The calendar says September 24th and according to the standings, most teams have only 8 or 9 games remaining which means that the October picture is coming into focus and, at least for this season, the awards picture is only getting murkier.
The MVP races have front-runners (Joey Votto for the NL and Josh Hamilton for the AL) and dark horses that could make some noise if they can lead their team to the postseason or simply finish the season with an exclamation point (Troy Tulowitzki in the NL and Miguel Cabrera in the AL).
That, however, is much clearer than the Cy Young Award races which seem more and more confusing by the day. In short, who deserves to win; the ace of a 95-win team that is almost guaranteed to make the postseason or the ace from a 95-loss team that has all the sabermetricians going nuts?
Well, since I haven’t attempted to quantify who has pitched the best before (yeah, right) I’m going to try yet again and this time, I think I just might have a winning formula in this age of sabermetrics.
Obviously, I am a big fan of Bill James’ Game Score formula and that metric will feature prominently in my analysis. The other two factors that go into this magic formula are ERA+ and simple innings pitched. While it may not seem fair to include something like innings pitched, I would pose to you this question; all else being equal, let’s say a 20-5 record, a 2.50 ERA, and a 150 ERA+, which is more impressive, the pitcher who throws 200 innings or the one who throws 250 innings?
To me the answer is obvious. Statistically speaking, the larger the sample size, the better the representation of a player’s true skill are. If a pitcher throws 10 innings and strikes out 26 batters, it’s not a good representation of what this pitcher can do because he’s thrown so few innings.
For the Game Score metric, I did a little bit more number crunching. I took the average GS for the pitchers in my group and divided their average GS by the highest 9 inning GS possible. If you were somehow able to throw a nine inning perfect game and strike out all 27 batters, your GS would be 114. Therefore, if you have an average GS of 57, your GS percentage (if you will) is 0.5.
After that, I simply multiplied the GS% by the ERA+ value (divided by 100) and then multiplied that value by the number of innings pitched.
Basically, what this formula calculates is the ability of a pitcher to prevent runs given his opponents and where they’re pitching (ERA+), the ability of a pitcher to maximize good results while minimizing bad results (GS%), and the ability of a pitcher to consistently put forth results (IP).
THE RESULTS
According to this formula, Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay would be in line to win the Cy Young Awards. This isn’t really anything new though since many different metrics have those two leading the Cy Young charge, despite Hernandez’s team trying to hold him back (he is currently 12-12).
What is more surprising is where the other leading candidates fall. While Felix Hernandez leads the AL with a mark of 224.9, CC Sabathia is currently 4th with a score of 147.0 and David Price is 6th at 139.8. So who is second? Despite only throwing 165.2 innings so far this season, Clay Buccholz is second with a score of 150.3 largely due to his league leading ERA+ of 182, an incredible 74.7 points behind Hernandez.
In the NL, things are much closer. Halladay’s score of 210.1 is just a little better than Adam Wainwright’s mark of 198.0. Even while pitching in one of the worst pitcher’s parks in the league, Ubaldo Jimenez has come down from his pre All-Star break high and is currently well behind the leaders in 4th at 166.2.
The most striking part of these standings to me is where the scores fall given the league that these players pitch in. While Hernandez leads the entire league in this metric, the next six pitchers down the line are all in the National League. You could easily say that a large part of this is due to the fact that AL pitchers have to face nine hitters while NL pitchers get to face a pitcher every time through the order, but I would say that it has more to do with the fact that the best pitchers in the league right now happen to pitch in the National League. The talent in baseball cycles through the divisions and the leagues and right now, the cream of the starting pitching crop is in the NL.
HISTORY LESSON
So the next obvious thing to do with this metric is to see if there is any validity in using this method to predict Cy Young voting. Of the past ten Cy Young Awards handed out (from 2005-2009), seven times the winner led their respective league in this metric and in 2008, Roy Halladay had a slight edge over Cy Young winner Cliff Lee (196.90-196.34) but I would say it’s safe to call that a tie and say that the leader has won eight of the past ten awards.
So why did I only go back five years? Simply because before that, it feels like the voters went more for the wow factor and were a little less concerned with who actually pitched the best in that given season. Lately (and especially in 2009), the voters have been able to look past the relatively pedestrian win totals of Tim Lincecum (15) and Zach Greinke (16) to realize that they pitched head and shoulders better than anyone else that season.
THE VERDICT
To tell the truth, I would have a hard time saying that Adam Wainwright wouldn’t deserve to win the Cy Young Award this year. However, Roy Halladay has just been a little bit better in a few more innings… and he did throw a perfect game this year…
In the American League, the only choice is Felix Hernandez and it will be a huge blow to the voters credibility if he does not win. The record isn’t flashy and he pitches in a wonderful pitcher’s park, but his ERA+ is still second best in the AL and third best in the entire league. So what’s the difference between him and those other two? He’s thrown 58.0 more innings than league leader Josh Johnson and 76.0 more innings than AL leader Clay Buccholz.
Now all we need is for the Cy Young voters to read this and (more importantly) believe me.
No, I’m not holding my breath.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
An Ode to Ichiro
For those of you who are not aware, on September 23rd, Ichiro Suzuki became the first player in Major League Baseball history to have ten consecutive seasons in which he accumulated at least 200 hits. At the same time, he tied Ty Cobb for the most 200 hit seasons over the course of a career. All in all, not bad for a guy who has played only ten years in the United States.
In that spirit, as well as in the spirit of Rob Neyer’s post in his SweetSpot Blog on espn.com (http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot, check his entry on September 10th), I’m going to take a little stroll down “what if?” lane. The simple question that Neyer asks is what would have happened if Ichiro had been born in the United States and not in Japan and so that’s the question that I’m going to attempt to answer in a very conservative manner.
First of all, in his post, Neyer suggests that Ichiro reaches the majors at the age of 22 but for this analysis, I’m making the bold assumption that he would have reached the big leagues at the age of 20. In reality, he began playing for the Orix BlueWave when he was just 19 and in his first full season of professional baseball, he hit .385 with 210 hits and a .958 OPS. Yes, I understand that Japanese baseball is not American baseball. Nowhere in this excursion into fantasy will you hear me suggest that Ichiro would have hit .385 against American pitching at the age of 20. However, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that as a 20 year old with his speed, his durability and his skill set, he could have gotten 200 hits and hit better than .300.
So, what I’m going to do is simply put in his career numbers for six seasons before 2001 when he made his Major League debut with the Seattle Mariners. Instead of using his averages for a 162 game season, I prorated everything for the average number of games that he has played over the past ten years, which even with several games left to go in the 2010 regular season, comes out to 157.7. Over those ten years, he’s averaged 223 hits, 9 home runs, and just 68 strikeouts per season.
Where would he be today with six additional seasons of .331/.376/.430 level production? First of all, his slash line would stay the same and that batting average is currently the highest among active players (just a tiny bit ahead of Albert Pujols, .3311-.3309) and would be good enough for the 30th best batting average of all time of batters with at least 3,000 plate appearances. Of the 29 that are currently ahead of him, only three played a single game after 1940: Al Simmons (.334) whose last appearance was for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1944, Paul Waner (.333) who played one game for the 1945 New York Yankees, and Tony Gwynn (.338) who last played in 2001. Another note on Gwynn; he only hit under .300 in one season during his Hall of Fame career and it was in his 190 at-bat rookie year when he hit “only” .289.
