Some Learning Programming Via Videogames Links

A coworker recently asked me about approaching programming through making video games. This is what I put together:

If you're looking for tools to encourage learning to program via making computer games, Invent With Python is likely the best fit. It's a book written specifically with the goal of teaching programming skills through game creation and it's F/OSS. Python has really gained a strong foothold as a teaching language with strong practical applications, too.

As an immediate impetus, there's the Liberated Pixel Cup. It's a competition to create game content and put together games using that content.

Invent with Python and related resources

Invent With Python

Making Games With Python & Pygame: Sequel to Invent With Python. Includes source code and discussion for various simple games.

Pygame: The actual Python game engine used above. Quite powerful,

Other Python Programming Books/Resources

Using Pygame

Game Programming: The L Line, The Express Line to Learning

Introduction to Programming Using Python and Pygame

Without Pygame

Snake Wrangling for Kids: Learning to Program with Python: Python programming book oriented at kids, ages 8 and up.

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python: The MIT OpenCourseWare Introduction to programming class. Very useful.

Learning Python: In many ways, the book for Learning Python. It's not as beginner oriented and it's not F/OSS.

The Python.org Tutorial and

Python Docs. (These are Python 2.7. Python 3 might be more useful)

Learn Python The Hard Way: One more online book oriented at beginners. Reasonably popular.

Python Wiki Beginner's Guide: An amalgamation of Python beginner's resources.

Python Wiki PythonGames Entry: Discussion on both Python games and game development resources.

Other Programming Language/Intro to Game Creation resources

I found surprisingly little outside of the Python sphere. There's a lot of game development stuff, of course, but little is beginner focused.

Game Maker's Apprentice: Introductory game programming text for Game Maker (Delphi based) proprietary game making software. Very well reviewed.

C Programming's Game programming page: Not really intro oriented and Microsoft focused.

Beginning C# Game Programming: C# intro book. Comes with mixed reviews and apparently has a lot of errors.

MSDN Beginning Game Introduction: Microsoft's Beginning Game development introduction

GUI based game creating environments

Game Editor: F/OSS 2D game authoring

Game Maker: Education oriented, but proprietary, game design software that uses it's own, Delphi based scripting language.

Maker3D Crossplatform 3D RPG. Might be good, looks a bit scuzzy to me.

RPG Maker: Long running RPG creator series. Largely Japanese.

Wikipedia RPG Creation Software Page

Advanced Topics

Programming communities/sites

Reddit

Reddit is a user moderated community with lively discussions with a wide variety of talented contributors. Particularly in technical subreddits such as /r/programming, industry leading experts show up regularly in discussions and often offer a lot of help. It also contains the dregs of the internet, as any such open site does.

Learn Programming

General Programming

Game Development Reddit

Gaming Developer communities/sites

PyWeek: Python Game Programming Challenge community with bi-annual challenges.

AltDevBlogADay: A daily blog with a lot of useful discussion on game design, development, marketing, etc. Very, very good.

GameDev.net: A game development community.

Gaming/Graphics Engines

Panda3D: F/OSS game and simulation engine originally from Disney and now maintained by Carnegie Mellon. C++ under the hood, but intended to be called from Python. Apparently very powerful with several successful commercial games using it.

CrystalSpace: F/OSS realtime 3D graphics SDK. Related is CEL which extends Crystal Space into the game engine realm and includes bindings for Python.

OGRE: F/OSS 3D rendering engine only. C++ based.

Bullet: Commonly used (within gaming industry)F/OSS physics engine with rigid body and soft body support as well as collision detection.

Other tools/Resources

Blender: F/OSS 3D content creation suite. Scriptable with, yes, you guessed it, Python. Related is the Game Blender, a game engine.

OpenGameArt.org: Community and repository for open access art resources. Also hosts the Liberated Pixel Cup.

ccMixter: Community and repository for Creative Commons licensed remixable sound and music pieces.

The Freesound Project: Like ccMixter, but only with sound samples.

Hackable Games

Games and simulators that are open source and useful to look at, perhaps.

Flight Gear: F/OSS flight simulator. Highly detailed, written in C++.

