Dale53130
Registered User
- Nov 10, 2019
- 408
- 600
Hmmm. But like you're saying with me with Francis and Ott, Chara is behind Randy Johnson in terms of peak and career value. Randy Johnson is right up there amongst the greatest pitchers of All Time, Chara is further down the list amongst the greatest defenders of All Time by comparison (at least I believe him to be).Nice work on the Johnson/Chara comp!
For the record, I also like @buffalowing88 's Chara/Johnson comparison, I was thinking of it too yesterday.
Edit to add, there's a significant difference between Chara finishing up there in Norris voting, and Randy Johnson either winning Cy Young's or placing high in Cy Young voting. Johnson's also doing this versus a very dense group of historically great pitching and historically great batting. Even your mentioning Kevin Brown in your OP, I think he was a very good pitcher myself, and that tells you the depth of the quality of pitching in that mid '90s to mid '00s period (or even beyond that).
Kevin Brown is so far down the list of pitchers from that period, only because there was so much great pitching at the time, that he's a bit of an afterthought compared to his peers. A number of people don't like Mike Mussina making the HOF, but I'm all for it, because if he played in a different era (more like now), he'd have been highlighted and would have stood out more. I feel just the opposite about Chara vs his peers/competition, relative to his peak/prime. The competition Chara was up against for the Norris, wasn't as strong (IMO), relative to what Randy Johnson was up against. Even Johnson's own teammate, Curt Shilling, was awesome at the same time they were both with Arizona, which could cut in to his actually winning two of his Cy Youngs ('01, '02), though it didn't.
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