More importantly though is where Ichiro would fall on the countables lists. Under our previous assumptions, he would have 3,565 hits in 10,766 at-bats by (nearly) the end of the 2010 regular season. He would also have scored 1,669 runs, hit 408 doubles, 114 triples, and 144 home runs. He would have stolen 611 bases while only being caught 141 times and while he would have only walked 728 times, he would have only struck out 1,088 times.
The obvious question is what does all that mean? Well, first of all, Ichiro would be tied with Paul Konerko for the 192nd most strikeouts in Major League history and while that may not seem noteworthy, you must also consider that only 13 players have ever had more at-bats than Ichiro’s projected total. His total of 611 stolen bases would also rank 18th in league history. All of this might be fascinating to you Ichiro and Mariners fans out there but none of this is what we’re really here to talk about.
At 3,565 hits, Ichiro would rank an astounding 5th all time while completing this season at the age of 36. Given that he really doesn’t look like he’s going to slow down anytime soon (he hit .352 last year at age 35) it’s very realistic to project that within two and a half to three seasons, he would become the third ever member of the 4,000 hit club and maybe a season or two after that (with good fortune before he turned 42) he would become the all-time hits leader.
In short, Ichiro is the prototypical player to break every hits record and put them far out of reach for generations to come, much the way Ty Cobb was once upon a time. If he had started his career here instead of in Japan, he would be a first ballot Hall of Famer with several years left in his career. As it is, I’m not at all convinced that he’s NOT a Hall of Famer. Consider this; many players don’t make it into the Hall of Fame for one of two reasons. First, that they simply weren’t good enough, they weren’t great players, merely good players. Second of all, they weren’t great for long enough. If you put a few more good years on the tail end of Ichiro’s career, it’s hard to say that he doesn’t meet both of those criteria since, in my opinion, he’s been one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball for the past decade.
Is he a Hall of Famer? I think after a few more years to boost his counting stats, he’ll be on the cusp and his batting average, baserunning, and stellar defense will push him over the top and into Cooperstown.
In that spirit, as well as in the spirit of Rob Neyer’s post in his SweetSpot Blog on espn.com (http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot, check his entry on September 10th), I’m going to take a little stroll down “what if?” lane. The simple question that Neyer asks is what would have happened if Ichiro had been born in the United States and not in Japan and so that’s the question that I’m going to attempt to answer in a very conservative manner.
First of all, in his post, Neyer suggests that Ichiro reaches the majors at the age of 22 but for this analysis, I’m making the bold assumption that he would have reached the big leagues at the age of 20. In reality, he began playing for the Orix BlueWave when he was just 19 and in his first full season of professional baseball, he hit .385 with 210 hits and a .958 OPS. Yes, I understand that Japanese baseball is not American baseball. Nowhere in this excursion into fantasy will you hear me suggest that Ichiro would have hit .385 against American pitching at the age of 20. However, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that as a 20 year old with his speed, his durability and his skill set, he could have gotten 200 hits and hit better than .300.
So, what I’m going to do is simply put in his career numbers for six seasons before 2001 when he made his Major League debut with the Seattle Mariners. Instead of using his averages for a 162 game season, I prorated everything for the average number of games that he has played over the past ten years, which even with several games left to go in the 2010 regular season, comes out to 157.7. Over those ten years, he’s averaged 223 hits, 9 home runs, and just 68 strikeouts per season.
Where would he be today with six additional seasons of .331/.376/.430 level production? First of all, his slash line would stay the same and that batting average is currently the highest among active players (just a tiny bit ahead of Albert Pujols, .3311-.3309) and would be good enough for the 30th best batting average of all time of batters with at least 3,000 plate appearances. Of the 29 that are currently ahead of him, only three played a single game after 1940: Al Simmons (.334) whose last appearance was for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1944, Paul Waner (.333) who played one game for the 1945 New York Yankees, and Tony Gwynn (.338) who last played in 2001. Another note on Gwynn; he only hit under .300 in one season during his Hall of Fame career and it was in his 190 at-bat rookie year when he hit “only” .289.
More importantly though is where Ichiro would fall on the countables lists. Under our previous assumptions, he would have 3,565 hits in 10,766 at-bats by (nearly) the end of the 2010 regular season. He would also have scored 1,669 runs, hit 408 doubles, 114 triples, and 144 home runs. He would have stolen 611 bases while only being caught 141 times and while he would have only walked 728 times, he would have only struck out 1,088 times.
The obvious question is what does all that mean? Well, first of all, Ichiro would be tied with Paul Konerko for the 192nd most strikeouts in Major League history and while that may not seem noteworthy, you must also consider that only 13 players have ever had more at-bats than Ichiro’s projected total. His total of 611 stolen bases would also rank 18th in league history. All of this might be fascinating to you Ichiro and Mariners fans out there but none of this is what we’re really here to talk about.
At 3,565 hits, Ichiro would rank an astounding 5th all time while completing this season at the age of 36. Given that he really doesn’t look like he’s going to slow down anytime soon (he hit .352 last year at age 35) it’s very realistic to project that within two and a half to three seasons, he would become the third ever member of the 4,000 hit club and maybe a season or two after that (with good fortune before he turned 42) he would become the all-time hits leader.
In short, Ichiro is the prototypical player to break every hits record and put them far out of reach for generations to come, much the way Ty Cobb was once upon a time. If he had started his career here instead of in Japan, he would be a first ballot Hall of Famer with several years left in his career. As it is, I’m not at all convinced that he’s NOT a Hall of Famer. Consider this; many players don’t make it into the Hall of Fame for one of two reasons. First, that they simply weren’t good enough, they weren’t great players, merely good players. Second of all, they weren’t great for long enough. If you put a few more good years on the tail end of Ichiro’s career, it’s hard to say that he doesn’t meet both of those criteria since, in my opinion, he’s been one of the best leadoff hitters in baseball for the past decade.
Is he a Hall of Famer? I think after a few more years to boost his counting stats, he’ll be on the cusp and his batting average, baserunning, and stellar defense will push him over the top and into Cooperstown.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Readers and Potential Commenters; BEWARE!
In case you haven’t heard by now, the New York Jets are under investigation for “things” done and said which allegedly created an uncomfortable atmosphere for a female reporter from a Mexican TV station. Shortly after, Clinton Portis was reached for comment and managed to put his foot in his mouth, much as he did when felon Michael Vick was under investigation for the truly hideous crime of dogfighting (if you really want a rant about Vick from a dog owner, just send me a note and I’ll tell you how I really feel).
I frequent espn.com and I truly love their content. The page is a little bit multimedia heavy but whatever, some of my favorite writers on the face of the planet write for that website. Whenever a story such as this breaks, involving gender issues and something that can definitely be called sexual harassment, I love to read viewpoints from all places of the spectrum and this story was no different. I read about the frat house atmosphere that the New York Jets seem to be allowing if not promoting (found here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=howard/100915). I also read about the fact that the Jets may not have been the only ones who should share blame in this fiasco (no, she didn’t ask for it, but read more here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=hill/100914).