Frets On Fire: Mostly F/OSS music rhythm game built using Python and Pygame.

The Quake/IdTech Family: Open source releases of the game engines behind id's Quake family of first person shooters

Battle For Wesnoth: F/OSS turned based strategy game. Lively community and easily created campaigns plus scriptability (through Lua) and it's own mod community.

The Spring Engine: A F/OSS real time strategy (RTS) game engine and framework. Spring:1944 is one standout game built on the engine. Of note, the computer controlled enemies can be scripted with Python, C++, Lua and Java derived languages.

Widelands: A newer and slower F/OSS RTS game than the Spring derived games.

Cube 2: Sauerbraten: Another F/OSS FPS engine and game.

FreeCiv: Empire building turnbased strategy game

Note:

I've written the post in the Markdown, um, markup language. There are a variety of tools to convert Markdown into other formats, like HTML or PDF. I use pandoc. There's also a web based converter.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 13, 4th Starter

I've gone over my general starting pitcher considerations here.

SelectionRoger Clemens

You can make a strong case for Clemens as the greatest pitcher of all time. Remarkably Durable across 24 seasons, Clemens replaces Maddux's long, gracious career arc with 3 distint peaks, centered around late 80s with the Red Sox, his two years with the Blue Jays in the late 90s and a smaller one with the Astros around 2004. Powerful, with overwhelming stuff, he was hard to square up on, with only a 0.66 HR/9 rate. His fly ball tendencies, high strike out rate (8.55 K/9, 23.1%), ruggedness and somewhat lesser control (both with the ball (2.89 BB/9) and with his bat hurling temper) remind me of, well, Curt Schilling on steroids. It's worth noting that the considerable majority of Clemen's innings were in the American League, so that 8.55 K/9 is somewhat depressed compared to Schilling's numbers.

Still, an amazing athlete and pretty much the definition of power pitcher, Clemens commands a spot on this team. His career line of 3.12/3.09/70/70 (ERA/FIP/ERA-/FIP-) with 145.5 fWAR is overwhelming. His best season is a hard choice, but I'll take 1997 with the Blue Jays: 2.05/2.25/45/50 for 11.1 fWAR. Roger Clemens, the Rocket, too close to the edge for comfort but damn impressive to watch.

Alternatives

Tom Seaver

There are two Tom Seavers. The demigod that pitched for the Mets and mere human baseball star that pitched for everybody else. It's the demigod that earns the mention here, particularly for his 1.76/1.93/51/59 line in 1971, with a K/9 rate of 9.08 and a BB/9 rate of 1.92. The human's tenure brought that down to 2.86/3.04/79/85 for his career, but it's still enough to rate Seaver among the greatest pitchers of all time.

Nolan Ryan

Ryan, on the other hand, managed to remain inhumanly overpowering for over 25 years. He just had issues with that, you know, strike zone thing. He got better at it, though, going from a BB/9 rate of 6.87 with the mets in 1970 (his worse year) to a BB/9 of less than 4 for most of the 80s and early 90s. Still high for anyone else, Ryan was so hard to hit (lowest batting average against of all time at .200, a K% of 25.3%, and a K/9 of 9.55), he still managed to be a great pitcher without the control. His lifetime line of 3.19/2.97/90/84 suggests that he was maybe somewhat better than his ERA would indicate, but it's not quite enough to get him on this list. If you can only take pitchers over 40, though, he's a definite pick up. His best season was probably in 1987, 2.76/2.47/69/62 with a 11.48 K/9 (that's a 30% K rate for a starting pitcher). The Ryan Express was 40 years old.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 14, 5th Starter

Now we've reached the starting pitcher slots. The slots are roughly in inverse order of rotation spot, so today we select the 5th starter. Since the requirements of a starting pitcher are pretty much the same for all five, I'm going to discuss a couple of alternative for each slot, but there's nothing special about any of them, they're all starting pitchers. I might do left handed alternatives with any left handed starters I might select.

