The Best of New York Baseball Bracket Challenge: Lefthanded Starters

We've done closers (and Mariano Rivera won in a landslide--more results on that later) and we've done right-handed starters (with Tom Seaver currently holding the leader there). But now it's time to do lefties. These weren't easy choices, especially for the Yankees. Since I get to make up the rules, I'm bending them a bit for this category to include 3 candidates for the Yankees. Let's get to the lefties (stats by Baseball-Reference except FIP from FanGraphs):

Yankees

Whitey Ford: "The Chairman of the Board" is an easy choice for this list (it got harder between the second two). He's won more games than any Yankee pitcher who pitched with either hand and his .690 winning % is absolutely remarkable (if you take away his last two partial seasons, it jumps to .705). No lefty comes close to his 2.75 ERA (min. 1000 innings). And unless Andy Pettitte pitches a few more seasons, he'll have the most strikeouts among lefties as well. He threw an amazing 45 shutouts in 438 starts. He led the league in wins 3 times, won 2 ERA titles and won one Cy Young. He was a 10-time All-Star and won the World Series MVP in 1961 when he went 2-0, giving up no runs to the Reds in two starts. If you compare his FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) to Andy Pettitte and Lefty Gomez, Ford dominates them both in the regular season and the playoffs and Ford's H/9 is less than any Yankee lefty except Al Downing. On his second try, Ford was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1974. (picture from Yankeeology)

Lefty Gomez: It came down to Gomez and Pettitte for the final Yankee spot...and I decided to list them both. Pettitte now has three more wins, but Gomez has the higher winning percentage and gave up less HR/9 (0.50) than Pettitte or Ford. But where Gomez really shined was in the playoffs where he went 6-0 with a 2.86 ERA and helped the Yankees go 6-0 in the World Series under his tenure (Ford's Yankees were 6-5 and Pettitte's Yankees are 5-2). More impressive were his pitching Triple Crowns he won in 1934 and 1937 (two seasons he led the league in K/9 and SO/BB as well). The one big knock on Gomez is that his career span was too short, having fizzled out by 34--which is one of the big reasons it took 27 years and a Veterans Committee vote to get him in the Hall of Fame. But make no mistake: Gomez was one the best Yankees lefties in history. (picture from Wikipedia)

Andy Pettitte: Pettitte may have been an easy choice as the top Yankee pitcher had he not left for Houston in the middle of his career. And what he does in 2010 and beyond could propel him there. But even without all that, he's still in the running. 192 Yankees wins with an excellent winning percentage and a 4.02 ERA in a hitter's era in the best hitting division in baseball certainly help his case (and a FIP of 3.74--though that includes Houston as well). So does the record number of series clinching wins in the playoffs (though it overshadows some bad pitching performances as well especially the 1998 ALCS, the 1999 World Series, the 2001 World Series and the 2002 ALDS). He also took home the 2001 ALCS MVP, going 2-0 with a 2.51 ERA in that series vs. Seattle. He walked less guys per 9 and struck out more per 9 than Gomez or Ford. And although he never won a Cy Young, he came in the top-6 four different times with the Yankees including a 2nd place finish in 1996. His durability has been amazing, too, starting in 31 games or more in every season except for one (2002) while with the Yankees. (picture from New York Magazine)

Just missed: Ron Guidry (whose 1978 season was one of the best pitching performances in Major League history and who had a couple of other dominating years but just didn't have the raw data needed to place in the top-3, in my opinion)

Mets

Jerry Koosman: No lefty has won 100 games for the Mets except for Koosman, though only one lefty has come within 1000 innings of Koosman's 2,544.2 and that's Sid Fernandez over 950 behind. So while Koosman may have been a compiler in the regular season, he was best in the playoffs, and especially the World Series for the Mets where he went 3-0 with a 2.39 ERA in 4 starts. He was in the top-9 in the National League in ERA 6 times. In 1976 he came in 2nd in the Cy Young award voting despite having struck out 173 more batters in 68 less innings than Randy Jones of the San Diego Padres. The next year he amazingly led the majors in losses with a 8-20 record despite leading the National League in K/9. Regardless, Koosman was a great Mets lefty and certainly one of their best. (picture from 2neat Magazines)

Sid Fernandez: Fernandez and Leiter had very similar numbers with the Mets but Fernandez gets my nod here (amazingly, neither pitcher won a playoff game while with the Mets). Fernandez led the majors twice in H/9 and the National League one other time. And in 1986, he finished 7th in the Cy Young voting and helped the Mets win their last World Series. So why Fernandez over Leiter? His peripherals. Fernandez had a better SO/BB ratio that Koosman or Leiter and his WHIP, K/9 and H/9 were the best among Mets pitchers who threw 1000 innings. In fact, only David Cone had a better K/9 amongst Mets pitchers who threw 1000 innings with either hand. Unfortunately, much of this is overshadowed by the fact that the end of his Mets days were spent among some of the worst teams in baseball. (picture from mental_floss)

Just missed: Al Leiter (just slightly below Fernandez, though his effort against the Yankees in the World Series was admirable)

So who do you think was the best lefty in New York history? Vote to the right!

Here were the results of the closer poll:

Who is New York's best closer?

Mariano Rivera	90%
Goose Gossage	5%
John Franco	0%
Armando Benitez	5%