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The most durable pitcher in major league history? The obvious answer is "Cy Young." But the obvious answer isn't always the best answer, so let's work through the issues raised by the question.
If we use games started or innings pitched to judge durability, you might assume that pitchers from Cy Young's era will dominate the rankings, since in those days pitchers started more games and nearly always finished what they started. You'd be wrong, though. In fact, it's the pitchers of the 1970s who dominate such rankings. Fourteen pitchers have started more than 615 major league games, and all but two of them pitched in the 1970s and/or the 1980s.
So if we look just at starts, or innings, it'll just be the guys we middle-aged sorts idolized in our misbegotten youth. Clearly, some sort of era adjustment is necessary. For example, one could, given a reasonable amount of skill and data, compare every pitcher's innings or starts to the league maximum in each season. But I have neither the skill nor the data, so we'll have to try something else.
And the something else is a close approximation of comparing games started to the league maximum. For each pitcher-season, I awarded one "Durability Point" for ranking in the top 10 in the league in games started, an additional point for each season in the top five, and one more point for each season leading the league.
Would you believe that Dennis Martinez gets more Durability Points than Tom Seaver? Martinez finished in the top 10 seven times, in the top 5 five times, and he led the league once, for a total of 13 Durability Points. Seaver, meanwhile, never led his league in starts (yeah, I was surprised, too). He did finish in the top 10 nine times and in the top five twice, for a total of 11 Durability Points.
You might think it's crazy to rate Martinez ahead of Seaver in anything, and I can't really argue with you. I'm not a slave to Durability Points (my second "junk stat" in two days), and anyway neither El Presidente nor Tom Terrific wind up figuring into the rankings. Speaking of which, these are them:
1. Cy Young (18-8-1)
2. Greg Maddux (15-13-6)
3. Early Wynn (14-11-5)
4. Walter Johnson (14-10-4)
5. Warren Spahn (14-10-2)
6. Robin Roberts (13-8-6)
7. Tom Glavine (12-8-6)
8. Steve Carlton (13-8-4)
9. Christy Mathewson (14-8-2)
10. Phil Niekro (11-8-4)
Yesterday, I identified the greatest control pitchers, and three names that appeared on that list appear on this one, too: Cy Young, Greg Maddux and Robin Roberts. All three are Hall of Famers, of course, and I would argue that Roberts, while not quite in the same class as Young and Maddux, is generally underrated.
Maddux
Young might be considered a stretch at No. 1 on the durability list, seeing as how he led his league in starts just once (Maddux did it six times) and finished in the top five only eight times (Maddux, 13). Young did finish in the top 10 18 times, more than anybody else (Maddux is No. 2, with 15). But it's not so much what Young did, as when he did it.
When you look at Young's stats – 815 starts, 749 complete games and of course those 511 wins – you think, "Sure they're impressive, but things were different back when Cy pitched."
Indeed they were, and nobody since has been able to do what Young did. But what people forget is that nobody came close to Young before or during his time, either.
Cy Young debuted in 1890, and he's the only pitcher of the 19th century who started more than 561 games. When Young arrived in the majors, the top starters routinely topped 400 innings per season … but not for many seasons, because their arms couldn't stand the strain of pitching 400 innings. Not Cy Young, though. Physically, he was some sort of freak. And all things considered, he looks to me like the most durable pitcher in the history of the game.
Early Wynn was a surprise. But the Hall of Famer led the American League in starts five times (only Maddux, Roberts, and Tom Glavine have done better), finished second through fifth 11 times (behind only Maddux), and finished sixth through 10th 14 times (behind only Young and Maddux).
Going into this, I thought Warren Spahn would rank very near the top, and if given extra credit for pitching into his middle 40s, he probably would. What "hurts" Spahn is that he somehow led the league in starts only twice. But this says more about the capriciousness of the system than it does about Spahn's durability. Spahn finished second in the National League in starts three times; if he'd started one more game in 1947, and two more apiece in 1952 and 1958, he'd have tied for first in each season, and be right up there in Durability Points with Wynn and Johnson (but not Maddux).
But then, much the same could be said about the other pitchers on the list. One has to draw the line somewhere, and I'm not unhappy with Spahn's place on the list.
Perhaps nobody's enjoyed quite a run like Robin Roberts did. He led the National League in starts for six straight seasons, 1950 through '55 (and in the latter five of those seasons he also led the league in innings). He was, over the course of those six seasons, easily the best pitcher in the National League. Spahn, of course, was an outstanding pitcher at the same time, but Roberts was clearly better. Roughly 12 games better.
OK, here's your trivia question for the day: There are two pairs of pitchers on the list who were teammates. Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine are, of course, one pair. But which two constitute the other? (Answer below.)
Here, it should be mentioned that all 10 of these pitchers are (or in the case of Maddux and Glavine, will be) in the Hall of Fame. But this guy isn't:
11. Bobo Newsom (13-9-4)
I'm running this to 11 pitchers because Newsom's not in the Hall of Fame, and because he's fun to write about. What makes him fun, though, isn't his durability but his personality, and the peripatetic nature of his career (Newsom was sold or traded 10 times, and pitched for the Washington Senators five different times). "Ol' Bobo," as he liked to call himself, ranked in the top 10 in starts 13 times. And when he was 41, he went back to the minors and ranked among the Southern Association's top workhorses for three seasons, then returned to the majors for brief stints with the Senators and Athletics.
Trivia: In 1987, 48-year-old Phil Niekro and 42-year-old Steve Carlton spent a few months together with the Indians. That worked about as well as you might guess.
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