Obviously, starters selections need to be actual starters. Mariano Rivera would make a poor choice, I think. Or at least a hard to justify one. Other than that, I favor picking the pitchers with high values. Pitching WAR is a good start, but I'm going to favor rate stats combined with extended track record. So my starters tend to have a strong career with a decent length and a high peak. The pitcher's bats actually do matter, but only half as much as they would in a no DH season, since I'm splitting the season into 81 games with DH, 81 games without. Pitcher fielding also adds some value.

I definitely favor liveball pitchers over deadball era, and I don't even consider pre 1900 performances. Apologies to Rube Waddell and Cy Young. Preintegration performances are also discounted some.

Selection Greg Maddux

Possibly no pitcher combines peak and extended performance like Greg Maddux. His peak was longer than many All Stars' careers. From 1990 to 2001, Maddux had an fWAR over 5.7 every single year. For seven of those years, his ERA (and FIP) was less than 3.00.

Maddux's peak even had it's own peak, with his normalized ERA and FIP coming in at or below 70 every year from 1992 to 1998. And that's just the peak. In his 22 qualifying seasons, Maddux was never worse than league average. Longevity, check. A brilliant, extended peak, check. How'd he do it?

Well known as a thinking man's pitcher, Maddux never excelled at getting strikeouts. No doubt Maddux was a great observer of hitters with the ability to spot and exploit weaknesses. Legned has it that he basically outthought hitters, setting them up months in advance so that they would feel comfortable in a high leverage situation later in the season and then turning the tables. While probably apocryphal, the legend couldn't hurt Maddux, as any hitter who believed it would set himself up, no input from Maddux required.

While batted ball data is only available after Maddux's peak, it's clear that did a good job keeping the ball on the ground in those years, though not a great one. Maddux did seem to thrive on location and movement, though, particularly during his peak. His lifetime batting average on balls in play is somewhat lower than average at .281, which, combined with his low home run rate (0.63 HR/9 for his career and atn amazing four homeruns in 202 innings pitched in 1994) and only moderate strike out rate (16.5% for 6.06 K/9), suggests that Maddux not only induced weaker contact on fly balls, but had fairly strong groundball tendencies during his peak years. Maddux is the sort of pitcher who will be that much better pitching in front of a strong defensive infield, so he may see more starts with Ozzie Smith behind him than the other starters.*

*For similar K% and HR/9 rates, groundball pitchers will show higher batting average on balls in play than fly ball pitchers because groundballs in play are much more likely to be hits than fly balls.

Maddux's most obvious trait as a pitcher, though, is his extreme control. He walked only 4.9% of the batters he faced across his career at only 1.8 per 9 innings. That control combined with his ability to keep the ball in the park meant that while Maddux relied on his defense to the make the play, he gave them the opportunity to do so as well.

I should note that while Maddux didn't exhibit legendary strikeout "stuff", his fastball started out around 93 mph early in his career and still ran about 86 mph at the end of his career with the Padres. And his offspeed pitches had plenty of separation (at least at the end of his career) with his Padres tenure curveball averaging 73 mph and both his changeup and slider average about 80 mph. Maddux is the paragon of the "hit your spots, change speeds, know the hitter, have movement on the ball" skillset and, as a result, is a strong candidate for greatest pitcher of all time. He definitely deserves his spot on this team.

Alternatives

Curt Schilling

In many ways, the fly ball version of Greg Maddux, Schilling effectively traded Maddux's lower home run rate for a higher strike out rate. Still, lots of control (1.96 BB/9) and a lot of strikeouts (8.6 K/9). He was also some what less durable than Maddux across his career and took some time to work out his early control issues. Still, a surprisingly underrated pitcher who ought to be a no doubt Hall of Famer on his regular season performances alone, I suspect what will eventually get Schilling in are his famed post season performances with the Diamonbacks and the Red Sox. An amazing pitcher overall, with a career line of 3.46/3.23/80/74 and 86.1 fWAR. His best year was maybe 2001, maybe 2002, when he posted lines of 2.98/3.11/66/68 (7.6 fWAR) and 3.23/2.40/75/54 (9.7 fWAR), respectively.

