His blazing five-year stretch from '62-'66 has become the standard by which all other great pitchers are measured. The Gold Standard. The definition of pitching dominance. Anyone who considers a new mode of analyzing pitching greatness has to insert his five peak seasons into the formulas and see what comes out. If you plug into your formulas his stats from these five seasons, during which he won five straight ERA titles, three pitching triple crowns and three 25+ win seasons in four years, and a historic result doesn't come out the other end, then maybe you need to double check your methods and formulas.

From '62 to '66 Sandy Koufax outperformed his team by 41%. If you exclude the '62 season, where Koufax's injury and the Dodger's decision to rush him back into the rotation in late September significantly skew the numbers, then Koufax outperformed his team by 49.5% from '63 to '66*. That's Randy Johnson territory. A 50% Team Relative performance over a period of years could be known as the Sandy-Randy Standard.

Randy Johnson's peak four-year period by Team Relative analyses was actually the five-year period from '93 to '97 that includes his injury-shortened '96 season when he went 5-0. It also includes the strike abbreviated '94 and '95 seasons. Over that five-year period Johnson's Team Relative performance was 58.2%. History suggests, however, that Johnson would not have maintained the .920 winning percentage he compiled in '95-'96 had he pitched full seasons. Johnson's true peak, as measured by wins, ERA+ and most other measures, actually occurred with the D'backs from '99 to '02, and he compiled a 49.9% Team Relative performance during that period.

Maddux compiled a 52.6% Team Relative performance from '94 to '97, but that period also included two strike-shortened seasons.

Guidry's Team Relative performance over his three-year peak from '77 to '79 was 40%. Seaver had a 44.2% Team Relative performance for four years between '68 and '71. If one excludes Gibson's injury-shortened '67 season, Gibson maintained a 41.1% Team Relative performance from '65 to '70. If one excludes Marichal's injury-shortened '67 season, he maintained a 33.8% Team Relative performance from '63 to '69.

For Schilling's three 20-win seasons - '01, '02 and '04 - he had a Team Relative performance of 48.2%. For Guidry's three 20-win seasons he had a Team Relative performance of 43.5%.

Team Relative analysis confirms that Koufax's great run was indeed among the very best four or five year stretches in baseball history. Throw in the huge innings totals Koufax put up in these years, the no-hitters, strikeout records, pennant race and post-season performances, and it's clear why Mr. K became a legend.
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* Koufax's best season by far as measured by Team Relative performance was his injury-shortened '64 season, when he posted a 19-5 record for a Dodger team that was truly terrible but for Koufax, compiling a .442 winning percentage in games in which Koufax was not the pitcher of record. Koufax outperformed that team by nearly 89%.