Kuzul

The 2010 National League Championship series between the San Francisco Giants and the Philadelphia Phillies has already given us some sterling starting pitching. Despite what a few of the the classier Philly fans believe.

Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum hooked Cy Young horns in Game 1 and, though neither was on top of his superlative game, they still managed to whiff 15 batters in an evenly split 14 combined innings.

Roy Oswalt and Jonathan Sanchez dueled in Game 2 with the Phillies’ ace walking away the better man on the evening. The midseason acquisition spun eight frames of three-hit ball, surrendering Cody Ross’ fourth postseason big fly in the fifth inning as his only blemish.

Sanchez wasn’t quite as dirty, but he managed five erratic innings while only allowing two earned runs to a vastly superior offense.

And the fun isn’t over yet.

With the seven-gamer knotted at a game apiece, the Gents and Phightin’s will give us at least three more scintillating matchups between starting pitchers.

Matt Cain and Cole Hamels will reignite hostilities when the series opens in the City on Tuesday, and we’ll probably see rookie phenom Madison Bumgarner before another dose of Doc Vs. the Franchise in Game 5.

Depending on how the contests unfold, we might see one crack this list of the top 10 pitching matchups in the history of Major League Baseball.

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After watching Cliff Lee dominate my Tampa Bay Rays in the ALDS, and dominate, well, everybody, throughout the playoffs last season, people are starting to rank him as one of the greatest postseason pitchers of all time.  The only way to compare them is to put Lee up against the greatest postseason pitcher of all time, Sandy Koufax.

Let’s take a quick look at the pitching lines.

Sandy Koufax: 4-3 record, 57 innings, 32 hits, 10 runs, 2 home runs, 11 walks, 61 strikeouts

Cliff Lee: 6-0 record, 56 1/3 innings, 32 hits, 11 runs, 1 home run, 6 walks, 54 strikeouts

Those numbers are strikingly close.  But Koufax’s numbers are a bit skewed.  Of those 10 runs he allowed, only six were earned (good enough for a 0.95 ERA).  Plus Lee got beat up in Game 5 last year of the World Series when he allowed five earned runs—one less than Koufax did in his entire postseason career—and he STILL got the win.  As good as Lee has been, there’s only one Sandy Koufax.  

In the 1965 World Series, Koufax pitched on three days rest and on two days rest—threw two complete game shutout victories.  Cliff Lee has NEVER pitched on three days rest in his life.

That’s the argument for Koufax being better.  For Lee—he does have the better record (though I firmly believe that wins are as much a team category as a personal category).  He does have nearly half the amount of walks that Koufax did (though both had precise control), and let up one less long ball.  But the big argument would be Lee has had to face the DH in four of his starts, while Koufax never did.  Lee’s best argument of being the best postseason pitcher ever is in the strength of the line-ups he’s had to face—the Yankees (now twice), the Rays, the Rockies, and the Dodgers.  

But is that enough to put Lee over Koufax?  Definitely not.  Sandy Koufax is one of the five greatest pitchers…EVER.  Cliff Lee isn’t.  Sandy Koufax was a two-time World Series MVP and a four-time World Series champion.  Lee has never won a World Series.  His performance in the 1965 World Series is the greatest ever.  Pitching with severe elbow troubles, winning Game 5 (on three days rest) and Game 7 (on two days rest)—with complete game shutouts, nevertheless—is an achievement that is almost impossible to think about today.  

The final argument: Koufax retired when he was 30.  His arm simply gave out on him. Well kind of.  In 1966—his final season, all Koufax did was pitch 323 innings, with a 27-9 record, and a 1.79 ERA.  After the World Series that year (the Dodgers were swept), Koufax retired due to traumatic arthritis in his arm.  Cliff Lee didn’t make his first postseason start until he was 31 years old—or a year older than Koufax was when he RETIRED.  Lee had years of experience in the regular season, while Koufax was thrust into the limelight and spotlight of the postseason at a much younger age.

Cliff Lee is simply filthy, and a guy I certainly don’t want to see in the playoffs.  But Sandy Koufax is the best that ever was, and the best that ever will be.

