The best Atlanta Braves RHP: so how do you value pitching?

How do you measure the better pitcher? In the rich history of the Atlanta Braves, this is actually an interesting question.

Longevity? Dependability?  Performance?  Intangibles? The Atlanta Braves — through their history — have enjoyed a lot of excellent pitchers over their nearly 150 years of existence, and thus it is definitely a question worth exploring.

Atlanta Braves beat writer Mark Bowman raises the point today is a tweet that suggests he is researching that very question.

In case you can’t see it, he poses a poll among his top four candidates for that “runner-up” position: John Smoltz, Phil Niekro, Tim Hudson, and 1880’s legend Kid Nichols.

Let’s break them down a bit… and I’ll throw Greg Maddux into the mix as well for the sake of completeness.  We’ll also assign points as one means of ranking these guys.  For the record, this is being done on -the-fly with no pre-conceived notions.

TIME WITH THE BRAVES

This should matter if you’re asking about the best pitcher for a given team. Granted – if you’re racking up years, you’ll also mount up a lot of stats. That said, you’re mounting up stats because you’re good enough to justify keeping for all of those years, too.

Here’s the tale of the tenure tape:

• HUDSON – 2005-2013: 9 seasons
• MADDUX – 1993-2003: 11 seasons
• NICHOLS – 1890-1901: 12 seasons
• NIEKRO – 1964-1983: 20 seasons, plus 3 innings in 1987 at age 48.
• SMOLTZ – 1988-2008: 21 seasons (counts an injured 2000 season).

Points: 5 for Smoltz down to 1 for Huddy. Yes – 20+ years is a lot better than 9-12, but let’s see if there’s any “adjustments” necessary at the end. This also awards the extra point to Smoltz despite an entire season in which he didn’t play.

For now, we’ll play it straight, but there’s much more to get to.

Braves Performance (part 1/WAA)

Here, we need to be a bit careful… and it’s the first point where “your mileage may vary”. I have chosen baseball-reference’s Wins Above Average for this. Not WAR, but hopefully a better indication of how much better a pitcher was performing beyond his peers’ results.

HUDSON – 11.7 (on this chart, he’s actually the tenth-ranked Braves RHP!)
MADDUX – 46.5
NICHOLS – 69.0
NIEKRO – 50.0
SMOLTZ – 39.1

Those between Smoltz and Hudson: John Clarkson (25.2), Vic Willis (24.4), Tommy Bond (24.1), Jim Whitney (15.4), and Charlie Buffington (11.9).

Had I used WAR, the results would still have Nichols on top (107.4) and Niekro 2nd, but flipping Smoltz and Maddux. Hudson drops to 11th among Braves RH hurlers as Lew Burdette jumps into the 9th spot.

Points: Niekro and Nichols 8, Smoltz 7, Maddux 5, Hudson 1.

BRAVES PERFORMANCE (part 2/ERA+)

Before looking, it is recognized that this metric might end up being too similar to WAA, though it is included since the value obtained is intended to grade a pitcher independent of ballpark conditions (how accurate that might be for Nichols is anyone’s guess, though).

HUDSON – 115 (9th among Braves RHP with 1000+ innings)
MADDUX – 163
NICHOLS – 143
NIEKRO – 119
SMOLTZ -127

Points: Nichols 12, Niekro and Maddux and Smoltz 10, Hudson 3

BRAVES WINS PLUS SAVES

The latter value is obviously in here because of Smoltz, though I am going to modify that just a bit: the numbers you’ll see here will be Wins + (0.333 * Saves)… counting a save as 1/3rd of the value of a Win (results rounded).

Feel free to adjust your own calculators if you don’t like that 0.333 figure, but that’s where we’ll start here:

HUDSON – 113 (again, all of these numbers are measure while a Brave)
MADDUX – 194
NICHOLS – 330 + (0.333)*15 ==> 335
NIEKRO – 268 + (0.333)*29 ==> 278
SMOLTZ – 210 + (0.333)*154 ==> 261

Points: Nichols 17, Niekro 14, Smoltz 13, Maddux 12, Huddy 4.

At this point, I want to make clear that while Tim Hudson was clearly a stalwart of the Atlanta Braves rotation for nearly a decade and his contributions to the success of the club were outstanding, he’s simply being overwhelmed by the rare company he’s in here.