Rob Neyer Please Stop Using the Word Wangdoodle.

I’m starting to have always agreed with Sabes on Neyer. He’s smug, not funny and sounds more and more like a writer that people with blogs should make fun of. Especially when he writes things like this:

Top Ten Individual Seasons in Baseball History

8. Pedro Martinez, 1999

In a year in which American League pitchers combined for a 4.86 ERA, Martinez posted a 2.07 ERA that was nearly a run-and-a-half lower than the No. 2 man on the list. He also won 23 of 27 regular-season decisions before chucking 17 scoreless innings in the playoffs.

Now I should start by saying that 1999, in context of league and period, was an amazing season of Pedro’s. It is easily one of the best of all time and definitely deserves a spot on any Top Ten list of this sort. Also he was an absolute demon in the playoffs. Like, he could have legally changed his name to “Baal, Devourer of Outs” and I would say, “Obviously.”

But if you’re going to make a list that only features one of Pedro’s great seasons, how could you possibly ignore 2000? It was better in so many ways:

	1999	2000
ERA	2.07	1.74
ERA+	243	291 (2nd all-time)
WHIP	0.923	0.737 (1st all-time)
Innings Pitched	213	217
Won-Loss	23-4	18-6

Neyer is obviously getting distracted by Pedro 1999’s sexy Won-Loss record, and his playoff appearances, two things that he should know are faulty and team-dependent measures of a pitcher. 2000 Pedro never even got a chance at playoff heroics, since his team finished 2 games back on the 87-win, “Worst Team of the Yankee Dynasty.”