Michael Perchick is the writer/editor of TheJockosphere, a sports/Twitter site, reporting the top tweets and news directly from athletes.  Follow him on Twitter @TheREALPerchick, and at http://thejockosphere.com/. 

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

The line from a pithy sportswriter was legendary in both its smarminess and its eventual inaccuracy.

“He would be a great pitcher,” the words from a now yellowed news clipping said, “if the plate was high and outside.”

Sandy Koufax barreled into the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers with a prized left arm but with absolutely no control over it. The next pitch could be a perfect strike or end up in Secaucus.

Koufax, before he became arguably the greatest left-handed pitcher of all time, started his career with six seasons of trying to gain dominion over the strike zone. It was epic in its scope.

Koufax and the strike zone was baseball’s Captain Ahab and Moby Dick.

But unlike Ahab’s elusive whale, Koufax’s demon stared him straight in the face, mocking him. The strike zone was hidden in plain sight during Koufax’s early years with the Dodgers.

Compiling Koufax’s statistics from his rookie year of 1955 thru 1960, it’s discovered that Sandy averaged 4.6 walks per nine innings pitched. You could get to first base with Koufax easier than you could with the town floozy.

Then something clicked, and from 1961 thru the end of his career in 1966, Koufax dominated National League hitters and surrendered just 2.4 walks per nine innings. Koufax had become the reverse Clint Hartung.

Clint Hartung died a few weeks ago at age 87. His legend will live on, and I’m about to make sure of it.

Hartung was a 6’5”, 210-pound pitcher/outfielder from Hondo, Texas. With a town called Hondo and in a state like Texas, being 6’5” must have been a requirement.

Hartung was a blue chip prospect, a can’t-miss kid. The Minneapolis Millers of the old Northern League signed Hartung in 1942. He was shortly thereafter drafted into WW II, where he played on military teams against other drafted pros.

As a pitcher, he went 25-0 during the war years, striking out an average of 15 batters per game. As an outfielder, he batted .567.

The New York Giants signed him in 1946 for a then-high sum of $35,000.

Sportswriter Tom Meany said, “Rather than stop at the Polo Grounds, they should have taken him straight to Cooperstown.”

Clint Hartung was supposed to make Northern Manhattan go crazy as a modern day Babe Ruth: a player whose pitching prowess was only matched by his hitting acumen.

Instead, Hartung became the poster child for the overhyped rookie.

Hartung pitched just 511 innings in the big leagues, compiling a 29-29 record and a 5.02 ERA. In 378 at-bats, he hit .238 and struck out 112 times.

Koufax was the reverse Hartung because he started as a flop and then earned his hype. The lesson? You never really know with prospects, do you?

The can’t-miss kid exists in every big league organization.

He’s somewhere—whether in the lowest of the minors, or in Double-A, or maybe even on the 25-man major league roster. He’s young and sleek and wows the scouts and general managers with his “tools.” If he’s a pitcher, he’s said to have stuff that’s “nasty” and “filthy.”

The can’t-miss kid is a blue chip prospect that holds up trades between big league teams on an annual basis—right about now, as a matter of fact.

The inter-league, non-waiver trading deadline in Major League Baseball is upon us. As I bang on my keyboard, the deadline for making trades between the two leagues without the necessity of players clearing waivers is about 15 hours away.

Big names have been mentioned as destined to be wearing different uniforms come Sunday morning. The usual pre-deadline rumor mill, churning as briskly as ever.

Whether these big names get moved will largely depend on certain GMs and their hesitancy to trade their so-called can’t-miss, blue chip prospects.

There are still a bunch of Clint Hartungs lurking in every big league organization. And they are going to determine the fate of pennant races in both leagues—either by their being traded, or by their GM’s reluctance thereof.

Matt Wieters is a catcher for the Baltimore Orioles who was supposed to be the next coming of Johnny Bench—or at the very least, Joe Mauer. Wieters’ debut with the sad-sack Orioles was looked forward to with almost biblical anticipation.

