I'm a little upset with you. I hadn't looked at that thread since it had a manageable number of comments, but your humorous quip caused me to look again and was truly appalled to see that it had gone well over 100 posts. I'm a little scarred now and I pretty much blame you.

In all seriousness though, R/S is a stat that I have a quibble with. I think this is one of those stats where it would be more informative to use the median for the stat, but even that is flawed. e.g. (and apologies for turning this into a Jaime Garcia comment string, but that is who I was looking at last night) it doesn't really tell you the story about Garcia's run support to say the Cardinals have scored 3.69 R/S, or even that the median is 3 R/S. Looking behind the numbers, the Cardinals have scored: 0 , 1 (5 times), 3, 4, 5, 6 (2 times), 7, 12 in his starts. Seems to me that the stat is just too prone to being distorted by one or two exceptional performances.

Hughes, I think I recall, on the other hand has had 8 or more runs in all but 4 or so of his starts. Consistent support can certainly make most pitchers look like winners - heck, if he got that kind of run support Ollie Perez might not be on the disabled list right now.

(Heh, I almost typed "NHL." I wonder what Jarome Iginla's WAR is?)

Being a current Brewers fan, it's great to see Yo-yo Gallardo on this list. Also, despite what people probably want, if you put "Yankees" in the first synopsis, it does tend to draw more responses on that particular blog.

Looking back now, I see that '83-'90 was actually a darn good run for Davey Johnson and the boys. (And how he didn't get work after that stretch astounds me - did Johnson turn down offers and just enjoy retirement? I don't blame him if he did, and good for him, but it's odd that he never resurfaced and nobody heard much from him or about him over the years.)

But DAMN, Doc! Through age 26 you'd have pencilled in Gooden for 300 wins, easy. He had won about 56% of his STARTS at that point. He could still strike out 8 per 9 IP, he was stingy with home runs (unless you were named Tuffy Rhodes); even through age 28, he was still effective though the Mets were now sucking out loud.

One of the great might-have-beens in baseball. Somewhere in the universe, Spock has a beard, we're still a British Commonwealth, and the Outstanding Base-Ballers Museum of Cooperstown, New York has plaques of Gooden, Straw, Saberhagen, Herb Score, Sudden Sam McDowell, and Shoeless Joe Jackson.

That's the cool part of it for me. I've been a baseball fan since 1973. So, there are some players I haven't thought about in a long time. And, there are others, before my time, that I never heard of before. And, these queries lead me to their names...and bring back memories or force some learning. And, that's always good - esp when it's baseball. 😉