| And by that I mean I'd probably give a slight edge to Pedro. And statistically his best year was 2000, not 1999. ERA+ adjusts a players ERA for the pitcher's ballpark and the league average ERA, the higher the score the better. The average ERA is set to 100. Pedro's 2000 is a 291 and Gibson's '68 is 258. Also Pedro put fewer guys on base per inning as his WHIP was 0.737(lowest ever in any era) to Gibson's 0.853 with the higher mound. Besides that, I'd argue an ERA of 1.74 in a league average of 4.91 is better than a 1.12 in a league average of 2.97. (AL and NL averages respectively from baseball prospectus) I am biased in that I am a Red Sox fan and I was alive to see Pedro pitch but not Gibson, but really its just nitpicking over two of the best modern pitching seasons. The real question is how Gibson managed to get tagged with 9 losses that season while throwing 13 shutouts. Shame on the Cardinals offense. |