1995 Greg Maddux Was on Another Level...

Greg Maddux is widely regarded as one of the greatest pitchers of all time. He is ranked 27th on the all time WAR leaderboard, 7th among pitchers according to baseball reference. He is on a list that consists players like Babe Ruth, Barry Bonds, Walter Johnson, and Tom Seaver among other all time greats. His ability to use his finesse and pinpoint location led him to win 4 Cy Young Awards in a row, and take home 4 ERA titles, 3 of which came in consecutive seasons. To go along with his absurd pitching abilities, he was also an extremely talented fielder, winning 18 gold gloves throughout his career, the most of any player in the history of the game. With that being said, today we’re going to focus in on one particular season, a year that Greg Maddux took his pitching to unreal heights. 1995 was arguably his best season of his career. Having already played 8 full seasons in the big leagues, Maddux had already established himself as one of the game’s best. He was coming off the season in which he won his 3rd straight Cy Young award in 1994, along with winning the gold glove and finishing 5th in MVP voting. He accomplished all of this in a season that ended prematurely in August because of a player strike. The strike carried over into early April of 1995.
 After the work stoppage came to a close, Greg Maddux took his game to a new level. The 1995 pitching leaderboard looks like a Greg Maddux fan page. He led the league in WAR, ERA, ERA+, FIP, win loss percentage, complete games, walks per 9, hits per 9, and home runs per 9, and tied Mike Mussina with 19 wins. Wow. 
There are even more stats, but I won’t bore you with stats like Base-out runs saved, which I have no idea what that one even means. One of the most impressive things from Greg Maddux’s 1995 is his ability to limit baserunners, and he took it to the next level this year. His strikeout to walk ratio was 7.87, meaning that for every 7.87 strikeouts, he walked one hitter. And he struck out less than 1 batter per inning, so it wasn’t as if he was making up for a bunch of walks with a lot of strikeouts. 
 Greg Maddux posted an ERA under 2 for the first time in his career the year prior in 1994, and was able to do it at a historically great level in 1995, posting a 1.63 ERA in 209.2 IP which led the league. To put that into perspective, Greg Maddux’s ERA was better than Walter Johnson’s 1908, Cy Young’s 1901, Zack Greinke’s 2015, and Shane Bieber’s 1.63 ERA in the 2020 shortened season. Remember how dominant he was in his 12 starts that year? Well Maddux did even better than that in more than double the sample size. To qualify for an ERA title, a pitcher must throw at least one inning per team game. So, in most cases in modern baseball, that is 162 innings. Both pitchers exceeded that threshold, but it’s worth mentioning because there are pitchers with lower ERAs, but didn’t meet the minimum number of innings pitched. After 1920, Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA is the only ERA lower than Greg Maddux’s in 1995. It’s also worth mentioning that Gibson’s was accomplished with a higher mound, and in the era of the pitcher. The higher mound contributed to a pitcher’s advantage, and MLB lowered the mound following Gibson’s dominant 1968 campaign. Greg Maddux’s WAR for 1995 was 9.7, which not only led all MLB players, it was a full win higher than second place Randy Johnson, who won his first career Cy Young that year. For a modern comparison, Shohei Ohtani in 2022 as a pitcher finished 4th in Cy Young and put up his most dominant campaign yet as a pitcher. His WAR for that season came in considerably lower than Maddux’s, at 6.2. You really can’t compare the two players, but it’s crazy to see just how elite Maddux was in 1995. 3.5 WAR better than one of the most dominant and talented pitchers of modern baseball? That’s absurd. The Atlanta Braves went into the postseason primed to make a run at the elusive World Series. In the first round they matched up against Colorado, and while Maddux struggled with a 4.50 ERA in 2 starts, the Braves still managed to pull away and advance to the NLCS. The Braves then matched up against the Cincinnati Reds to fight for a World Series berth, and Maddux put up an incredible 8 inning start, allowing just 1 run, and picking up the win. The Braves now advanced to play in their 3rd World Series in 5 years. They were looking for their first win in 38 years, as they had finished runner up in both the 1991 and 1993 campaigns. The 1994 Series was cancelled due to the strike so it’s plausible the Braves could have appeared in another World Series had the postseason not been canceled. Regardless of that outcome, the Braves were now matching up against the formerly known Cleveland Indians in hopes of winning it all. In 2 World Series starts, Greg Maddux threw a complete game, and got through 7 innings in the other, putting up a 2.25 ERA and guiding the Braves to their first World Series title since 1957. Tom Glavine may have won the Series MVP, but Greg Maddux was the Braves MVP in 1995. After the season came to a close, there really wasn’t a debate regarding who should take home the Cy Young award. Let’s take a look at his season as a whole. Like we mentioned earlier, Maddux led the league in what feels like every major category, excluding strikeouts, but who cares when you put up stats like this. A 1.63 ERA, 10 complete games with 3 of those being shutouts, a .811 WHIP, and a 260 ERA+, meaning he was 160% better than the league average pitcher that year. Naturally, Greg Maddux took home the Cy Young in 1995, as well as winning a Gold Glove and finishing 3rd in MVP voting. Which, if this were to be voted on again today, with all that we know about WAR, FIP, and other stats that tell the full story of a player’s season, I believe that Greg Maddux had an MVP caliber season, and that’s saying something coming from someone who doesn’t believe pitchers should be able to win the Most valuable player award. It’s just that in 1995, Greg Maddux was far and away the most dominant pitcher, and you can make the case that he was even more valuable than position players who play every single game, as opposed to every 5. Let me know in the comments down below if you all learned something new today. Thank you all for watching and I’ll see you guys in the next video. Later.