He also hurts my theory about fly ball pitchers having lower batting average balls in play, with a .293 lifetime compared to Maddux's .281. Maybe Maddux really was that good at inducing weak contact. Oh, and Schilling is a wonderful case study for how the DH effects pitching stats. Going from NL to AL in 2004, his K/9 stable around 10.5 for the last three years, dropped to 8.2ish for the next 3. Facing pitchers can really buff your strikeouts.*

*Nolan Ryan pitched 2737 innings in DH era AL. At 2 K/9, that cost him another 608 or so strikeouts.

Roy Halladay

Halladay is another pitcher with strong similarities to Maddux. High control, good but not great strikeout rate, high groundball rate (that's been on the decline) and good home run suppression. Halladay makes a good choice for the same reason Maddux does, though his true talent might be a smidgen or three less. Likely Hall of Famer, with a career 3.25/3.31/72/75 line and 71.3 fWAR in 14 years. His best year was arguably 2011: 2.35/2.20/61/56 for 8.2 fWAR.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 15 Backup Catcher

One of the reasons I've always been frustrated by the eight+pitchers all time teams is the absence of the backup catcher. Such rosters may include a couple of starting pitchers and maybe a reliever or three (and maybe even a couple of bench bats), but who warms up the relievers? It gets even better as the rosters begin to include full rotations and reasonable bullpens. Then, it's plausible that the pitching staff can cover a full season and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that all seven nonbattery players could manage a 154 or even 162 game season.

But nobody is going to catch 162* games in a season. Nobody who wants to actually use their legs in the future, anyway. Catching is gruelling, body destroying work and catchers are largely underappreciated by baseball fandom. Anything roster claiming to be a baseball team ought to have a backup catcher.

*The highest is 160, caught by Randy Hundley in 1968. In 1944, Ray Mueller and Frankie Hayes caught all 155 of their team's games.

I figure that 32 starts is a good estimate for a backup's playing time. Of course, a defensively oriented backup might be brought in as a late inning replacement (Yadier Molina in for Mike Piazza sort of thing) and a gifted bat could expect to see time as a pinch hitter or maybe even DH given a perfect storm of injuries. I estimate a light hitting backup might see about 150 plate appearances (though with the difficulty of getting my line up out, it might be noticably more), and a heavy hitter

Selection Joe Mauer

Despite his merely average 2011 and his mysterious weak leg disease, Mauer has returned to form as an excellent offense first catcher with apparently decent defense. (Catcher defense is notoriously hard to quantify). He's averaged just under 5 fWAR as season for the past 8. His batting like is strong: .322/.403/.468/132 (avg/obp/slg/wRC+). And Mauer has had a high peak so far, hitting .365/.444/.587/170 in 2009, good for a 7.9 fWAR season and an MVP.

While Mauer isn't much of a home run threat, he's 22.8% line drive rate is exceptional.* A high contact/high OBP line drive lefty, Mauer makes an excellent lefty bench bat when he's not starting at catcher. His OBP is main driver in this selection, as the power in the rest of the line up drives up to the value of getting on base. Mauer's handedness is a big part of the reason I picked him, as not only could I use a lefty on the bench, my starter selection is right handed, so I can pick starter off days to gain platoon advantage.

* Damn, I wish we knew Stan Musial's line drive rate. Let's set the over/under at 30%. I'll take over.

Alternatives

Ivan Rodriguez

The obvious choice for the more defensively minded backup, our still rudimentary estimators of catcher defensive value peg Pudge as the greatest defensive catcher of all time with something like 166 runs saved above average. His caught stealing rate for his career is an impressive 45.68%. His defensive reputation and career batting line .296/.334/.464/104 belie his considerable batting peak, with his best qualifying season being 2004's .334/.383/.510/134. His durability was also exceptional: 2348 games started at catcher (most all time), 7 at first base and one a second base (where he had 1 put out).*

*For the 2006 Tigers. Presuming Brandon Inge was at third, one wonders if Jim Leyland could've swung an "all catcher infield".

Eventual Hall of Famer (and owner of a career 73.9 fWAR) Rodiguez's big weakness was lack of plate discipline, with only a 5.0% walk rate. Even so, he's an excellent pick, with unprecendented durability, elite defense and a strong bat, he's just not the best fit for my line up.