I know that I shouldn’t, but another thing that I do from time to time is I look at the comments that people write after reading an article. I know that to a certain extent I shouldn’t let these comments get to me but sometimes I do. So I’ve decided to dedicate this post to those people and I’m going to let anyone who reads this (yes, I’m talking to you) know why these comments, mostly innocent, bother me so much and if I manage to make one single person re-evaluate before posting their comment, I will consider myself victorious.
The first two paragraphs of this post are building up to a law so dramatic that we went to war over it (granted, we went to war for many other reasons but this was included). In short, it is the law that allows us to say whatever we want. Yes, that law is the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Everyone knows the basics about these far-reaching and powerful words but many people seem to think that they are more powerful than they really are. First of all, this is the text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Before I wade too deep into my point, I would like to say first and foremost that I will not be discussing freedom of the press, right to peaceably assemble, right to petition the government, or the freedom of religion. Yes, that eliminates everything except the freedom of speech.
So what do those words mean? In a nutshell, it means that we as citizens have the right to say whatever we want, whenever we want. Now, for the public good, people have been found legally liable for doing idiotic things like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater but for the most part, that law remains the same today as it did over two hundred years ago.
Writers on espn.com and all over the sports journalism world like to get juicy quotes and then comment on them; that’s just the nature of the beast. When a kicker is critical of one of the best quarterbacks in league history and then that quarterback, known for his unbelievable poise and class in his responses to the media, refers to the instigator as “our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off”, it’s news.
What often happens after episodes where professional athletes put their foot in their mouth is some combination of the team that employs them and the league that indirectly employs them comes down and slaps them on the wrist. In some cases, minority opinions needs to be heard and it is through this courage that the enormous ball that is “social change” can get rolling. That’s not what we’re talking about though. I’m talking about Clinton Portis, who on two occasions has earned the ire of his own front office and the league office by doing nothing more than voicing his opinion (first about Michael Vick and dogfighting and secondly about this most recent incident involving the Jets).
I know it’s not a great idea to take seriously the comments that follow the articles written by professional journalists but sometimes they just make my blood boil and I’m here to rant about it. The one that gets me time and time again are the comments about the articles that are written about the wrist slapping. It took me a minute to work that out so I’ll make it simpler.
Situation occurs
Third party gives good quote
Third party is reprimanded by team/league for giving quote
Article is written about reprimand
Comment is made about article
Make sense?
Ok, now back to my point. Many people that take the time to submit a comment immediately jump on the team (twice now the Redskins) that does the wrist-slapping and one ignorant person even went so far as to say that Portis should retain a lawyer and sue the Redskins for violating his right to free speech.
The reason this bothers me so much is it shows a complete ignorance in the text of the first amendment. Congress shall make no law… Congress! The first amendment says nothing about the Washington Redskins, the National Football League, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., etc. The right to free speech cannot be infringed upon or impeded by the government (be it state, local, or federal). Private companies and organizations can include all kinds of restrictions in the contracts that they have their employees sign. For instance, there might be a clause in Portis’ contract (I know I keep coming back to Portis but he is the one shining example that proves my point) that states that he will do or say nothing that would reflect badly upon the Redskins franchise.
At the point that he signed it, he is now bound by that clause and if he wants to say and do things that reflect poorly upon the Redskins, he can still do that… but he might find himself out of a job very quickly.
PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
The last rant that I will undertake before I sign off will be to all those of you who take the time to write a comment just to say that the person who wrote that piece is stupid (or something along those lines). I know that I don’t have a huge circulation and not very many people read this blog so therefore, I don’t get a lot of comments. Nevertheless, it takes a certain kind of courage to put your ideas and thoughts down on paper (electronic or newsprint). I write for the enjoyment of sharing one particular set of opinions and views of the world with anyone who will take the time to read it. Am I out to convert anyone to my chosen viewpoints? Absolutely not. I would say that my sole goal is to spark debate or further debate and if I had to guess, I would say that if you polled professional journalists around the country, they would say similar things about why they enjoy writing for complete strangers.
To go to those sites and call the writers idiots is nothing short of disrespectful and it irks me incredibly. I don’t care if you disagree with me; in fact, I enjoy it when I debate a topic with someone who disagrees with me as long as the discussion is respectful in nature. To all you who would make such comments, you are the internet equivalent of the guy standing behind home plate who stands up and yells “you suck!” when the other teams best player comes up to bat. It is an emotional response and emotional responses have no place in debate.
So the next time that somebody writes something that you vehemently disagree with, craft your comment and then ask yourself if you would want someone to say that to you after you make a point. If so, post it. If not, please reconsider.
…
To sum all this up, be informed. If you disagree with something that someone says, back your opinion up with solid reasoning. Some of the most fruitful and interesting discussions that I’ve ever had were ones where I did not have all the facts and when they were presented before me, I acknowledged my lack of information and continued the discussion/debate without an emotional outburst. In a world of grey, nobody is 100% right and nobody is 100% wrong.
And I’ll leave you today with this thought.
Always remember it is never a good idea to argue with a stupid person because someone walking by may not be able to tell the difference between the two of you.
Happy Friday everyone.
I frequent espn.com and I truly love their content. The page is a little bit multimedia heavy but whatever, some of my favorite writers on the face of the planet write for that website. Whenever a story such as this breaks, involving gender issues and something that can definitely be called sexual harassment, I love to read viewpoints from all places of the spectrum and this story was no different. I read about the frat house atmosphere that the New York Jets seem to be allowing if not promoting (found here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=howard/100915). I also read about the fact that the Jets may not have been the only ones who should share blame in this fiasco (no, she didn’t ask for it, but read more here: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?page=hill/100914).
I know that I shouldn’t, but another thing that I do from time to time is I look at the comments that people write after reading an article. I know that to a certain extent I shouldn’t let these comments get to me but sometimes I do. So I’ve decided to dedicate this post to those people and I’m going to let anyone who reads this (yes, I’m talking to you) know why these comments, mostly innocent, bother me so much and if I manage to make one single person re-evaluate before posting their comment, I will consider myself victorious.
The first two paragraphs of this post are building up to a law so dramatic that we went to war over it (granted, we went to war for many other reasons but this was included). In short, it is the law that allows us to say whatever we want. Yes, that law is the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. Everyone knows the basics about these far-reaching and powerful words but many people seem to think that they are more powerful than they really are. First of all, this is the text of the first amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Before I wade too deep into my point, I would like to say first and foremost that I will not be discussing freedom of the press, right to peaceably assemble, right to petition the government, or the freedom of religion. Yes, that eliminates everything except the freedom of speech.
So what do those words mean? In a nutshell, it means that we as citizens have the right to say whatever we want, whenever we want. Now, for the public good, people have been found legally liable for doing idiotic things like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater but for the most part, that law remains the same today as it did over two hundred years ago.
Writers on espn.com and all over the sports journalism world like to get juicy quotes and then comment on them; that’s just the nature of the beast. When a kicker is critical of one of the best quarterbacks in league history and then that quarterback, known for his unbelievable poise and class in his responses to the media, refers to the instigator as “our idiot kicker who got liquored up and ran his mouth off”, it’s news.
