re: Who was better? Randy Johnson, greg maddux

Greg Maddux faced 20,421 batters during his career and only 310 saw a 3–0 count. 177 of those were intentional walks. 18 gold gloves. He could also swing the bat better than Johnson or Pedro. All are great but this isn't even close

Greg Maddux. He didn't throw heat like Johnson or Pedro but he was a surgeon on the mound.

Off topic, but Bobby Cox should have won multiple championships with that pitching staff.

Because Cox

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Greg Maddux faced 20,421 batters during his career and only 310 saw a 3–0 count. 177 of those were intentional walks.

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This is one of those stats that make you go into a neverending downward spiral of being in awe.

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In 1994, the league average home run rate per nine innings jumped to 1.04, up from 0.90 in 1993, which is one of the main reasons it is often labeled as the start of the “Steroids Era”. When the strike occurred, Matt Williams was on pace to break the all time single season home run record, and five other players looked like they might get close to it as well. And in that year, the beginning of the home run boom, Maddux allowed four home runs for the entire season. Four. It’s the only season of the last 60 years where a pitcher has thrown 200 innings and given up fewer than five home runs, and it happened in the era when home runs were most plentiful

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LINK

Great Fangraphs article

And a shout out to Pedro

Pedro smokes the best hitters in the NL

Career? Maddox

One season? Pedro (‘99)

One out? Johnson because he was scary to face every at bat

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Maddux used to be extra frustrating bc he almost certainly wouldn't have the best stuff in LA high school ball, let alone MLB, and still nobody really hit him

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Maddux could locate.

And if the catcher set up a foot off the plate and Maddux fired a strike to his catcher...he got the call.

Umps were just fricking dumb in the 90's. They all had to be special and have their own strike zone.

Never saw anyone get so many strike calls on pitches where the bat couldn't reach.

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Maddux

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Have you seen what he got to throw at?

After reading the thread..

It clearly doesn't dawn on y'all what it means to even get an inch off the plate for an AVERAGE pitcher.


ETA: Come at me..

Greg Maddox would have a short career if he HAD to put the ball over the plate today.

Give me Johnson's season with the Astros over Pedro's 99 anyday of the week.

Maddux was still schooling hitters at the end of his career in 2008, despite possessing raw stuff that wouldn’t have landed him so much as a minor league deal. He had no fastball to speak of, throwing the pitch at an average speed (84.3 MPH) that bested only Jamie Moyer (80.9 MPH) among qualified starters.

Just about nobody swung through Maddux’s “heat,” as his whiff rate (7.1 percent) was barely half of the league average (14 percent). Yet, Maddux got elite results .
with an ultra-slow pitch that elicited scads of contact.

Maddux was the dean of expanding hitters’ strike zones.



Overall, pitchers got called strikes 13.1 percent of the time they threw something off the plate in 2008. But Maddux? He got a called strike 20 percent of the time, ranking behind only Livan Hernandez (21.7 percent) and Jake Peavy (20.5 percent).

People complain about Livian Hernadez and Greg's strike zone but they never complain about Madduix doing the same thing.

Maddux tossed the fifth-highest rate of fastballs to the outside corner (60.6 percent) among all starters.

The guy lived on the edge literally.

He once threw a so-called strike that was two feet off the plate...and everyone embraced it.

Randy Johnson could blow people away throwing right down the pipe.

Middle of the plate was kyrptonite to Maddux and he knew it.