Brad Radke vs. Camilo Pascual

While listening and writing into the entertaining Fanatic Jack's podcast on Wednesday night the topic of Brad Radke's greatness was brought up. While Radke was a fine pitcher I felt there had to be pitchers of the same or better caliber than him that played for the Twins. I threw the name of Camilo Pascual into the discussion and created a short debate on the merits of each pitcher. Neither person running the podcast had much background on Pascual. How unfortunate. The Minnesota Twins are 50 years into their existence. Fans cannot lose track of those players that played decades ago. They were very talented and represented the team well. Camilo Pascual is an excellent example of that. Even though Camilo may object, let's put him under the microscope briefly.

Let's start a comparison with ERA+. Radke had a career of ERA+ of 112, while Pascual had a 103 for his career. Now let's look at Camilo's years with the Twins only. His Twins only ERA+ averages out to 114. He spent 7 years as a Senator and another 6 with the Twins. Some of his most dominant years were in Minnesota.

• For 3 years from 1961-1963 Pascual led the AL in strikeouts with: 221, 206 and 202
• From 1961-1964 he won 15, 18, 18 and 14 games.
• In 1961 he had 8 shutouts and followed that up with 5 in 1962.
• His ERA+ numbers from 1961 through 1966: 123, 123, 149, 109, 106 and 74 (yikes!).

Brad Radke had pinpoint control as we all know. He led the league with 1 walk per 9 innings in 2001 and over the course of his career posted an outstanding 1.6 walks per 9 innings. Pascual cannot compare here. He averaged 3.3 walks per nine innings and never averaged below 2.4 walks per 9 innings during his career. I could analyze Brad Radke further, but why? Radke just doesn't have the league leading numbers that Camilo did in some areas for even a short amount of time. Breaking down Brad Radke's numbers show him to be a slightly above average pitcher as his ERA+ of 112 shows. He was 12% above league average over the course of his career while Pascual was 14% better than league average while in a Twins uniform. I will take Camilo Pascual because of his league leading strikeout numbers for that 3 year stretch from 1961 through 1963. I admit it's close and Radke was part of an important Twins group that resurrected life back in to the franchise, but Camilo Pascual was better. His dominance was greater despite it being short lived.