Bill James ranked the 100 greatest pitchers in baseball history in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The book was written after the 1999 season (and ultimately published in 2001) and consequently greats like Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera are not as elevated in James's rankings as they would be today (ranking 11th, 14th, 29th, 49th and unranked, respectively). Based on more recent commentary by James I think it's pretty clear that Randy Johnson, in particular, would make a huge jump in James's ranking.

Here is James's list of the top 20 southpaws of all time through 1999 (my list is here; open it up in a new window and do a side-by-side comparison of the lists):

A pretty good list, Mr. James. Bill's list is based on his Win Shares analyses, which combine career Win Shares, top three Win  Share seasons, Win Shares over the pitcher's best five consecutive seasons and career Win Shares per season. Accordingly, Bill has Sandy Koufax ranked ahead of Steve Carlton despite having barely half Carlton's career Win Shares.

Bill's top 10 would look pretty much the same today, I believe, with two exceptions: Randy Johnson would jump ahead of Koufax and probably even Spahn, taking the two spot behind Grove; and Glavine would likely crack the top 10 given his superior 2000 to 2002 seasons (55-27, 133 ERA+).

It's harder to speculate about what Bill's second 10 would look like today. Bill and his buddy Rob Neyer seem to think fairly highly of Andy Pettitte (Bill has said Andy will likely make the Hall of Fame, and Neyer has said that Andy is "qualitatively" better than Jack Morris). And Johan Santana is probably already on the cusp of Bill's second 10. However, the presence of Wilbur Cooper and Eppa Rixey on Bill's list suggests to me that he perhaps adhered too slavishly to his Wins Shares index, and I don't think either Pettitte or Santana fare too well on that basis (although Santana will certainly get there with another four or five good years).

Bill has seven pitchers ranked ahead of Guidry who I'd ranked behind: Plank, Newhouser, Waddell, Cooper, Pierce, John and Kaat. Conversely, Bill has Gomez ranked one spot behind Guidry whereas I had ranked Gomez one spot ahead of Guidry. The difference between our approaches to Plank and Waddell is easily explainable: I copped out and argued that it was simply to difficult to compare "deadball era" pitchers to post-1920 era pitchers. As for the rest, this is my take on Bill's take:

Newhouser.  Bill seems to hold Prince Hal in unusually high regard. It's not clear to me how Bill weights the War Years, but it seems as if he doesn't discount them as much as I do. He also made a couple of very strange claims about Newhouser's post-War Years in his Historical Baseball Abstract, arguing that Newhouser was the best pitcher in the AL in '47 and '48. Well, it was Feller in '47 and, for my money, either or both Gene Bearden and Bob Lemon were better than Hal in '48 (I admit, Hal's and Lemon's numbers in '48 are pretty damn similar, but Lemon pitched TEN shutouts, and that tipped the balance to Bob). Anyway, I had Prince Hal 14th on my list of post-1920 lefties.

Cooper.  Cooper was good, and very consistent, between '16 and '24, but I think Bill's ranking of Cooper is a case of too much reliance on the Win Shares analysis. Also, while consistency is certainly a virtue, Bill seems to value it more highly than I do. See the discussion of Jim Kaat, below. Cooper was honorable mention on my list (i.e., not in the top 15).

It's difficult to tell what Bill thought of Cooper, with Cooper's mini-bio in Bill's Abstract consisting only of two extended quotes from two other writers that dealt more with Cooper's personality than his pitching.

Pierce.  I, too, am a Billy Pierce fan (perhaps I just fancy slightly built lefthanded power pitchers), but he barely missed my list of the top 15 post-1920 lefties. Here are my two reservations regarding Billy.

First, in considering his excellent W-L record during his peak (i.e., '51 to '60) you have to recall that the White Sox had some very good teams in those years. In fact, the White Sox had a cumulative .568 winning percentage over that decade; Billy managed a .584 winning percentage over that period. That's not much of a difference.

Second, Billy seemed to disappear a bit on the Chisox down the stretch of those '50s pennant races. Take his great '55 season, for instance (1.97 ERA, 199 ERA+). The White Sox were half a game up on the Yanks and 1.5 games up on the Indians when Billy took the mound against the Indians on Sept. 3, but he gave up 8 hits and 6 walks in 5.1 innings and lost, 6-1. A week later he faced the Yanks and couldn't make it out of the 2nd inning,  giving up 6 runs in 1.1 innings. Ten days later, with the White Sox now five games back of the Yankees but still alive, Billy lost to the Indians and Early Wynn, 3-2, eliminating the Sox from the pennant race.

In 1953 the Sox were just 6.5 games back of the Yanks after Billy shutout the Tigers on August 14th, but Billy won only two more game the rest of the way, and his second win was on the last day of the season, long after the Sox had been eliminated.

In '57 the Sox were staying within striking distance of the Yanks through August and September (between 4 and 6.5 games back for most of those two months), but Billy went only 5-5 with a 5.04 ERA in August and September, after taking a 15-7 record and 2.45 ERA into August. He was hammered in both his starts against the Yanks down the stretch, giving up 9 earned runs in 10.1 innings.

And when the Sox finally won the pennant in '59 Billy struggled down the stretch, winning only two games in August and September. It was the same story in '60 - the Sox were right there with the Yanks and Orioles in August and September, but Billy pitched very poorly over his last 8 starts (ironically, the Sox won six of those starts anyway, despite Billy averaging less than 4.5 innings per start and posting a 5.14 ERA).

I don't think these late season swoons figured into Bill's analysis at all. They figure into mine, however, and they exerted a pretty heavy drag on Pierce's ranking in my list of all-time lefties.

John.  Honorable mention on my list. He was a big winner when healthy for the Dodgers and Yanks in the late '70s and in 1980. And he was consistently good even during his abbreviated seasons. But there were just too many seasons when he didn't make enough starts, didn't pitch enough innings, and therefore didn't have enough impact.

Kaat.  Bill has an extended take on Kaat in the Abstract, and emphasizes how consistent Kaat was during the '60s and '70s. It's true, Kaat was very consistent, but he was too often consistently mediocre from '68 to '73, during a period that should have been the peak of his career (ages 29 to 34). I've lauded Kaat in this blog - for his back-to-back 20 win seasons for poor White Sox teams in '74 and '75, and for his spectacular stretch run in the great four-team pennant scramble of '67 - but I had Kaat ranked 15th on my list of post-1920 lefties, five spots behind Guidry.

All in all, I think Bill's list is pretty similar to mine. And even if Bill is right and Guidry is the 14th best post-1920 southpaw rather than the 10th, I still think he belongs in the Hall.

Is it really possible that the tenth greatest lefthander in the modern history of the game was rejected by the Hall of Fame? Is it really possible the Hall rejected the fourth greatest leftie in modern American League history? Put together your list of the premier southpaws in baseball history - mine's on the next page. Just click below to see my ranking of the 15 greatest lefthanders of all time. I'll tell you right now that the five guys pictured above - Hubbell, Spahn, Grove, Johnson and Carlton - all rank near the top.

Here's my list.