Mickey Cochrane

Cochrane profiles a lot like Joe Mauer, but from the pre-integration era (points off) and without the 170 wRC+ season. A good choice, particularly if love you OBP (and I do).

A power bat

If you prefer that your backup catcher be a huge bat of the bench, even if he's (relatively) defensively weak, Mike Piazza makes a good choice. Life time .308/.377/.545/140 is great line for anybody, with a fantastic peak in 1997 of .362/.431/.638/183. Then again, he's a righty, doesn't quite match Mauer on OBP (I conject I'll have plenty of power either way, I'll take saving my outs) and you might want to take Jimmie Foxx, anyway. Only 108 games at catcher across his career, we know at least that he was familiar with the position and astronomical (though again pre-integration) career batting line of .325/.428/.609/159. Josh Gibson, too deserves a mention.

Jose Molina

In many ways, the opposite of all of the other options, Molina seems a strange pick. A career batting line of .238/.286/.342/66 and a career fWAR of 4.7 make him appear, in some ways, to be the canonical backup catcher, Molina actually can be justified as an avant garde choice. It seems that Molina's hidden value lies in his ability to frame pitches. The Rays certainly think so, as his current .196/.278/.309/67 batting line isn't very enticing. From the Mike Fast's linked article:

Catchers appear to have a substantial impact on the success of their pitchers through their ability to gain extra strike calls from the umpire. This is an important factor to consider when valuing the contributions of catchers to a team. We have identified at least two specific techniques that affect catcher performance in this arena. Given the important impact on major-league teams, further research along that line is warranted.

Fast estimates that Molina's pitch framing ability is worth about 35 runs above average per 120 games caught. That's substational (and shows how much more work needs to be done on catcher defense, as that outweighs all of the components of catcher defense that we do account for by a signficant margin). That comes .032 runs per inning saved above average.

So, if you're an uncaring manager who cares not for your starter's knees or needs, or you just like he can take it, you could use your starter or maybe your utility player for nearly every regular season start and use Molina as a late inning shutdown catcher. Assuming he averaged 2.0 innings of catcher relief per game for, say, 150 games, that's worth about 9.7 runs above average defense (roughly an extra win across a season) and hopefully keeps his lousy bat out of the lineup. Given the higher leverage of late situations, that significant improvement to pitching performance that Molina provides could actually be worth more. Just warm him up with the shutdown reliever and play "Hells Bells" as your shutdown battery takes the field.

The pitchers might love it, too. Even for Marianno Rivera, the difference between Jose Molina and a league average catcher is 0.29 ERA, which would put him at 1.92 ERA (and presumably lower his FIP by the same, given that pitch framing largely effects strike outs and walks).*

*So what's the difference between Jorge Posada, an apparently bad pitch framer, and Jose Molina, a great pitcher framer on Rivera's ERA? Calculate Rivera's Earned runs per inning, Posada and Molina's Pitch Framing runs saved per inning from Fast's data and determine their difference. Subtract that difference (or rather it's absolute value) from Rivera's ER per inning and multiply by nine. I get 1.50. A lifetime ERA of 1.50. High leverage, shutdown catchers (or rather shutdown batteries) are either the wave of the future or the impetus for the next sea change in baseball with automated strike calling. You read it here first.

Jose Molina, so damn crazy, it just might work.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 16, Yet Another Lefty Relief Pitcher

It's easy for a manager to over manage. Most of the time, it's best to let your starters play. They are your starters for a reason, so assuming you haven't made bad line up selections substitutions usually mean taking the bat out of a better player's hands. One area where a manager must make substitutions is with pitcher substitution. Not only must the manager know when his starter has had enough, he must pick the right pitcher to follow him. (And, without the DH, decide when it's advantageous to trade out even an effective pitcher for a pinch hitter).

The manager has control of a couple of factors. He can pick when he makes the substitution and who he puts in. This allows the manager to play the platoon match-up based on the upcoming batters. Having a lefty and a righty available in the bullpen means that, for at least two of the next three batters (barring switch hitters), he has the (very real) platoon advantage. And if you're starter is tiring, you can use every advantage you can get.

