Love For the Lefties

It's been a week and a half since the Baseball Hall of Fame induction, and something they said at the end of the broadcast has really stuck with me.  CC Sabathia and Billy Wagner are just the 19th and 20th left-handed pitchers to be elected.  They're the first lefties to be inducted together since Sandy Koufax and Lefty Gomez in 1972.  (The only other time two lefties went in together was in 1947, Lefty Grove and Carl Hubbell.)

That's really a mind-boggling stat if you think about it.  There are 351 Hall of Famers.  Only 20 (not counting Babe Ruth) are left-handed pitchers.  That's a little over 5 percent.  And that number might not become 21 until Clayton Kershaw gets in (unless Tommy John is elected by the Eras Committee before then).

The more I thought about it, though, it did make sense.  I never realized it until it was mentioned, but there really are that few.  Every time I tried to roll through the list of Hall of Fame lefties in my head, I didn't even get to all 20.  The most I could rattle off top of my head was only about 15.

Being a Baseball Hall of Famer is a pretty exclusive list.  Being a left-handed pitcher in the Baseball Hall of Fame is really exclusive!  How do those lefties compare to each other though?  Well, like most things, it's entirely subjective.  The list has already been narrowed down to 20 for us, though, so we can narrow it down from there.

10. CC Sabathia: While most people agreed that CC was a likely Hall of Famer when he retired, not many thought he'd get in on the first ballot.  Well, he did.  And I'd venture to say that he's the 10th greatest lefty immortalized in Cooperstown.  CC pitched for 19 years and put up statistics we may never see again.  He had 250 wins and 3,000 strikeouts.  He was the best pitcher in baseball for Cleveland, then won a World Series as the Yankees' ace.  Perhaps most impressively, Sabathia completely changed his pitching style later in his career and was just as successful as his overpowering early days.

9. Lefty Gomez: I'm not sure Lefty Gomez gets enough credit for how good he was.  Yes, he pitched on those great Yankees teams of the 1930s that were loaded with offensive stars (Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, etc.).  But someone had to pitch, and Lefty Gomez was the ace of those staffs.  He went 6-0 in the World Series and his career winning percentage was .649.  Gomez started the first three All*Star Games and five of the first six (he also had the first RBI in All*Star Game history).

8. Tom Glavine: We may never see a pitching staff like the one the Braves had during their 90s dynasty again.  Three Hall of Fame starters, all of whom were elected in their first year of eligibility.  Glavine was there first.  He endured the losing seasons before Atlanta got really good.  So, it was only fitting that he threw eight innings of one-hit ball in the Game 6 clincher of the 1995 World Series and was named World Series MVP.  It was with the Mets, though, that Glavine earned his 300th win.

7. Carl Hubbell: Any baseball fan knows what happened in the 1934 All*Star Game.  Carl Hubbell, pitching in his home park, struck out five Hall of Famers in a row.  At one point, he posted 24 consecutive wins for really good New York Giants teams of the 1930s.  Hubbell was a two-time NL MVP and who knows how many Cy Youngs he would've won had that award existed then?

6. Whitey Ford: Whitey Ford is the greatest pitcher in Yankees history.  Period.  End of sentence.  He's the franchise's all-time leader in wins (236) and has the fourth-best winning percentage (.690) in Major League history.  He also holds numerous World Series pitching records and was a six-time champion during one of the Yankees' most dominant eras.  Ford's career ERA of 2.75, meanwhile, is the third-lowest in the live-ball era.

5. Lefty Grove: Probably the first truly great left-handed pitcher and just the second lefty elected to the Hall of Fame, Grove was the ace of Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics that won back-to-back World Series in 1929 & 1930.  In a three-season span from 1929-31, he went a ridiculous 79-15!  Grove led the AL in ERA a record nine times, in strikeouts seven times and in wins four times.  He was the first left-hander to reach the 300-win mark.

4. Warren Spahn: Spahn & Sain and Pray for Rain.  That was the mantra if you went against the Braves in the 40s and 50s.  His 363 wins are the sixth-most in history, most all-time by a lefty, and the most by any pitcher who wasn't born in the 1800s.  He also had more than 2,500 strikeouts, which was the most-ever by a lefty at the time of his retirement and is still fifth on that list.

3. Steve Carlton: An argument could be made that Steve Carlton should be in the No. 1 spot.  For me he's No. 3.  He wasn't just the best lefty of his era (with all due respect to Ron Guidry), he was arguably the best pitcher PERIOD in the 70s and early 80s.  Carlton won a World Series early in his career with the Cardinals, then was the ace of that legendary 1980 Phillies team.  His 329 wins and 4,136 strikeouts are both second-most all-time among left-handers.

2. Randy Johnson: When you think of dominant pitchers, Randy Johnson's name is one of the first to come to mind.  For starters, he scared the crap out of you.  Just ask John Kruk or that bird (well, actually, you can't ask the bird).  The Big Unit threw a perfect game at 40.  He won four straight Cy Youngs.  He came out of the bullpen in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series on no days' rest and earned the win.  And, oh yeah, he's second all-time in strikeouts.

1. Sandy Koufax: There could only be one for the top spot.  Sandy Koufax only played 12 years and retired at 30.  Just imagine how insane his numbers would've been had he played longer!  He was THE dominant pitcher of his era and is arguably the greatest pitcher ever (left-handed or right-handed).  Three Cy Youngs, an MVP, four no-hitters (including a perfect game), four World Series rings and two World Series MVPs.  And, again, his counting numbers would be so much higher had he pitched into his 30s.