What often happens after episodes where professional athletes put their foot in their mouth is some combination of the team that employs them and the league that indirectly employs them comes down and slaps them on the wrist. In some cases, minority opinions needs to be heard and it is through this courage that the enormous ball that is “social change” can get rolling. That’s not what we’re talking about though. I’m talking about Clinton Portis, who on two occasions has earned the ire of his own front office and the league office by doing nothing more than voicing his opinion (first about Michael Vick and dogfighting and secondly about this most recent incident involving the Jets).
I know it’s not a great idea to take seriously the comments that follow the articles written by professional journalists but sometimes they just make my blood boil and I’m here to rant about it. The one that gets me time and time again are the comments about the articles that are written about the wrist slapping. It took me a minute to work that out so I’ll make it simpler.
Situation occurs
Third party gives good quote
Third party is reprimanded by team/league for giving quote
Article is written about reprimand
Comment is made about article
Make sense?
Ok, now back to my point. Many people that take the time to submit a comment immediately jump on the team (twice now the Redskins) that does the wrist-slapping and one ignorant person even went so far as to say that Portis should retain a lawyer and sue the Redskins for violating his right to free speech.
The reason this bothers me so much is it shows a complete ignorance in the text of the first amendment. Congress shall make no law… Congress! The first amendment says nothing about the Washington Redskins, the National Football League, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., etc. The right to free speech cannot be infringed upon or impeded by the government (be it state, local, or federal). Private companies and organizations can include all kinds of restrictions in the contracts that they have their employees sign. For instance, there might be a clause in Portis’ contract (I know I keep coming back to Portis but he is the one shining example that proves my point) that states that he will do or say nothing that would reflect badly upon the Redskins franchise.
At the point that he signed it, he is now bound by that clause and if he wants to say and do things that reflect poorly upon the Redskins, he can still do that… but he might find himself out of a job very quickly.
PROFESSIONAL JOURNALISTS
The last rant that I will undertake before I sign off will be to all those of you who take the time to write a comment just to say that the person who wrote that piece is stupid (or something along those lines). I know that I don’t have a huge circulation and not very many people read this blog so therefore, I don’t get a lot of comments. Nevertheless, it takes a certain kind of courage to put your ideas and thoughts down on paper (electronic or newsprint). I write for the enjoyment of sharing one particular set of opinions and views of the world with anyone who will take the time to read it. Am I out to convert anyone to my chosen viewpoints? Absolutely not. I would say that my sole goal is to spark debate or further debate and if I had to guess, I would say that if you polled professional journalists around the country, they would say similar things about why they enjoy writing for complete strangers.
To go to those sites and call the writers idiots is nothing short of disrespectful and it irks me incredibly. I don’t care if you disagree with me; in fact, I enjoy it when I debate a topic with someone who disagrees with me as long as the discussion is respectful in nature. To all you who would make such comments, you are the internet equivalent of the guy standing behind home plate who stands up and yells “you suck!” when the other teams best player comes up to bat. It is an emotional response and emotional responses have no place in debate.
So the next time that somebody writes something that you vehemently disagree with, craft your comment and then ask yourself if you would want someone to say that to you after you make a point. If so, post it. If not, please reconsider.
…
To sum all this up, be informed. If you disagree with something that someone says, back your opinion up with solid reasoning. Some of the most fruitful and interesting discussions that I’ve ever had were ones where I did not have all the facts and when they were presented before me, I acknowledged my lack of information and continued the discussion/debate without an emotional outburst. In a world of grey, nobody is 100% right and nobody is 100% wrong.
And I’ll leave you today with this thought.
Always remember it is never a good idea to argue with a stupid person because someone walking by may not be able to tell the difference between the two of you.
Happy Friday everyone.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
NCAA, Heisman Trust Put Heads in Sand
Before I get to why I titled this post the way I did, first I must give a slight lecture on economics. I apologize, but it is critical and I’ll be brief.
One of the more basic concepts in all of economics that holds true a frighteningly large percentage of the time is the concept of supply and demand. It’s pretty simple, if there are ten of something and two people, then the price is probably going to be low due to the high supply and low demand (let’s assume that each person only wants one of these items). Imagine that it was reversed; two items and ten people. All of a sudden a bidding war can break out and the price that the consumer ends up paying for that item ends up being a lot higher.
Many things can affect the actual supply and demand and greatly affect the price of a good and I’m not going to go into all of those save one and that one is the government. One of the things that the government can do is they can set a price floor or a price ceiling and for this example, let’s focus on a price ceiling.
First of all, imagine a graph with two lines on it that form an X. The line that slopes from the upper left to the lower right is the demand curve, the other line sloping upwards to the right is the supply curve. The X-axis represents the quantity of a good and the Y-axis is the price of a good. Where the two lines meet is called the equilibrium point, where supply equals demand (it’s actually quantity supplied and quantity demanded but that’s the last time I get technical). At this point there is no shortage of goods or excess of goods; the consumers are happy and the producers are happy.
Now, let’s put a price ceiling on a good. To do that, all you do is put a horizontal line below the equilibrium point. Not too hard… however, now we have a problem. The demand is sky high and the supply is extremely short but because of our handy dandy price ceiling, the price of this good is fixed.
The problem with certain applications of price floors and price ceilings is they can lead to the development of the black market. Let’s stick with this price ceiling example. Eventually you’re going to get consumers that are desperate to have an item and they’ll pay any price and eventually you’re going to have a producer of that good that doesn’t care what the government will do to them, they want to sell this good at a higher price. When that happens, a black market has developed.
This, my friends, is exactly the situation that the NCAA has to contend with.
THE ILLUSION
Now this is when you are rewarded for reading my little economics lecture and I bring all the dots together. First of all, put the NCAA where the government was in this example. Amateur athletes are the producers; I know it sounds strange but they have the goods and services that people want. They have the ability to throw a football 75 yards, run a 4.3 40, have a 50” vertical leap, so on and so forth. Because they want to maintain the illusion that these truly are amateur athletes, they set a price ceiling on the services that these players provide; 0.
I know I know, it’s not exactly zero. Schools can offer football players scholarships but more or less, the price ceiling is zero.
Now we have everything set up for disaster to strike. This is actually an interesting example because it usually is not the direct consumer that goes outside the law because we rarely hear about the schools themselves giving these players “gifts” worth tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, it’s boosters or agents or famous alumni that want to see the football team do well and so they provide money to the producer so they will produce for a particular consumer (their school of choice).
Now we have a system where a black market is almost guaranteed to form and flourish and sure enough, it’s difficult to get through an entire NCAA basketball or football season without hearing about someone somewhere that accepted gifts that he shouldn’t have.
What’s the solution? Unfortunately, I don’t have one other than to start paying the players. I know that it’s a little ridiculous, especially when you consider that these young men are in college to get an education first (right…) and play sports second (and if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…).
REGGIE BUSH
All of this meandering thought brings us back to the moment; a few hours after the news broke that Reggie Bush would be returning his Heisman Trophy because he supposedly was paid enormous sums of money (enormous for college anyways) while he played football at USC. This is just the latest blow that has come down from the NCAA centered on Bush’s tenure in Los Angeles. Already wins have been vacated, a national championship has been erased from the record books, and now there is no official Heisman Trophy winner in 2005. The question is, should all that have happened?