I don't mean to say that each pitcher should be a one out specialist, but rather given an all time great lefty and an all time great righty in the bullpen, picking the pitcher with the platoon advantage against more upcoming hitters makes good sense. And since I have my pick of the all time greats, I might as well take advantage.*

* And one more tiny thing: if my opponent knows I play the platoon advantage, he may feel compelled to always splitting his batters left-right-left-right. As dangerous as Williams-Mays-Ruth-Pujols may be, it's not quite as dangerous as Williams-Ruth-Musial-Mays, particularly against a right handed pitcher.

So, without any better justification than the above, I decided that my last bullpen slot should be a left handed pitcher. Well, that and there are some amazing LHPs to choose from.

Selection: Lefty Grove

Arguably the best LHP ever, Grove curiously gets left out of a lot of greatest of all time discussions. Perhaps because he pitched during a strong hitter friendly era, perhaps because he predated the Cy Young award or perhaps because his 300 wins (note: this is in no way an endorsement of traditional pitcher wins as a useful statistic, it's not), didn't stand out as much against the backdrop of the prior generation's greats like Walter Johnson and Christy Mathewson (or the next generation's Warren Spahn) and their astronomical win totals. Grove's career was also "only" 17 years long, which hurts him some in the various counting stats

But for those 17 years, Grove was amazing. His lifetime pitching line: 3.06/3.36/69/77 (ERA/FIP/ERA-/FIP-) puts him among the greatest starters ever and trailing only Randy Johnson and the brilliant but brief Sandy Koufax for post 1900 lefties in normalized FIP and beating them both in normalized ERA.* His peak wasn't bad, either, with a 2.06/3.01/47/71 in his 1931 MVP season (that's an ERA less than half league average). His FIP suggests he may have been a bit lucky that year and prefers Grove's also excellent 1930 season (2.54/3.09/53/64) as a more standout -- if slightly less effective -- performance.

*The relative merits of FIP and ERA over an entire career are definitely up for debate. Both try to correct a pitcher's performance for the vagaries of defense to provide a truer measure of a pitcher's performance than simple runs scored against average. FIP is a better predictor of future ERA than ERA for most pitchers, but some pitcher's consistently out perform their FIP.**

**And then there's xFIP. There's always room for improvement, we're pretty much always wrong, but we can be less wrong

Alternatives

Warren Spahn

Here's a fun debate: What are better, the quotes by Warren Spahn or the quotes about him?

exempli gratia:

By Spahn:

He was something like zero for twenty-one the first time I saw him. His first major league hit was a home run off me and I'll never forgive myself. We might have gotten rid of Willie (Mays) forever if I'd only struck him out.

I'm probably the only guy who played for Casey before and after he was a genius.

Regarding his encounters with pre and post Yankees Casey Stengel.

About Spahn:

I don't think (Warren) Spahn will ever get into the Hall of Fame. He'll never stop pitching.

--Stan Musial

He's not in the film, but he's still our all-time favorite left-hand pitcher.

--The producers of Naked Gun

And of course, "Spahn and Sain and Pray for Rain"

The quotable, talented, immortal Spahn is considered by many to be the greatest lefty of all time. But... the stats don't bear that out. While a deserving Hall of Famer in my mind, Spahn is the personification of the Very Good Accumulator*, with a career pitching line of 3.09/3.44/84/94. Even his two exceptional years by ERA-, 1947 and 1953, look like years that combined very good pitching with vergy good luck (with FIP- of 82 and 75, respectively). Twenty one years as a starting pitcher is an amazing accomplishment in itself, but Spahn's consistent career is somewhat lacking in peak performance to make this team.

*Next time you think or hear "It's not the Hall of Very Good" or "He's just an accumulator" regarding a Hall of Fame candidate, ask "Well, what about Warren Spahn?"

