Best Pitchers of the 21st-Century: Part 2

The On Deck Circle

This is the second of three installments in this series.  If you want to go back and read the criteria I used to compile this list, or to find out who the top ten pitchers of the 21st-century have been, here’s link to the first post.

In this second installment, you will find that some of the pitchers listed were household names in the late-20th-century as well.  This does not contradict my prior sentiment that the purpose of this list is to highlight those players who are of more recent vintage.

Although I don’t necessarily want this list to reflect a Hall of Fame ballot of retired players, the fact of the matter is that some of the players we might normally consider of pre-9/11 vintage actually spent around half or more of their careers toiling in our current century, performing at a high level.

Each pitcher included on this…

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Best Pitchers of the 21st-Century: Part 1

The On Deck Circle

Who are the best pitchers of the 21st-century?

This is the first installment of a three-part series that will examine the top pitchers the 21st-century has had to offer.

Let me be clear, I am not attempting to discuss which of the current young arms of this generation will ultimately prevail as the greatest pitcher of (at least the first quarter) of this century.  Therefore, you won’t find David Price, Steven Strasburg, or Matt Harvey on this list.  To make this list, a pitcher has to A) Have accumulated at least 30.0 career WAR, B) Not have accumulated the vast majority of his career WAR value in the 20th-century, C) Cannot have a career ERA over 4.00 and D) Cannot have been primarily a relief pitcher.

These criteria mean that, for example, Roger Clemens, who won two of his seven Cy Young awards in this century, and even though he…

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All Things Bright & Beautiful…Evolution Made Them All!

Nate Silver’s Joyless FiveThirtyEight Isn’t Expanding Journalism — It’s Reducing It

Flavorwire

In Creativity, Inc., the new book on Pixar’s creative culture by Pixar head Ed Catmull, the name behind movies like Toy Story and Ratatouille and a man who holds a PhD in computer science, rails against relying solely on data:

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The City Bus

Nice try at covering up what you’re reading, creepy old dude…

— Jackson Williams.

Let’s Overanalyze This Excerpt From the Next ‘Game of Thrones’ Book

Flavorwire

Technically, it’s the next A Song of Ice and Fire book. But with an audience supersized by the popularity of a certain HBO show that premieres its fourth season next week, the release of a sample chapter from George R.R. Martin’s upcoming The Winds of Winter was enough to break the author’s site for several hours. It’s brand-new material, never before heard at a reading or fan convention. We still don’t have a publication date yet — given the length of Martin’s books and his typical writing pace, we’ve likely still got a couple years to go — but this chapter’s enough to keep up our hopes that the wait will prove worth it. On to the overanalysis!

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Go Midwest, Young Writer: Why the Middle of the Country (Not Brooklyn) Is the Future of American Literature

Flavorwire

For those who only look at the bigger picture, yes, New York is the publishing epicenter of the country, and a lot of people who write do live in Brooklyn. As someone who writes for a living and calls Brooklyn home, I can totally back up everything you’ve heard about thriving independent bookstores, nightly literary events, and writers crowding every coffee shop. Going out means routinely bumping into editors, agents, publicists, and other people who help get new books out into the world, and that gives you every reason to think that New York City is the only place to be if you’re a writer.

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