The single part that I understand the least from this whole saga is that they actually delete things (wins, awards, etc.) from the record books as if it never happened. The problem is it did happen, I was there (figuratively) for it happening. I watched Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush lead an amazing drive at Notre Dame with their perfect record and their national title dreams hanging in the balance. In that game, Bush rushed 15 times for an absurd 160 yards. Nope, not anymore.
I didn’t watch the game live but I watched the highlights of the last time that Fresno State was competing on the national stage. In the end, the scoreboard read 50-42 and Fresno State never recovered from that loss. Bush carried the ball 23 times in that game, the most he would have until the next week against UCLA. Those 23 carries covered 294 yards and he scored 2 touchdowns. He also caught three passes for 68 yards, returned 7 kicks for 135 yards and a punt for 16 yards. All told: 34 touches, 513 yards, and 2 touchdowns. Before I go any further, I’ve had video game lines that weren’t that gaudy.
This game also provided what many would say was the signature moment of his Heisman campaign and I’ll let the video speak for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwS5x920i8A
But wait, now, it never happened. Well, actually, it DID. I really hope that some of you out there are feeling my pain right about now.
BASEBALL
Major League Baseball is in a very interesting position right now and it will be nothing short of fascinating to see the eventual outcome. We are on the tail end of what will always be known as the “Steroids Era” and there’s nothing we can do about that. Before we got any further, I also realize that I’m comparing a $6.5 billion industry to amateur athletes but you’ll see what I’m getting at in a few moments.
Since pretty much forever, baseball players, watchers, and historians have been obsessed with numbers and statistics and I count myself among that crowd. Until recently we were also willing to do nearly everything to protect the sanctity of those records. In my opinion, one of the greatest travesties in baseball history was committed with exactly that purpose in mind. For 34 years, the legendary Babe Ruth held the single season home run record at 60. In the summer of 1961, Roger Maris ultimately hit 61, capping his amazing season with the record breaking home run on the last day of the season.
In order to preserve Ruth’s spot in the record books, commissioner Ford Frick ordered that both records be listed and that Maris’ mark be accompanied by an asterisk because he played 163 games where Babe Ruth played only 154.
Ultimately, the correct decision was made and the asterisk was removed from the record books and Maris got his due. Now we fast forward to the present day. It is now suspected that 4 of the top 10 home runs hitters of all time cheated by using steroids and also the top six home runs seasons of all time were done by suspected cheaters.
So what’s the solution? Do we bury our head in the sand and say that those things never happened? Say that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa didn’t actually hit 70 and 66 home runs, respectively, in the magical summer of 1998 which helped lead baseball back from the abyss of the 1994 players strike? Do we say that Barry Bonds didn’t turn 73 unfortunate baseballs into souvenirs just 3 years later?
Absolutely not, it happened, I watched all three of them. At the time I didn’t want Barry Bonds to break the record because I didn’t like Bonds as a person. As a player he is the best hitter that I have ever seen play and I dare you to argue that point and if you say steroids one time, I’m out. I’ve never seen anybody who was able to take sixteen pitches over four at-bats and absolutely demolish the one that was in the strike zone. Bonds was able to maintain his focus for every single pitch and if you threw one near the plate, duck and cover.
My point is that it happened. Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, and potentially Alex Rodriguez will all get their comeuppance when their names start appearing on Hall of Fame ballots. Baseball history will reflect their accomplishments whether they cheated to get them or not. It’s a part of the history of the sport and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you can just hit the delete button.
CONCLUSION
Reggie Bush happened. Deleting his contributions to the USC football program do little to make people forget that he was there on the field, making eleven guys in jerseys different from his cry for their mothers.
In the end, deleting his contributions from the record book don’t hurt him at all; he rode that Heisman wave to the number two overall selection and a very lucrative contract. They hurt USC plenty as these deletions came along with penalties for allowing all of this to go on.
The only thing that really changes is whether or not Vince Young gets awarded his own Heisman Trophy and the number of “official” wins that USC can claim when comparing their football program to the likes of Michigan and Notre Dame. As to the former; sure, give him a trophy. As to the latter, who cares?
History happened; we can’t pick and choose what we want to acknowledge.
One of the more basic concepts in all of economics that holds true a frighteningly large percentage of the time is the concept of supply and demand. It’s pretty simple, if there are ten of something and two people, then the price is probably going to be low due to the high supply and low demand (let’s assume that each person only wants one of these items). Imagine that it was reversed; two items and ten people. All of a sudden a bidding war can break out and the price that the consumer ends up paying for that item ends up being a lot higher.
Many things can affect the actual supply and demand and greatly affect the price of a good and I’m not going to go into all of those save one and that one is the government. One of the things that the government can do is they can set a price floor or a price ceiling and for this example, let’s focus on a price ceiling.
First of all, imagine a graph with two lines on it that form an X. The line that slopes from the upper left to the lower right is the demand curve, the other line sloping upwards to the right is the supply curve. The X-axis represents the quantity of a good and the Y-axis is the price of a good. Where the two lines meet is called the equilibrium point, where supply equals demand (it’s actually quantity supplied and quantity demanded but that’s the last time I get technical). At this point there is no shortage of goods or excess of goods; the consumers are happy and the producers are happy.
Now, let’s put a price ceiling on a good. To do that, all you do is put a horizontal line below the equilibrium point. Not too hard… however, now we have a problem. The demand is sky high and the supply is extremely short but because of our handy dandy price ceiling, the price of this good is fixed.
The problem with certain applications of price floors and price ceilings is they can lead to the development of the black market. Let’s stick with this price ceiling example. Eventually you’re going to get consumers that are desperate to have an item and they’ll pay any price and eventually you’re going to have a producer of that good that doesn’t care what the government will do to them, they want to sell this good at a higher price. When that happens, a black market has developed.
This, my friends, is exactly the situation that the NCAA has to contend with.
THE ILLUSION
Now this is when you are rewarded for reading my little economics lecture and I bring all the dots together. First of all, put the NCAA where the government was in this example. Amateur athletes are the producers; I know it sounds strange but they have the goods and services that people want. They have the ability to throw a football 75 yards, run a 4.3 40, have a 50” vertical leap, so on and so forth. Because they want to maintain the illusion that these truly are amateur athletes, they set a price ceiling on the services that these players provide; 0.
I know I know, it’s not exactly zero. Schools can offer football players scholarships but more or less, the price ceiling is zero.
Now we have everything set up for disaster to strike. This is actually an interesting example because it usually is not the direct consumer that goes outside the law because we rarely hear about the schools themselves giving these players “gifts” worth tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, it’s boosters or agents or famous alumni that want to see the football team do well and so they provide money to the producer so they will produce for a particular consumer (their school of choice).
Now we have a system where a black market is almost guaranteed to form and flourish and sure enough, it’s difficult to get through an entire NCAA basketball or football season without hearing about someone somewhere that accepted gifts that he shouldn’t have.
