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Bob Friend vs Catfish Hunter
Two talented pitchers, respected by their teammates and opponents, both endowed with excellent nicknames--two very different careers. Who do you like? Was Catfish's strong suit his choice of teammates? Did The Warrior pitch just well enough to lose?
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8Bob Friend37.50%3Catfish Hunter37.50%3About equal12.50%1Impossible to compare across contexts12.50%1The poll is expired.
Indeed the first step toward finding out is to acknowledge you do not satisfactorily know already; so that no blight can so surely arrest all intellectual growth as the blight of cocksureness.--CS Peirce -
Seems to me there was aa thread on this last year, or at least a discussion about it. I remember Yankwood pressing hard for Hunter's superiority.
In my opinion they are very close. I saw Friend through most of his career. He was a good, no frills pitcher. Almost always healthy, able to go deep into games, no trick pitches. Friend was on more poor/mediocre teams than good ones. I think it is very likely that Friend's W-L record would have been at last similar to Hunter's had he been on good teams consistently. Both were very good, not great pitchers- neither one meets my personal criteria for HOF- worthiness, but they were both strong workhorses. -
The stats say it is just about a push, but I saw both of these guys pitch a lot of games and just never thought of Friend being as good as Hunter.Buck O'Neil: The Monarch of BaseballComment
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A lot of pitchers from the 60s/70s are overrated by casual fans. That being said, I believe that league quality was very high during Catfish's times, more so than in Friend's times. I went with Catfish.Comment
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