Clayton Kershaw

At the moment, Kershaw trails only Randy Johnson, Grove and Koufax in the normalized ERA and FIP among modern left handed starters. While it's early in his career, Kershaw was deserving Cy Young winner last year with a 2.28/2.47/62/66 line. Time will tell if he ends up being an all time great, but if you're looking for the next great left hander, Kershaw is your best bet.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 17 Swingman

Picking pitchers is a surprisingly difficult proposition. There aren't really clearly defined roles or necessary considerations the way there with position players. Pitchers pitch, largely, and while some may excel in certain things and in certain cases. By and large, a great pitcher is a great pitcher. Rivera, arguably, is an exception to this rule -- his one perfect pitch seems to have made him a genius reliever but not such a great starter. Who knows, though, what would have been had he stayed in the starter role. That cutter, with a decent sinker and changeup? Not a starter I'd want to face.

The whole point of a bullpen is that it can be used in anyway you imagine. So it's useful to have flexible pitchers. As such, I'm labelling one of my slots "swingman" and aiming it for the sort of pitcher that is both a first class starter and a shutdown reliever. Few pitchers have shown the flexibility to do both.

Selection: Satchel Paige

It may be that Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was the greatest pitcher that ever lived. Anecdotally, the case is strong. I'll let a Hall of Fame quality storyteller relate Paige's fastball:

I'm going on faith here, obviously, but think about this: Satchel Paige became a legendary pitcher even though (1) He spent his prime playing in Negro Leagues where few media members saw him; (2) He really did not throw anything but a fastball. The second part is what's so intriguing: Paige named his pitches -- Bat Dodger, Midnight Creeper and so on -- but best anyone can tell they were all fastballs thrown at various speeds and with remarkable command. When Paige was asked about how he changed his grips, he would scoff and say he just grabbed the baseball and threw it. I don't know that it was quite THAT casual, but I do think Paige basically threw fastballs and only fastballs until later in his career. Basically every player who faced that fastball -- from DiMaggio on down -- said it was unlike anything they had ever faced, that it was on top of them before they could react, that it was by them before they could blink. And his control was exalted; the story went that he would warm up by throwing fastballs over stick of chewing gum.

I sometimes wonder, by the way, if Paige's fastball was a lot like Mariano Rivera's cutter.

--Joe Posnanski

The data isn't bad either. In 476 innings pitched in the majors -- a pittiance that at least demonstrates the injustice of segregation -- Paige posted a 3.29/3.27/81/81 (ERA/FIP/ERA-/FIP-), all over the age of 40. He mixed in starts and relief apperances, demonstrating his swingman ability at an age many greats are long out of baseball.

There is also the Negro league data to consider. Paige allowed an average of 3.22 runs per 9 innings (not earned runs, but all of the runs, regardless of fielding mistakes) across almost 1300 innings pitched in the Negro Leagues. His strikeouts per 9, 8.1, and his walks per 9, 1.7 suggest a pitcher with excellent stuff and fine control.

As Paige was primarily a fastball pitcher, I'd likely prefer using him in a relief and long relief role to avoid giving opponents too many looks at his (many different) fastballs. But I have faith in his ability to start as necessary and so he gets my nod at swingman.

Alternatives

John Smoltz

Former Cardinal John Smoltz originally occupied the slot Billy Wagner now has, when it was my swingman spot. Though I could not resist or avoid the Wagner temptation, Smoltz has a deserving case for almost every role a right handed pitcher can be shoehorned into. Switched back and forth between starter and closer through out his Braves career, Smoltz never lost his effectiveness, even in his unlucky final season, where a 6.35 ERA belied a 21.2% K rate and a 5.2% walker rate, good for a 3.87 FIP. Smoltz was a very good to great starter and an utterly amazing reliever, particularly his 2003 year where he posted a 1.12/1.54/25/35 pitching line in 64 innings. Not even Mariano Rivera had a peak that high as a reliever. Smoltz's best year as a starter probably came in 1996: 2.94/2.64/69/60 with 253 innings pitched. Across his 21 year career, Smoltz averaged 3.33/3.24/81/78.

Smoltz's shutdown/meltdown ratio is worth noting too, 131/20. That's mindboggling high. It's over 6 to 1, and even Rivera only manages just under 5 to 1. Smoltz probably represents one of the best arguments against Rivera as "greatest reliever/closer of all time." Oh, and Smoltz's bat was (relatively) decent as well, with Fangraphs putting him at 7.5 batting Wins Above Replacement.