What’s the solution? Unfortunately, I don’t have one other than to start paying the players. I know that it’s a little ridiculous, especially when you consider that these young men are in college to get an education first (right…) and play sports second (and if you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you…).
REGGIE BUSH
All of this meandering thought brings us back to the moment; a few hours after the news broke that Reggie Bush would be returning his Heisman Trophy because he supposedly was paid enormous sums of money (enormous for college anyways) while he played football at USC. This is just the latest blow that has come down from the NCAA centered on Bush’s tenure in Los Angeles. Already wins have been vacated, a national championship has been erased from the record books, and now there is no official Heisman Trophy winner in 2005. The question is, should all that have happened?
The single part that I understand the least from this whole saga is that they actually delete things (wins, awards, etc.) from the record books as if it never happened. The problem is it did happen, I was there (figuratively) for it happening. I watched Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush lead an amazing drive at Notre Dame with their perfect record and their national title dreams hanging in the balance. In that game, Bush rushed 15 times for an absurd 160 yards. Nope, not anymore.
I didn’t watch the game live but I watched the highlights of the last time that Fresno State was competing on the national stage. In the end, the scoreboard read 50-42 and Fresno State never recovered from that loss. Bush carried the ball 23 times in that game, the most he would have until the next week against UCLA. Those 23 carries covered 294 yards and he scored 2 touchdowns. He also caught three passes for 68 yards, returned 7 kicks for 135 yards and a punt for 16 yards. All told: 34 touches, 513 yards, and 2 touchdowns. Before I go any further, I’ve had video game lines that weren’t that gaudy.
This game also provided what many would say was the signature moment of his Heisman campaign and I’ll let the video speak for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwS5x920i8A
But wait, now, it never happened. Well, actually, it DID. I really hope that some of you out there are feeling my pain right about now.
BASEBALL
Major League Baseball is in a very interesting position right now and it will be nothing short of fascinating to see the eventual outcome. We are on the tail end of what will always be known as the “Steroids Era” and there’s nothing we can do about that. Before we got any further, I also realize that I’m comparing a $6.5 billion industry to amateur athletes but you’ll see what I’m getting at in a few moments.
Since pretty much forever, baseball players, watchers, and historians have been obsessed with numbers and statistics and I count myself among that crowd. Until recently we were also willing to do nearly everything to protect the sanctity of those records. In my opinion, one of the greatest travesties in baseball history was committed with exactly that purpose in mind. For 34 years, the legendary Babe Ruth held the single season home run record at 60. In the summer of 1961, Roger Maris ultimately hit 61, capping his amazing season with the record breaking home run on the last day of the season.
In order to preserve Ruth’s spot in the record books, commissioner Ford Frick ordered that both records be listed and that Maris’ mark be accompanied by an asterisk because he played 163 games where Babe Ruth played only 154.
Ultimately, the correct decision was made and the asterisk was removed from the record books and Maris got his due. Now we fast forward to the present day. It is now suspected that 4 of the top 10 home runs hitters of all time cheated by using steroids and also the top six home runs seasons of all time were done by suspected cheaters.
So what’s the solution? Do we bury our head in the sand and say that those things never happened? Say that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa didn’t actually hit 70 and 66 home runs, respectively, in the magical summer of 1998 which helped lead baseball back from the abyss of the 1994 players strike? Do we say that Barry Bonds didn’t turn 73 unfortunate baseballs into souvenirs just 3 years later?
Absolutely not, it happened, I watched all three of them. At the time I didn’t want Barry Bonds to break the record because I didn’t like Bonds as a person. As a player he is the best hitter that I have ever seen play and I dare you to argue that point and if you say steroids one time, I’m out. I’ve never seen anybody who was able to take sixteen pitches over four at-bats and absolutely demolish the one that was in the strike zone. Bonds was able to maintain his focus for every single pitch and if you threw one near the plate, duck and cover.
My point is that it happened. Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Roger Clemens, and potentially Alex Rodriguez will all get their comeuppance when their names start appearing on Hall of Fame ballots. Baseball history will reflect their accomplishments whether they cheated to get them or not. It’s a part of the history of the sport and just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean you can just hit the delete button.
CONCLUSION
Reggie Bush happened. Deleting his contributions to the USC football program do little to make people forget that he was there on the field, making eleven guys in jerseys different from his cry for their mothers.
In the end, deleting his contributions from the record book don’t hurt him at all; he rode that Heisman wave to the number two overall selection and a very lucrative contract. They hurt USC plenty as these deletions came along with penalties for allowing all of this to go on.
The only thing that really changes is whether or not Vince Young gets awarded his own Heisman Trophy and the number of “official” wins that USC can claim when comparing their football program to the likes of Michigan and Notre Dame. As to the former; sure, give him a trophy. As to the latter, who cares?
History happened; we can’t pick and choose what we want to acknowledge.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Felix Hernandez and the AL Cy Young Race
As you are no doubt aware, the leading (sabermetric) candidate for the American League Cy Young Award this year is “King” Felix Hernandez of the lowly Seattle Mariners. The problem is that this year his win-loss record is a very blemished 11-11. However, he currently leads the league in ERA (2.39), innings pitched (225.2), strikeouts (214), and Wins Above Replacement (5.2). The question is simply will he win the award?
Standing in his way are two other aces that have much more gaudy win-loss records despite peripherals that don’t stack up to Hernandez’s. Tampa Bay’s David Price is currently 4th in WAR amongst AL pitchers (4.6), has a 17-6 record, and a 2.87 ERA for a very good team. CC Sabathia is in the discussion mostly because of his 19-6 record. His ERA (3.14), and WAR (4.0, 11th in AL) ratings are nowhere near those of Price and Hernandez but he’s winning games for a playoff bound team.
Before we go too much further, I should mention that the metric Wins Above Replacement (WAR from now on) is going to feature very prominently in this posting. In a nutshell, WAR was developed to determine what players were the most valuable assets to their teams. It compares their numbers against particular teams in particular ballparks and compares them to what they call a “replacement level” player. I guess the best way to imagine a replacement level player is imagine that your starting pitcher gets hurt and nobody else on the active roster is able to fill his spot in the rotation (unlikely yes, but certainly possible). The replacement level player would be the one called up from AAA to fill that turn in the rotation. The higher the value of WAR, the less the team can afford to lose the player.
For a little more clarification… I’ll be using the WAR values from baseball-reference.com. I admit that it’s a fairly glaring omission that I didn’t even know there are multiple ways to calculate WAR but I don’t really care. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind that is provided by b-r.com is this.
<0 – Replacement Level
0-2 – Bench Player
2+ - Starter
5+ - All-Star Level
8+ - MVP caliber
So, onto the analysis!
Will the voters be able to overlook the margin of wins between Hernandez and everyone else? Historically speaking, probably not. Since 1990, 20 of the 40 Cy Young winners led their league in victories, which doesn’t bode well at all for Hernandez. Furthermore, of the 20 Cy Young winners who did not lead their league in victories, only five times was the discrepancy in wins greater than 3 and two of those were seasons in which closers won the Cy Young.
