Bob Gibson's 1968 season voted the greatest ever by an MLB player
doubledragon
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in Sports Talk
I ran across this on Reddit, a vote was held in 2020 I believe, and Bob Gibson's 1968 season was voted the greatest ever by an MLB player. The bracket is divided into two categories, best seasons by a hitter, and best seasons by a pitcher. Anyway, I don't really know much about baseball but I thought this was very interesting.
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i have no qualms with that
in '68 he threw 304.2 innings and gave up 38 earned runs
that's incomprehensible
Don't mind me, I'm just throwing threads out here hoping to get some conversation started. You know times are hard when I'm starting baseball threads!
,,,
If you are bored, you could head over to the New Sentence thread that you inspired. It's not getting a lot of traction. @Hydrant told me it was a great idea, and he hasn't been seen or heard from.
I was over there yesterday for a brief time, I accidentally turned your thread into a tutorial about Raccoons. Sorry about that, I get carried away at times.
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Is that what you did? I thought you just didn't know how to play the game. 🤷
Interesting list. It is difficult to impossible to truly quantify/compare hitters to pitchers. that said, Hoot in 1968 was a monster. I think it is safe to say, no one ever pitched better than him during that season.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
It's rather baffling to me that during that same season, 1968, Denny McClain appears to have a better statistical season than Gibson and his name doesn't even appear in the graphic. Since 1920 there have only been four 30 game winners in MLB and I doubt there will ever be another.
By "better statistical season" you appear to be excluding allowing runners to reach base and allowing runners to score. McLain did pitch about 10% more innings than Gibson, but he allowed almost 100% more runs to score (mostly because he allowed almost 200% more homers). I absolutely agree that McLain had a great season, but Gibson's was clearly better.
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The above bracket is sixteen entries on each side. Just for Ss and Gs, how big do you think the bracket would have to be to include my man Jim Rice's 78 season? Do you think that there is a screen or piece of paper that big? ~asking for a friend
I think (check me if you care enough) that Rice's 1978 season would, on average, be about the 15th best season in any given decade. That's excluding pitchers, so let's call it 20th. So if we went to 64 on each side (total of 128), Rice 1978 would not make the grade for the 20th century. You'd need to go to 128 per side (total of 256) to get Rice in there, and he'd be out in the first round assuming anything like reasonable seeding. If you include the 1890's and the 21st century so far, I think Rice would get shut out of the 256 bracket so you'd need to go to 512.
Let’s see, Steve Carlton won almost half the games the dreadful 1972 Phillies team. So you have a pitcher winning all those games with a dreadful team, and they knock him out in the first round.
Oh well. It just proves the flaws in such “contests.” The main surprise is that the big award didn’t go to a New York player.
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I honestly expected 256, but 512 I can handle too.
I appreciate your answer!
Here's a better one - Gibson wasn't knocked out of a single game all year. That is, he was never once lifted in the middle of an inning.
Bob Gibson and Tim McCarver only think about blowing a 3-1 WS lead that year, not Gibson's incredible performance.
It was a great year for Gibson, but it was The Year Of The Pitcher. His stats were fantastic -- but so were dozens of other pitchers.
Babe Ruth's best seasons he outhomered ENTIRE TEAMS. He changed the game and helped make the most famous team in all of American sports.
So Ichiro was 7th in MVP voting in 2004 but it was top 16 in history?
Harper 2015? The steroid boys?
No, no, no, no 🤦♂️
In the course of every human endeavor since the dawn of time the risk of human error has always been a factor. Including but not limited to field goals, 4th down attempts, or multiple paragraph ramblings on a sports forum authored by someone who shall remain anonymous.