What was the Difference between Mike Mussina and Greg Maddux

I know I'll get some flack for this post, but finish reading and you'll see what I'm getting at. I'm not going to look at things like Cy Young awards or MVP voting. I also will not look at things that are influenced by teammates like wins, losses or ERA (without comparing to FIP)

Let's start with their ability to get batters out. Mike Mussina had the best season in K/9 at 8.733, and finished ahead for the career with a 7.11 and Maddux a 6.06. Much of Maddux last 5 years dragged his K/9 down and he was more of a 6.50-7.00 pitcher in his career, but Mussina wins here.

In regards to keeping guys from getting free passes we are looking at 2 of the best. Greg Maddux had a BB/9 of 0.774 in 1997 and also a 0.987 in 1995. He threw as many walks in 1997 as Matsuzaka threw in an average 35.6 innings in 2008. Mussina was no slacker here though as his best season was 1.393. Their career numbers were 1.80 for Maddux and 1.98 for Mussina. Based on the best seasons I give this to Maddux.

So now overall dominance based on K/BB we have some great seasons by Maddux. Maddux K/BB of 8.850 in 1997 is the 7th greatest of all time. He also owns number 15 for his 1995 season. Mussina's best was a 5.100 in 2001 which ranks 81st all time. Maddux seems to win this, but career Mussina is 3.58 and Maddux trails at 3.37. I still give this to Maddux with his great seasons and he played into his 40's which Mussina did not and it cost his K/BB in 2 of those years.

So if they are so close together with Mussina being more consistent and Maddux having the 4 extremely great years (sabermetricly speaking- obviously he had some 10 years of dominant pitching) what made the difference? Greg Maddux finished with a career ERA of 3.16 and a career FIP of 3.26. Mike Mussina had a career ERA of 3.68 and a career FIP of 3.57. The difference in their final ERA and FIP comes down to GB%. Mike Mussina did not excel at GB rate and was average at drawing groundballs with a 43.3% from 2002-2008 (previous years not available). Greg Maddux was able to maintain a GB% of 51.5% in those same years. This helped Maddux hold a career HR/9 of 0.63 while Maddux had a 0.95. This small difference resulted in a 0.42 ERA difference and if we assumed Mussina won 10 games in 3 more years playing to 42 years old then 55 wins.

I was originally against Mussina getting into the Hall of Fame, but I truly believe now he is a Hall of Famer. This will come down to things like awards and Win counts though. Maddux also has the defense which resulted in 18 gold gloves, but I believe Maddux will get in first ballot and Mussina will be several years later if at all.

Extra Thoughts

I wanted to check how Curt Schilling would rank in all this and you can see he was really hurt by those 7 seasons in Philadelphia excluding 1992 when they were just a horrible team. His Final Numbers (if he retired this offseason):

K/9 - 8.60 (13th all time)
BB/9 - 1.96 (79th all time)
K/BB - 4.38 (2nd all time to only Tommy Bond who pitched from 1874 to 1884)
GB% - 39.5%
ERA - 3.46
FIP - 3.23

I wonder if people will forget how good Schilling truly was because of his poor win totals. He can probably account the higher ERA to FIP from some of the poor defense back then, but he didn't really start to dominate until 1997 when he had a K/9 of 11.29 or 2002 when he had a K/BB of 9.58 which is 4th all time for a single season. He also lead the league in K/BB 5 times. I worry that even if he gets elected they will make it about his playoff performances, but I think these three pitchers truly deserve to be Hall of Famers.

Questions or comments send to TroyPatterson@RotoSavants.com