It has been awhile since we had a pitcher on the list, and there will be a lot more. I have 281 pitchers in the top 1,000. While Glavine is 15 spots behind Glavine, he is only 19 points behind him. The lower we go the closer the players get to each other and the more likely that the rankings can be changed. That is true with Palmer and Glavine. I think you can easily argue that Glavine was better than Palmer.
I didn’t like Glavine much as a fan when he pitched. He seemed to spend the first couple of innings setting up the outside corner. Then he got away with going more and more outside. I remember he had a reputation for giving up a lot of runs in the first inning. When he slid by that he was hard to score on. From my perception it was because the umps gave him too many out side pitches. It seemed the strike zone got wider as the game went on. I don’t think the catcher was doing that great of a job of framing. My mind might have made this a bigger thing than what it was. I still think that was why Eric Grigg called so many outside pitches strikes against the Braves in the 1997 National League Championship Series. There were some strange strike zones in the 1990s.
Still, Glavine won 300 games. He was on the winning side of a lot of pennant races. He was in the top 3 for the Cy Young Award six times, winning two. He shut out the Indians for 8 innings giving the Braves their one World Series Victory while winning all those divisions.
Coming right behind Glavine is Don Sutton. Both are great pitchers and are very close. I feel Glavine had a little better prime, so my formula is probably right in this case.