4 – 2009 – Tim Lincecum (15) over Adam Wainwright (19)
4 – 2008 – Tim Lincecum (18) over Brandon Webb (22)
5 – 1999 – Randy Johnson (17) over Mike Hampton (22)
The next question is whether or not it’s unprecedented for the Cy Young winner to not have the highest WAR rating in his respective league for that season and the answer is of course not. For whatever reason, voters vote according to what they think is the best way to choose the best pitcher for that season. As one might expect, with 28 individual voters, there will be 28 different methods for determining who the best was that season. According to b-r.com, there have been 12 instances of a pitcher not having the best WAR and still winning the Cy Young Award, or once every other year on average.
First of all, I have to eliminate two of those seasons from this discussion. Dennis Eckersley and Eric Gagne may have had otherworldly years in 1992 and 2003 respectively, but the baseball community isn’t quite together on how we want to deal with closers and saves so for ease of analysis, they aren’t going to be considered.
In the past twenty years, pitchers have put forth a WAR of 4.0 or greater 192 times and only 9 times did the pitcher in question record more than 30 saves. Out of those the highest of the past two decades was Mariano Rivera’s 2004 campaign when his WAR was 4.8. To put that in perspective, in 2009 only one of the ten pitchers who received any Cy Young votes at all failed to reach a WAR of at least 4.8.
THE EXCEPTIONS
If we accept the premise that WAR is a good measure of who the best pitcher was in a given season, what happened in the ten seasons when a starting pitcher won without having the best WAR? Well, when you look at the numbers it’s actually pretty easy to see why they were chosen.
Of those ten seasons, the Cy Young winner led the league in victories 7 times and in several cases the difference was quite profound. In 1993 Greg Maddux finished second in WAR but won the Cy Young with a 20-10 record. Jose Rijo led the league in WAR but was just 14-9. In 1996 John Smoltz finished 3rd in WAR but was the only 20-game winner in the NL (24-8). Ahead of him on the WAR rankings were Greg Maddux (15-11) and league leader Kevin Brown (17-11).
The biggest discrepancy in the voting results occurred in 1990 in the American League. Bob Welch won the Cy Young with a sterling 27-6 record, a 2.95 ERA, and a 1.22 WHIP. However, his WAR was just 2.5, by far the lowest by a Cy Young winner in the past twenty years. Dennis Eckersley was the only other award winner with a WAR under 4 and his was 3.0 in 1992. Meanwhile, Roger Clemens had the third highest WAR rating since 1990 (9.5), still went 21-6 with an ERA of 1.93 and a WHIP of 1.08. I believe in this case we can say that the voters became very enamored with a pitcher who won 27 games and didn’t look too much past that.
THE ROCKET
The most interesting part of this little statistical exercise is how often Roger Clemens’ name comes up on the exceptions list… on both sides. He led the league in WAR three times in seasons where he failed to win the Cy Young award; 1990, 1992 (7.9 vs. Eckersley’s 3.0), and 2005 (7.2 to Chris Carpenter’s 4.8). He has also won the award twice when he did not lead the league in WAR. He accomplished that feat in 2001 (5.4 while teammate Mike Mussina’s WAR was 6.5) and again in 2004 (5.2 to Randy Johnson’s 7.4).
The 2004 season in particular is a great example of why wins were, for a very long time, extremely overrated as a pitching statistic. In some corners, they are still overrated but word is getting around about the problems with judging pitchers by W’s and L’s. That season was Clemens’ first in the National League and he pitched extremely well, with a 2.98 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP. However, Randy Johnson’s ERA was 2.60 and his WHIP was 0.90 and he pitched 31.1 innings more than Clemens so why did Clemens take home the hardware? He was 18-4 for an Astros team that went 92-70, took the wild card, and came within one game of the World Series. Randy Johnson was 16-14 for a Diamondbacks team that only managed a 51-111 record that season.
THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM
Any of you who frequent my blog know that I can’t escape a topic where I talk about the best without also talking about the worst but in this case, for the most part, it’s not the fault of the individual pitchers, but rather the metrics that have been created to judge them. Of the 11 pitchers who have received Cy Young votes and managed a WAR under 2.0, only Bill Gullickson of the 1991 Tigers was a starter (and while his 20-9 record was nice, his 3.90 ERA and 1.33 WHIP were less than stellar, leading to a WAR of 1.9). The other ten seasons on that list were all done by closers who averaged 41.1 saves and (more importantly for the WAR rating) only 63.0 innings pitched in those seasons.
THE VERDICT
So what does this all mean for the 2010 Cy Young Award season? Well, let’s look at just a few more numbers for the 40 awards handed out:
- The leader in wins have won the Cy Young Award 20 times
- The leader in average GS has won the Cy Young Award 21 times
- The leader in WAR has won the Cy Young Award 28 times
- No starting pitcher has won the Cy Young Award while finishing farther than five wins behind the league leader
When you add all of that up, I would say that right now, with two or three weeks to be played this season, we’re heading towards David Price (or maybe CC Sabathia) in the American League and Roy Halladay in the National League.
Maybe…
Standing in his way are two other aces that have much more gaudy win-loss records despite peripherals that don’t stack up to Hernandez’s. Tampa Bay’s David Price is currently 4th in WAR amongst AL pitchers (4.6), has a 17-6 record, and a 2.87 ERA for a very good team. CC Sabathia is in the discussion mostly because of his 19-6 record. His ERA (3.14), and WAR (4.0, 11th in AL) ratings are nowhere near those of Price and Hernandez but he’s winning games for a playoff bound team.
Before we go too much further, I should mention that the metric Wins Above Replacement (WAR from now on) is going to feature very prominently in this posting. In a nutshell, WAR was developed to determine what players were the most valuable assets to their teams. It compares their numbers against particular teams in particular ballparks and compares them to what they call a “replacement level” player. I guess the best way to imagine a replacement level player is imagine that your starting pitcher gets hurt and nobody else on the active roster is able to fill his spot in the rotation (unlikely yes, but certainly possible). The replacement level player would be the one called up from AAA to fill that turn in the rotation. The higher the value of WAR, the less the team can afford to lose the player.
For a little more clarification… I’ll be using the WAR values from baseball-reference.com. I admit that it’s a fairly glaring omission that I didn’t even know there are multiple ways to calculate WAR but I don’t really care. A good rule of thumb to keep in mind that is provided by b-r.com is this.
<0 – Replacement Level
0-2 – Bench Player
2+ - Starter
5+ - All-Star Level
8+ - MVP caliber
So, onto the analysis!
Will the voters be able to overlook the margin of wins between Hernandez and everyone else? Historically speaking, probably not. Since 1990, 20 of the 40 Cy Young winners led their league in victories, which doesn’t bode well at all for Hernandez. Furthermore, of the 20 Cy Young winners who did not lead their league in victories, only five times was the discrepancy in wins greater than 3 and two of those were seasons in which closers won the Cy Young.
4 – 2009 – Tim Lincecum (15) over Adam Wainwright (19)
4 – 2008 – Tim Lincecum (18) over Brandon Webb (22)
5 – 1999 – Randy Johnson (17) over Mike Hampton (22)
The next question is whether or not it’s unprecedented for the Cy Young winner to not have the highest WAR rating in his respective league for that season and the answer is of course not. For whatever reason, voters vote according to what they think is the best way to choose the best pitcher for that season. As one might expect, with 28 individual voters, there will be 28 different methods for determining who the best was that season. According to b-r.com, there have been 12 instances of a pitcher not having the best WAR and still winning the Cy Young Award, or once every other year on average.
