Tag Archives: best Braves players ever

H2H 155: Phil Niekro vs. Gaylord Perry – Who was Better?

In baseball’s long and storied history, there are numerous examples of brothers who excelled at the MLB level, e.g. Paul and Lloyd Waner, the DiMaggios, the Alous, the Alomars, etc.  From the pitching side of things, the winningest brothers in MLB history are Phil and Joe Niekro (539 combined wins), followed closely by Gaylord and Jim Perry (529 wins); no other pair of brothers has even surpassed 400 total wins.  Among these standout siblings, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry were the more illustrious half of each pairing – with 5,000+ career innings pitched, 300+ wins, and 3,000+ strikeouts apiece, each hurler spent more than two decades in MLB and was among the greatest workhorses of the 1960s and 1970s; these parallels thus make for an interesting comparison:

Who was better – Phil Niekro or Gaylord Perry?

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H2H 129: Greg Maddux vs. Warren Spahn – Who was Better?

Take a look at MLB’s career pitching wins list and when you scroll past the workhorses of the late 19th and early 20th century (Cy Young, Walter Johnson, Christy Mathewson, etc.), i.e. post the dead-ball era, you come across Warren Spahn at #6 and Greg Maddux at #8 with 363 and 355 career victories, respectively.  Known for their pitching guile and control rather than overpowering heat, both the southpaw Spahn and the righty Maddux spent their primes with the Braves franchise and helped lead the team to World Series titles nearly 40 years apart – thus, it seems only natural to compare these all-time MLB and legendary Braves pitchers and ask:

Who was better – Greg Maddux or Warren Spahn?

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H2H 91: Jim Edmonds vs. Andruw Jones – Who was Better?

When you think of center fielders, some of the greatest all-around players in baseball history come to mind: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., Ty Cobb, and currently, Mike Trout, just to name a few.  As one of the game’s “glamour” positions, the best center fielders are wizards with both the bat and the glove; during the 2000s, two of the best center fielders in baseball were Jim Edmonds of the St. Louis Cardinals and Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves.  Both were All-Star and MVP-caliber players in their primes who won numerous Gold Gloves and in full, their careers sit right at the borderline of the Hall of Fame.  In comparing the careers of these two sterling center fielders and their Hall of Fame credentials, naturally this also leads to the question:

Who was better – Jim Edmonds or Andruw Jones?

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