

Wins: Spahn 8, Glavine 5, Grove 4, Carlton 4, Johnson 1

Strikeouts: Johnson 9, Grove 7, Carlton 5, Spahn 4

Triple Crowns (led league in Wins, ERA, and Ks): Grove 2, Johnson 1, Carlton 1

Leading the league in winning percentage is actually a better indicator of a pitcher’s performance than leading the league in wins for two reasons. 

First, the number of games a pitcher wins is much more dependent on factors external to the pitcher, like how many runs his team scores when he’s on the mound and in the modern game, how good his bullpen is. 

Second, the team with the best winning percentage, not the team with the most wins, wins the pennant. 

This never happens any more, because games lost to rainouts, etc. are made up if they effect the pennant race now; however, there have been times in baseball history where the team that won the most games did not win the pennant.

Here’s how I would rate the six in terms of peak value (their highest sustained level of performance in their careers:

1. Lefty Grove

2. Randy Johnson

3 (tie) Warren Spahn

3 (tie) Steve Carlton

5. Tom Glavine

6. Eddie Plank

Grove was the only left-handed pitcher in this group (Sandy Koufax did it three times in a much shorter career) to win two pitcher’s triple crowns, and he is at the top or no lower than third in number of times leading his league the major pitching categories listed above. 

He won his two Triple Crowns in back to back seasons (1930 and 1931) and also led the AL in winning percentage both years.  Pitching performance doesn’t get any higher than that.

I picked Johnson second because the only category in which he did not finish first or second is wins, the category least dependent on the pitcher’s own performance.  I don’t think either Spahn or Carlton are close.

I rank Spahn and Carlton a tie for third.  Carlton had a Triple Crown in 1972, but Spahn led his league in the categories above 16 times to Carlton’s 11.

Glavine comes in fifth over Plank because Glavine in his day was a much more dominating pitcher than Plank. 

Eddie Plank was the Don Sutton of his day, a consistently excellent pitcher who was never the best pitcher in his league in any given year.  Plank won a lot of games and has a great career winning percentage, but great pitchers pitching on the better teams in his day won more games and had better career winning percentages than the best pitchers today.

Planks’ Philadelphia A’s from 1901 through 1914 were the best team in the American League during that period. 

Plank’s career high for a season in wins (26 in ‘04 and ‘12) is not particularly impressive when one remembers that the league leaders in those days generally won at least 30.

In fact, Plank was generally only the second best starter on his own team, behind guys like Charles Albert “Chief” Bender and “Colby” Jack Coombs, who won a combined 59 games for the A’s in 1910 and ‘11.

Here’s how I rank the six for their overall career performance:

1. (tie) Lefty Grove

1. (tie) Randy Johnson

3. Warren Spahn

4. Steve Carlton

5. Tom Glavine

6. Eddie Plank

It’s hard not to put Warren Spahn on top because he won so many games.  But his 63 more wins than Grove or Johnson (so far) come with 104 more losses than Grove and 81 more losses than Johnson (so far). 

I’d rather have Grove’s or Johnson’s career than Spahn’s.

Grove’s record is presently 11.5 games better than Johnson’s.  However, Johnson’s record in the 1990s and 2000s is, in my opinion, as impressive as Grove’s record in the 1920s and 1930s. 

There’s definitely a lot more parity in MLB now than there was in Grove’s day. I don’t think that Johnson will play more than one more year after this year, if that, so I don’t know that his career record will change that much.

I rank Carlton over Glavine, not only because Carlton won considerably more games, but also because although Glavine has a better career winning percentage, I suspect (without actually having crunched the numbers) that overall Glavine played on better teams than Carlton did over the courses of their careers. 

I’ll have to check this and post my findings.  Even if the same, I’d still go with Carlton given the higher peak performance.

Steady Eddie’s career .627 winning percentage is terrific, but, in my opinion, not nearly as impressive as Tom Glavine’s career (so far) winning percentage of .600. 

While both played on great teams for most of their careers, great teams in Plank’s day (1901 to 1917) had much higher winning percentages than great teams do today.  Even with expansion, there has been much more parity in baseball after WWII than before.