So Long, Greg Maddux

I told you that while many of my posts would focus on entrepreneurship, many others would not. One of my great passions is baseball. I was a terrible baseball player in little league – especially at hitting. I could catch and throw OK but I was an automatic out at the plate at every level. Still, I loved the game and maybe that’s why I love it so much now. I am used to succeeding and when I fail at something, that seems to captivate my imagination all the more. I follow my beloved Red Sox with great passion, but I am also a Braves season ticket holder (and will renew this year). I collect autographed baseballs. I play on the Xbox (MLB 2K8 was immensely disappointing as the online play was useless). I play fantasy baseball. For awhile, I was in a Montreal-based simulation league, which let me keep up my French while exploring another fascinating area of baseball. The history, statistical depth, quirky personalities, and inherent uncertainty of the game (few games have no time limit, and none that I can think of have a non-standard field of play) make every trip to the ballpark a magical one for me. I admit it – the Strike of 1994 just made me miss the game all the more.

I get asked a lot these questions so I’ll answer them now. My favorite baseball movie is The Winning Team (1952) starting Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander, the great Indians pitcher. My favorite baseball book is Rob Neyer’s Big Book of Baseball Blunders. Ken Burns’ Baseball is, of course, in a league of its own. Anyway, on to the subject of the post.

Without a great deal of hoopla or fanfare, one of the greatest pitchers of our or any era, Greg Maddux, retired on December 8, 2008. The main reason he announced a press conference, which lasted all of 30 minutes was to say “thank you to everybody”.

I grew up in the American League and spent most of my life before moving to Atlanta in American League cities (or abroad), and so I didn’t see Maddux pitch a lot, except for the playoffs and his highlights on SportsCenter. Then, I discovered cable TV and TBS. Guys like Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling and John Smoltz received a lot of fanfare toward the end of their careers, perhaps because of their flamboyance, and their willingness to be embracing the media, and let’s face it, there is something magical about a 94 mph fastball. But is there anything more tedious than the “retirement watches” and players talking about playing half-seasons? I know serious Braves fans who were unaware that Maddux had formally retired. So, I’d like to throw a mix of narrative and analysis to make sure we appreciate who Greg Maddux was and his place in history.

Maddux’s brilliant career spanned 22 years, and he played for the Cubs, Padres, Dodgers and, of course, the Braves where he had his greatest success and longest tenure. Maddux didn’t attend college because nobody offered him a scholarship. Oops. Maddux surely be wearing a Braves cap when he enters the Hall of Fame in 2013. Maddux’s 355 wins (mercifully, one more than Roger Clemens) is 8th in the history of baseball. For some perspective, Maddux’s 353 wins came in an era of a) 5-man rotations, b) reliever specialists, c)pitch/inning counts to “save” valuable arms, and d) many of his opposing batters, and perhaps some opposing pitchers, used steroids. The guys ahead of Maddux, like Cy Young, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson routinely pitched on 3 days rest or less, were expected to pitch a complete game each time out, were not nearly the valuable financial commodities that pitchers are today, and generally pitched against much smaller human beings. (For example, in 1920, only the Phillies and Yankees as a team hit more home runs than Babe Ruth.)

Greg Maddux in a way was the victim of the company he kept. He was lumped into the “big three” of Smoltz, Tom Glavine and Maddux. Smoltz threw harder. Glavine had physics-bending (and strike zone-extending) breaking stuff. Maddux was the best of the three and it wasn’t particularly close. Some will point to his 11-12 postseason record and claim he wasn’t a “big money” pitcher. But if you have a postseason ERA of 3.27 and 7 no-decisions, it isn’t your fault if your record is under .500.

Greg Maddux could also field his position. His 18 Gold Gloves is the most for any player at any position. (The Gold Glove is a little dubious, as it is awarded by a vote of managers, but if you win 18 of them, you’re at least a pretty good fielder.)

Maddux made 8 All-Star teams and probably should have made at least 4 more.

Maddux strikeout to walk ratio was 3.37, 16th all time. Given that he was a good, but not great strikeout pitcher (3,371 Ks but 6.7 K’s per 9 IP, which is good but not spectacular – true strikeout pitchers throw 8K’s+ per 9 IP), that tells you how as a hitter, you’d better go up ready to swing the bat, and he was never going to beat himself. This is how his career ERA of 3.16 for his career was a full run under the league average.

From 1992 to 1995 Maddux won all 4 National League Cy Young awards (and finished 2nd in 1997 and 3rd in 1989 and 2000). During that stretch, his 1.92 ERA was over 2 runs lower than the league average. In 1994-5 his WHIP (walks+hits per inning pitched) was under 0.9. Getting under 1.0 for a starting pitcher is phenomenal. Nobody goes a whole season allowing that few base runners. That folks, is dominating, and not just over one good year – but four. In 1994-5 Maddux also posted the first back-to-back seasons of sub-1.80 ERA’s since Walter Johnson in 1918. Woodrow Wilson was the President of the United States back then.

Maddux accomplished all of this without overpowering stuff, although he did record his highest strikeout totals of his career during his Cy Young run. In his prime, Maddux rarely threw harder than 90 mph and still got major league hitters out throwing 85-88. It goes to show you that pitching is not about velocity – it is about location, lateral movement of the baseball, knowing your batters, and command of the strike zone. Velocity helps as it gives you more margin for error, but the best pitchers outthink hitters before they overpower them.

The other great thing about Maddux is that he was spectacularly efficient. In an era where games were pushing 4 hours in length with regularity, Maddux got you out of their in under two. Doing that keeps your defense fresh and your whole ballclub is able to work off some fatigue prior to the next game. Fewer pitches means less opportunity to get hurt. After his “official” rookie year in 1987, Maddux never pitched fewer than 190 innings.

You never heard a peep about Greg Maddux not getting along with teammates (though reportedly he wasn’t crazy about how Javy Lopez called a game). He didn’t show up opponents, nor did he ever let his contract status be a distraction. (Did you even realize that Scott Boras was his agent?) When Atlanta decided to move on for budgetary reasons as well as a need to start integrating youth into the ball club, he wasn’t screaming to get out of town or letting it distract his team (see, Ramirez, Manny for another way to handle that situation). All Maddux did was take the ball every 5th day and get guys out. Oh, and you never heard Maddux EVER mentioned in the steroids fiasco.

Maddux stopped being Maddux in 2003, his last year with the Braves. After 2003, his ERA was never under 4.00 and although he won 15 games for the Cubs in 2005 and 14 in 2006, he was no longer a front-line starter, but rather a league-average #3/#4 type. At age 42, being a league-average starter still isn’t so bad. He could have pitched longer. 10 wins would have put him in 5th place all time ahead of Pud Galvin. Someone, probably even a good team, would have given him a one-year contract to be their 4th/5th starter, but enough was enough. He could never dominate again and apparently his portfolio didn’t suffer so much damage this fall that he felt the need to keep playing well past his prime a-la Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

One of the game’s all-time greats just retired and will never throw a pitch again. Do yourself a favor – do a YouTube search for Greg Maddux highlights. Watch the movement of the ball. Watch how major league hitters look helpless against sub-90 mph pitches. He belongs in the same breath as Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Satchel Paige, and Sandy Koufax as the absolute best to ever pitch a baseball.