THE FRANCHISE:

In his 2001 New Historical Baseball Abstract, Bill James rated Seaver the sixth-best pitcher of all time, behind Warren Spahn and four pitchers whose careers were over by World War II. "There's actually a good argument that Tom Seaver should be regarded as the greatest pitcher of all time," wrote James. "Where Seaver rates ... depends to a large extent on how steep one believes the incline of history to be. Since no one can say with any confidence how much tougher the game has become, it is certainly reasonable to argue that the accomplishments of early pitchers should have been marked off by more than I have discounted them, and thus that Seaver's record, in context, is more impressive than [Walter Johnson's]."

James wrote that before Roger Clemens and Pedro Martínez--two of the half-dozen or so pitchers with a legitimate statistical claim to the title of best pitcher ever--were out of their primes, so suffice it to say the math has shifted a little in the past 20 years. But a more thorough examination of Seaver's statistical record compared to other pitchers of his era reveals his greatness.

Seaver was one of 10 Hall of Fame pitchers to debut between 1962 and 1969. In addition to a couple of edge cases, that list includes Jim Palmer, a three-time Cy Young winner like Seaver, Nolan Ryan, Steve Carlton, Phil Niekro, and Don Sutton--four of the other nine pitchers to win 300 games and strike out 3,000 batters.

There's a tendency in baseball to view contemporary Hall of Fame-caliber players as equals, even if the numbers show one to be clearly better than the other. Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio, Barry Bonds and Griffey, A-Rod and Jeter, Mike Trout and Mookie Betts. A Hall of Famer is a Hall of Famer, but there's a difference between the best player of his era and the second-best. Sometimes a big difference.

That's a tough thing to imagine, let alone to prove, especially when the other guys at the same position in the same era are legendary figures like Carlton and Ryan. When those two retired, they were 1-2 all time in strikeouts. Ryan had thrown more no-hitters (seven) and appeared in more MLB seasons (27) than any other pitcher in history. Carlton had won more Cy Young awards (four) than any other pitcher ever. His 1972 campaign, in which he won 27 games for a woebegone Phillies team that won just 59 games total, had become the stuff of legend. Ryan had unparalleled velocity and durability, while Carlton had the legendary wipeout slider and was the best-conditioned pitcher in baseball.

But both were inconsistent, and Ryan in particular was prone to fits of wildness. Seaver was great enough, consistently enough, to be taken for granted.

Seaver made his major league debut in 1967 at the age of 22. That year, he made 34 starts, threw 251 innings, posted an ERA of 2.76, and was named NL Rookie of the Year. In each of the 13 seasons that followed, Seaver made at least 32 starts, threw at least 215 innings, and posted an ERA of 3.20 or less. His worst ERA+ in that 14-season span, 112, is equal to Ryan's career average. His second-worst single-season ERA+, 115, is equal to Carlton's career average.

Seaver won his first Cy Young in 1969, when the Mets won their first title, by going 25-7 with a 2.21 ERA and allowing fewer hits per inning than any other pitcher in the National League. He lost a razor-thin MVP race to Willie McCovey that year--both men received 11 first-place votes but McCovey had better downballot support. Seaver won another Cy Young the next time the Mets won the pennant, in 1973, and a third in 1975. His 61 career complete-game shutouts are most of any pitcher who debuted after World War II, and more than all MLB pitchers have put together in total in the past three years. If you want to ding Seaver for not being as big a strikeout pitcher as his two contemporaries, fine, but Seaver led the NL in strikeouts five times and in K/9 ratio six times. At the time of his retirement Seaver was third all time (behind Carlton and Ryan) in total strikeouts and fifth in K%.

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