Lefty Gomez or Ron Guidry?
 

Which Yankee lefty would you take? Goofy or Gator?

Guidry. The numbers are close enough to make it a toss up overall, but I chose Gator because he was also an outstanding fielder who lost a couple of years of pitching stats because the Yankees inexplicably didn't call him up for good until he was 26. I suspect he would have posted respectable enough numbers in those years to give him the edge over Lefty, and I voted accordingly.

It's so close even you take postseason & peak performance and their ERA compares to League average into consideration. I took Gator only because his Yankees was not as great as Goofy's.

I'm picking Guidry for peak, but Gomez for career. Probably should pick Lefty for both, seeing how he's got two pitching triple crowns...but I thought Guidry's peak was a lot more impressive.

The only reason I can give as to why I'm picking this way is stats, because I'd usually have picked Lousiana Lightnin' for both in a comparison like this. In other words, I have no good reason for my choice. :)

Guidry - period. Guidry's Yankees were nowhere near the force that Goofy's were, yet he put up superior W-L numbers. For whatever reason, Guidry was marooned in the minors for an extra two or three seasons or his counting numbers would have blown well past Gomez

FWIW, Lefty Gomez had 4 seasons with NY where his RSAA was 40+. Gator only had one year like that.

How much of that was the team behind him?

Actually Guidry had behind him better infield defense with Chamblis and Mattingly at 1B, Randolph at 2B, Smalley, Harrah and Dent as SS and Nettles in 3B than Gomez with Gerigh and Dahlgreen as 1B, Lazzeri and Gordon in 2B, Crossetti as SS and Rolfe and Sewell as 3B.
And meanwhile outfield with Guidry was very unstable with a lot of names around as Jackson, Winfield, Rivers, Murcer, Piniella, White and Henderson as the most outstanding names, Gomez was the oposite with five years (1930-1934) in a row with the loser ranges of Ruth, Combs and Chapman and after a little transition had a great defensive improve with Selkirk, DiMaggio and Henrich as the main actors. Only when your refers to the catchers they had Gomez had a monstrous advantage with Dickey all the time meanwhile Guidry had a bunch of so-so defensive catchers as Munson, Cerone and Wynegar.
However , in general, Guidry had better allround defense behind him than Gomez.
Other thing aree times when they played: AL in 30's was a league where offensive production was in the roof of historic levels meanwhile AL east division in the late 70's and early 80's had a dread offensive. Probably is that the casue because Gomez have better +ERA than Guidry.
Gomez average almost 20 innings more per year than Guidry per in similar lapses of time (240 between 1931-1939 vs 220 between 1977-1985), probably the main cause to be done with only 34 years old.
As contemporary with Lefty Grove ,who was the dominating pitcher of the AL in the early 30's. However, Gomez deserves a 2 CY (1934 and 1937, both triple crowns) although Grove sore arm injury in 1934 help him.
I think that the most fair is give vote Guidry as peak (1978) but Gomez as Carrer.

RSAA is all on the pitcher, no?

A pretty even race but I would take Gomez by a little bit. Guidry's 1978 season was the best season by either pitcher though.

RSAA, like ERA, is highly dependent on the defense.

Gotta disagree. While having the aging Ruth behind him was not helpful, Gomez did have the assistance of two of the greatest ever, Joe Gordon and Joe DiMaggio. Both would rank at or near the top ten defensively at their positions. Crosetti was an exceptional shortstop as well. Guidry's OF during his career was never very good.

Dang - I'm voting lockstep with LGO. That doesnt happen too often (esp. in the totally irrelevant area of college football :) )

Lefty. He did better compared to his league in IP and ERA+ longer than Gator did.

Gomez easily
 

This isn't even close. Gomez was pitching in an era of tremendous offensive output. The 70's were watered down in comparison. Remember the 70's? 30 homers and 100 rbi's were considered great.

Gomez for the long haul; Guidry for peak (if only because he carried the Bronx Zoo on his back in '78).

If Guidry had merely an excellent year that season instead of an astonishing year, there's no comeback, no tie, no Bucky Dent, no World Series.

Goofy only had Gordon at 2b from 1938 to 1941. And Crossetti was a fine glove but had average range, nothing special. That central line Crossetti-Lazzeri (1931 - 1937) had a lot less range than the Randolph - Dent combination behind Guidry 1977 - 1981.
Actually Randolph was the 2B the whole Guidry's carrer, and he is the best defensive 2B (IMHO) in the Yankee's history. And almost the same happened with Nettles.
Anyway I find Gomez more tending to be a groundballer and deppending more of the infield range to made out in balls in play than Guidry, which Hr/inn was increasing each year. I don't know how manny games won Lazzeri with his homers but I think that someone as Randolph would be a nice support for Goofy.

It looks like Gomez all the way. He had a better RSAA for both peak and career. He had a better NW/NL winning percentage and pitched a few more innings. Guidry had a much better BR/9 but that was undoubtedly a function of the era.

I didn't realize, until flipping through the book yesterday, that Bill James has them next to each other in the NHBA. He has Guidry as the #66 pitcher and Gomez at #67.

Guidry was a great pitcher, and should be in the HOF. That he only won 170 games, in part because he was called up late (he wasn't a regular until age 26) should not automatically rule him out of the HOF.

Ditto! I agree.

I got one question though this thread seems dead...
I wonder why it took so long for Gator to blossom until he's 26? Especially he spend two seasons on the rost before that year but only pitched 31.2 innings. Was he late blossomer or the Yankees just missed him?

Thanks!

Billy Martin didn't use him in 1976, basically.

Only winning 170 games didn't "automatically" rule him out of the HoF (See Dean and Koufax). There's isn't much we can do about him not being given a chance until he was 26. He may not have been ready, he may have been stuck behind the pitching staff that was the 1975-76 Yankees, Martin hated unproven pitchers, etc., but we don't know and can't really give him any points for that.

I think the thing that keeps him out is with the modern tools of analysis we have today his career doesn't merit election. The HoVG for him.

http://www.baseballlibrary.com/baseb...Guidry_Ron.stm
I forgot to do a little search.

size does matter

Now, if Dick Williams had gotten the Yankees job, Guidry would have reached the majors much sooner.

I never realized that Guidry was the slight of a pitcher. There definitely was a bias against pitchers who weren't physical giants. If he had pitched for the Astros of recent times he would have made his mark a lot sooner.