An incredible pitcher with amazing peaks as both a reliever and starter, Smoltz makes a great swingman choice. Maybe we could go back and make this a 26 man roster.

Hoyt Wilhelm

Knuckleballers seem like a natural choice for a swingman. Their arms are effectively rubber, allowing them to plug into the rotation as necessary and the shear alienness of their pitches is only exacerbated by coming in as relief for a fireballer. Hoyt Wilhelm is the prototypical swingman knuckleballer, with plenty of innings in both relief and as a starter. For his career, wilhelm produced a 2.52/3.06/68/81 line, and it's worth noting that fielding independent metrics like FIP may have issues with knuckleball pitchers. Either way, Wilhelm was a durable, flexible and effective pitcher and the best choice for a knuckleballer if you require one for you team. Given the heat the rest of the team is throwing, I'd bet Wilhelm would be even more effective.

Greatest Possible Baseball Team: Slot 18 Relief Pitcher/Strikeout Master

While I've tried to come up with specific roles for my relief pitchers, the intent is to give me tactical flexibility rather than limit their actual use. It's nice to have situationally useful strengths, but one should be careful not to trade off too much general ability for them. So all of my picks are made with the understanding that the pitchers be good in general, as well.

Originally, I had the next for slots listed just as relief pitcher, but I've come up with a few more situations I'd like to have the right tool for the job in. For instance, it would be nice to have a pitcher who's so good at generating strikeouts that he's your go to guy for situations such as runners on 2nd and 3rd, no outs. And it would be nice if he didn't issue too many walks, either. Being able to throw multiple innings or start is a plus, too. One man stands out above all the rest:

Selection: Randy Johnson

Wait, I've already picked Johnson. Hmmm. Let's try this again:

Selection: Billy Wagner

Originally, Wagner wasn't on my roster. He was always a bridesmaid, never a bride. But Wagner was (and probably still could be) a fantastic relief pitcher. He actually does possess the highest career strikeout rate of all time (33.2%) and a good walk rate (8.3%). And he kept popping up: Ridiculous against lefties but still strong against righties, crazy high K rate, excellent relief record, tiny ERA and FIP. Wagner is basically the relief pitcher alter ego of Randy Johnson. And I couldn't avoid him in searching for great pitching performances if I tried. I've written about him twice already, so I don't feel the need to say more.

I do need to note that he'd be used more as a LOOGY than Johnson, with Johnson getting longer relief appearances and some starts. And next week, who knows, maybe I'll decide that Johnson is my starter. Or that my entire pitching roster consists of 4 clones each of Johnson and Pedro Martinez with a Mariano Rivera, a Brandon Webb and a Phil Niekro thrown in to leaven the mix.

Alternatives

Sergio Romo

A quick glance through the K% and BB% columns on Fangraphs and one pitcher stands out quickly. Sergio Romo has a 31.2% K rate with only a 5.7% walk rate. That's fanastic and makes him ideal for this sort of role. Except... Romo, a right handed pitcher, has had much greater success against righties than lefties. A 2.17/2.29/54/57 (ERA/FIP/ERA-/FIP-) overall, he's had only 65 innings versus lefties (and about 120 versus right handers) in his career. For such small sample sizes, xFIP (expected FIP), which regresses the batted ball data (like home runs per fly ball) used by FIP, performs better. Romo's xFIP versus right handers is excellent 2.80, but an merely ok 3.92 versus lefties.

Of course, on a roster with Randy Johnson available, you could use Romo as a right handend strikeout pitcher. He compliments a pitcher like Johnson (or Wagner) extremely well. If one uses Johnson as a starter, the Romo/Wagner/Rivera combination is a fantastic relief triad. Be warned, though, that Romo's career has been short and he could still flame out. Mark Prior did.

Any great power pitcher

Johnson or Pedro Martinez being the leading cadidates, Lincecum, Koufax, Clemens, Curt Schilling and Johan "Met's First No-hitter" Santana all bring good combinations of control and strike out stuff. Of course, some of them are still haven't experienced the valleys of their careers yet. And, of course, they all make good choices as starters.