Wieters is 6’5”—there’s that measurement again—and bats left-handed. He’s 24 years old and was the Orioles’ first-round draft pick of 2007. He was touted as the organization’s designated can’t-miss kid.

Wieters debuted for the Orioles in May 2009 against the Tigers. In his second game, Wieters had a double and a triple and scored a run.

But after 28 at-bats, Wieters had just four hits.

His year-end numbers were OK: .288 BA, nine HR, 43 RBI in 354 at-bats.

Hardly numbers that make your eyes pop out.

This year, Wieters is hitting .248, striking out every five at-bats and the Orioles are still lousy.

Yet if it had been suggested a couple years ago that the Orioles trade Wieters for an established big league player, the suggester would have been tossed into the Potomac.

Hey, remember Cameron Maybin?

He was the Tigers’ designated can’t-miss kid from a few years back. Maybin, an outfielder, was said to have all the “tools” that baseball people fawn over.

Maybin was practically an untouchable prospect—a blue chip that would never be seriously considered to be played at the blackjack table.

The Tigers rushed him to the big leagues in 2007 and plopped him into the lineup in Yankee Stadium during an important August series. That’s not a debut, that’s a blood-letting.

Maybin proved to be not ready for the majors.

In December, 2007, the Tigers did the unthinkable and traded Maybin, along with pitcher Andrew Miller, to the Florida Marlins.

Slugger Miguel Cabrera wouldn’t be performing feats of mass destruction as a Tiger had GM Dave Dombrowski not played the Maybin blue chip.

Maybin has compiled very pedestrian numbers as a Marlin since 2008. Currently, he’s batting .225 with a truckload of strikeouts, while Cabrera flirts with a Triple Crown and MVP contention.

Prospects are just that, while established big league players are also just that.

Give me an established player over a prospect any day!

Suck it up, trade the can’t-miss kids if they’ll net prime time players, and go get more prospects. That’s why you’re paying your scouting staff, right?

Oh, the trades that could be made if can’t-miss kids were included in deals more often. So few GMs have the guts.

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

On this date in 1982, Pete Rose passed Hank Aaron to move into second place on the all-time hits list.

Baseball, like no other sport, is a game of statistic with literally hundreds of categories that we keep track of.

The following list will take a look at the 10 most impressive second bests in baseball history. Many of these players once held the most revered records in the sport, while some came just short of the top spot. So here are the 10 best.

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In light of Roy Halladay’s recent perfect game, I decided it would be interesting to rank the top five pitchers of all time. The catch: they must have breathed in the rarified air of the perfect game.

So Nolan Ryan out…uh, Dallas Braden in?

There have only been 20 perfect games in the history of Major League Baseball. This does limit my options for these rankings somewhat, but also should be an indication of how incredibly difficult it is to throw nine innings of perfection.

By definition, it is impossible to compare perfect items. Keep in mind that this is a ranking of the best pitchers of all time who pitched a perfect game, not a ranking of the best perfect games.

If I were attempting that, Braden’s “Stick It, A-Rod”” game may have made it. Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series would have easily topped the list.

Disclaimers: Credit goes to www.baseball-reference.com for the pitcher stats and www.wikipedia.com for the list of perfect game pitchers and backstories.

All photos used on this slideshow that weren’t directly made available by Bleacher Report are not, to the best of my knowledge, subject to copyright restrictions.

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Just under 50 games in to the 2010 season, the first word of potential trade brewings has surfaced for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

According to the Dodgers’ website, the team has inquired about pitchers Roy Oswalt of the Houston Astros and Cliff Lee of the Seattle Mariners. Although both teams responded with a “No, for now” it doesn’t necessarily mean the door can’t be opened later.

But which pitcher would make a better fit in Tinsel Town? Perhaps the pitcher with the ability to eat up innings or simply keep the Dodgers in the game long enough for the offense to solidify a victory. If not that, at the very least keep hitters from sending the ball to left field.

On the slides to follow will be a break down of Roy Oswalt’s attributes and Cliff Lee’s skills, respectively. Along with statistics will be an inside look at each player, and how they might fare in Los Angeles.

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