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That's what Frayed Knot said Tom Glavine would be, when compared to Derek Lowe in mid-summer of '04. I suggested that the Mets should JUMP at the chance to do a straight Lowe-for-Glavine deal, and FK corrected me by pointing out in the above-stated flat prediction that Glavine would certainly be better in the year and a half to follow. Now that '04 and '05 are in the books, let's look at the record:
[url]http://www.baseball-reference.com/l/lowede01.shtml
and
[url]http://www.baseball-reference.com/g/glavito02.shtml
The '04 stats are a little tricky, because Glavine was pitching well in mid-summer and Lowe was not, but we've already argued '04 (I think I won the argument because of Lowe's amazingly good post-season performance, which I count as a positive and FK didn't count at all. But in any event Glavine was not clearly Lowe's superior pitcher in the latter half of '04.)
Comparing '05 stats , I'd say they came out about even, Lowe ahead in IP and starts, Glavine with a better w/l record (13-13, 12-15), ERAs virtually identical (3.61. 3.53) , Lowe ahead on WHIP (1.252 to 1.363). I could argue that Lowe's '05 was better than Glavine's but I don't need to, to win this argument. All I need to show is that Glavine's '05 was NOT clearly superior to Lowe's, and it it was clearly not.
Now we could go on arguing that Lowe is, at this point, with 04 and 05 in the books with no clear superiority to Glavine, the more valuable property. Assuming they're both equally skilled right now, would you rather have a 32 year old or a 39 year old with the same skill level?
Mind you, this was a deal that I claimed the Mets could never get the Sox to do, because Lowe's value and potential for future big years was clearly
way above Glavine's, but Frayed Knot was claiming that, if the Sox somehow lost their minds and agreed to this deal, the Mets should turn it down.
'Fraid not.
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