John 'S, Nl: Fill & Download for Free

Jason McDonald, Joel Lewenstein and John DeMarchi already gave great answers. Basically, it is very difficult for relievers to win, though you could definitely have made an argument for him in certain seasons (1996 especially, though the fact is - he wasn't the closer that year, but a setup guy).I'd argue the biggest thing is that Mariano hasn't had the goofy statistical seasons that some closers have had. Let's take Mariano's "Best" statistics to create his artifical "Best Season":8-0 (1996 Wins, 1998 Losses), 53 Saves (2004), 1.38 ERA (2005), 130 K (1996), 0.665 WHIP (2008). Note that these are all generally in different seasons (1996 is a bit weird since it is also his highest IP).Compare this to the year Eric Gagne had when he won the Cy Young in 2003:2-3, 55 Saves, 1.20 ERA, 137 K, 0.692 WHIP. Basically, he had better than Mariano's best year ever in Saves, ERA and K (and pretty darn close in WHIP) in one year. And realize 2003's NL Candidates were pretty weak. Jason Schmidt's 2nd place year of 17-5 with a 2.34 ERA and Mark Prior's 3rd place year of 18-6 with a 2.43 were good, but not great, and 4th place Russ Ortiz did win 21 games, but 21-7 with a 3.81 ERA isn't winning the Cy Young in anything but softball.So yeah, Mariano's career definitely averages out to more than 1 Cy Young, but he never really pulled it off in any individual season. You're still talking about the greatest closer of all time (2nd place is not even close), probably the greatest postseason pitcher of the modern era, and someone who did, at the end of the day, save more games than anyone (regular season AND postseason), finished in the top 5 for the Cy Young 5 times, was top 30 in MVP voting 9 times, is a 12-time all-start, and won 5 World Series, and the guy isn't even done yet.Oh, and also just take a look at the career leaders in Adjusted ERA+:http://www.baseball-reference.com/leaders/earned_run_avg_plus_career.shtmlBest. Ever. Hands down.

The only one that I think it’s not realistic for someone to break is the 511 career pitching wins amassed by Cy Young. No one else, even in Young’s own time, ever had more than 417 (Walter Johnson), and the most by a modern-era pitcher is the 355 of Greg Maddux.Young pitched in a very different era, where pitchers didn’t go all-out on every pitch, and by all accounts he was a freak of nature anyway—a guy who was able to pitch every other day if necessary, and who threw harder than nearly all of his contemporaries. His win total is sometimes derided because he moved to the new American League in mid-career, and the AL wasn’t quite as strong as the NL. However, Young was one of the best pitchers in the NL already, and as far as the AL being weaker, Young pitched his Boston Americans (known as the Red Sox today) to the first World Series title in 1903. So if they were weaker, Denton True Young apparently was good enough to bridge the gap.Even if Cy Young hadn’t switched leagues, he’d still be the all-time wins leader and probably have something like 480 career victories. He pitched until he was 44, and even at the time of his retirement had only slipped to more or less league average performance. Basically, he was the Nolan Ryan of his generation, only he was a better pitcher than Ryan was.Bill James once wrote that a record is safe at any given time if it consists of 23 or more seasons of contemporary league-leading performance. The most wins in a single season by an MLB pitcher in the last five seasons is 22, by Jake Arrieta in 2015 and Rick Porcello in 2016. A pitcher who won 22 games a season for 23 years would have 506 career wins.Even Pete Rose’s 4,256 career hits is more attainable than this. In fact, there’s a pretty strong argument that Ichiro Suzuki could have broken it if he’d played his entire career in MLB. And presently, Mookie Betts is averaging 196 hits per full season. If he could do that into his 40’s, he could easily challenge Rose (196 hits for 23 seasons is 4,508). It takes a great player who collects a lot of hits (like Betts) who starts his career at a very young age and who then ages exceptionally well, with the desire to play a long time, but it is possible. Derek Jeter had 216 hits at the age of 38 and was at 3,304 for his career, but when he lost basically his entire age 39 season to injury and came back as a much diminished player, his chance was gone.

Not sure I should answer this, since Moderation just accused me of BNBR for merely talking about someone else’s racist views, but I’ll bite because it’s a legitimate question.The reason why the Red Sox were the last team to integrate was because of the racist attitudes of their owner during that historical era, Tom Yawkey. Yawkey purchased the Red Sox in 1933, after they had been a doormat for more than a dozen years, and immediately started infusing massive amounts of capital into the team in order to make them competitive again. He bought up star players from cash-starved teams all over the league and moved the Sox back into the first division, but he couldn’t get them to the pennant until 1946. Even then, he never actually won the World Series—the Red Sox won the AL in 1946, 1967 and 1975, but lost the Series in seven games all three times.Starting in the late 1940’s, the Sox had opportunities to integrate by signing Black players who were of star quality, but declined to do so. In early 1945, the Red Sox actually tried out Sam Jethroe (1950 NL Rookie of the Year), Jackie Robinson and longtime Negro League star Marvin (Tex) Williams, but didn’t sign them. A few years later, they passed on Willie Mays. Even after Robinson established himself in MLB and the leagues integrated, Yawkey declined to sign Black players for the Red Sox, who by this time were struggling. When he finally did sign a few, he kept them down in the minor leagues.It all came to a head in 1959, when the team sent Elijah “Pumpsie” Green back to the minors after spring training. Although Green wasn’t a great player, the Red Sox weren’t a very good team, and Green had performed well enough to deserve a spot on the roster. There was a great outcry about this, and when Green went back to Triple-A and hit .320, Yawkey was forced to promote him to Boston on 21 July 1959. He ended up playing four years for the Sox.After that, the Red Sox integrated, and Yawkey’s last pennant-winning team included players like Jim Rice, Luis Tiant, Cecil Cooper and Roger Moret, none of whom would have been welcome on the pre-1959 Sox. But the fact that Yawkey was a known racist and waited 11 years after Jackie Robinson to integrate his team is a legacy that the Red Sox still have to deal with today, even though the only prerequisite for being on the team today is being good at baseball (see Mookie Betts, David Price and Jackie Bradley Jr.).There is an ongoing campaign to demonize Yawkey today, and he probably deserves a lot of it, but I always figured he punished himself the worst. Something tells me the “Curse of the Bambino” would have ended much sooner if Yawkey had signed Sam Jethroe, Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Instead, he went to his grave without a ring.