First of all, I have to eliminate two of those seasons from this discussion. Dennis Eckersley and Eric Gagne may have had otherworldly years in 1992 and 2003 respectively, but the baseball community isn’t quite together on how we want to deal with closers and saves so for ease of analysis, they aren’t going to be considered.
In the past twenty years, pitchers have put forth a WAR of 4.0 or greater 192 times and only 9 times did the pitcher in question record more than 30 saves. Out of those the highest of the past two decades was Mariano Rivera’s 2004 campaign when his WAR was 4.8. To put that in perspective, in 2009 only one of the ten pitchers who received any Cy Young votes at all failed to reach a WAR of at least 4.8.
THE EXCEPTIONS
If we accept the premise that WAR is a good measure of who the best pitcher was in a given season, what happened in the ten seasons when a starting pitcher won without having the best WAR? Well, when you look at the numbers it’s actually pretty easy to see why they were chosen.
Of those ten seasons, the Cy Young winner led the league in victories 7 times and in several cases the difference was quite profound. In 1993 Greg Maddux finished second in WAR but won the Cy Young with a 20-10 record. Jose Rijo led the league in WAR but was just 14-9. In 1996 John Smoltz finished 3rd in WAR but was the only 20-game winner in the NL (24-8). Ahead of him on the WAR rankings were Greg Maddux (15-11) and league leader Kevin Brown (17-11).
The biggest discrepancy in the voting results occurred in 1990 in the American League. Bob Welch won the Cy Young with a sterling 27-6 record, a 2.95 ERA, and a 1.22 WHIP. However, his WAR was just 2.5, by far the lowest by a Cy Young winner in the past twenty years. Dennis Eckersley was the only other award winner with a WAR under 4 and his was 3.0 in 1992. Meanwhile, Roger Clemens had the third highest WAR rating since 1990 (9.5), still went 21-6 with an ERA of 1.93 and a WHIP of 1.08. I believe in this case we can say that the voters became very enamored with a pitcher who won 27 games and didn’t look too much past that.
THE ROCKET
The most interesting part of this little statistical exercise is how often Roger Clemens’ name comes up on the exceptions list… on both sides. He led the league in WAR three times in seasons where he failed to win the Cy Young award; 1990, 1992 (7.9 vs. Eckersley’s 3.0), and 2005 (7.2 to Chris Carpenter’s 4.8). He has also won the award twice when he did not lead the league in WAR. He accomplished that feat in 2001 (5.4 while teammate Mike Mussina’s WAR was 6.5) and again in 2004 (5.2 to Randy Johnson’s 7.4).
The 2004 season in particular is a great example of why wins were, for a very long time, extremely overrated as a pitching statistic. In some corners, they are still overrated but word is getting around about the problems with judging pitchers by W’s and L’s. That season was Clemens’ first in the National League and he pitched extremely well, with a 2.98 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP. However, Randy Johnson’s ERA was 2.60 and his WHIP was 0.90 and he pitched 31.1 innings more than Clemens so why did Clemens take home the hardware? He was 18-4 for an Astros team that went 92-70, took the wild card, and came within one game of the World Series. Randy Johnson was 16-14 for a Diamondbacks team that only managed a 51-111 record that season.
THE OTHER END OF THE SPECTRUM
Any of you who frequent my blog know that I can’t escape a topic where I talk about the best without also talking about the worst but in this case, for the most part, it’s not the fault of the individual pitchers, but rather the metrics that have been created to judge them. Of the 11 pitchers who have received Cy Young votes and managed a WAR under 2.0, only Bill Gullickson of the 1991 Tigers was a starter (and while his 20-9 record was nice, his 3.90 ERA and 1.33 WHIP were less than stellar, leading to a WAR of 1.9). The other ten seasons on that list were all done by closers who averaged 41.1 saves and (more importantly for the WAR rating) only 63.0 innings pitched in those seasons.
THE VERDICT
So what does this all mean for the 2010 Cy Young Award season? Well, let’s look at just a few more numbers for the 40 awards handed out:
- The leader in wins have won the Cy Young Award 20 times
- The leader in average GS has won the Cy Young Award 21 times
- The leader in WAR has won the Cy Young Award 28 times
- No starting pitcher has won the Cy Young Award while finishing farther than five wins behind the league leader
When you add all of that up, I would say that right now, with two or three weeks to be played this season, we’re heading towards David Price (or maybe CC Sabathia) in the American League and Roy Halladay in the National League.
Maybe…
Saturday, September 11, 2010
#2 Ohio State 36, #12 Miami 24
THE SCORE
#2 OHIO STATE 36, #12 MIAMI (FL) 24
THE STAR
Jim Tressel. With one exception, Ohio State’s coach got everything he wanted from a typical conservative game plan. Kicking, defense, special teams, and a quarterback who can manage the game.
Senior kicker Devin Barclay connected on 5-6 field goal tries (and it should have been all six since the one miss was from 32 yards) and the kickoff team performed well after their one blunder. Defensively, the Buckeyes asserted themselves, holding Jacory Harris to 23-39 passing and intercepting him four times. Admittedly, not all of the blame belongs on Harris’ shoulders. On one of the interceptions, it appeared that the receiver was lining up the defensive back for a run block when the ball went right over his shoulder into the hands of the guy he was going to block.
Terrelle Pryor appears to be much the same quarterback that lit up the Pasadena night last January in the Rose Bowl. While he only completed 12-27 passes, he threw for 233 yards and a touchdown without any turnovers. Some of his passes were offline but some of them were nothing short of stupendous and the only thing standing between him and being a Heisman finalist is consistency. One thing I saw in him today was that not too many of his passes were near interceptions. There were some but most of his passes fell into the category of “if my guy doesn’t catch it, nobody will”.
On top of his decent passing day, Pryor ran the ball 20 times for 113 yards and a touchdown and was by far the most reliable runner for Tressel.
The elephant in the room is special teams. In less than one half of football, the Buckeyes gave up an 88 yard kickoff return and a 79 yard punt return for two of the three touchdowns Miami managed. Without those, the score might have looked more like the 36-10 margin that it should have been.
BY THE NUMBERS
Ohio State outgained Miami 414-346, 233-232 through the air (let’s call that one a tie) and 181-114 on the ground. The Hurricanes committed 8 penalties for 59 yards while the Buckeyes (in typical Tressel fashion) committed just 2 for 25 yards. The biggest number in the entire box score though is 4. Miami threw four interceptions and Ohio State did not turn the ball over.
THE SPIN
First and foremost, I realize that this game was played in front of more than 100,000 fans, most of who were not pulling for the Hurricanes. Nevertheless, what I saw was two teams that both had the same goal and only one that had a chance to realize that goal.
Ohio State did make some mistakes but overall they played a very solid game. Their defense was excellent and opportunistic, their offense was efficient and just needs a few tweaks that can easily come with more game time this fall, and their special teams has room to improve. This is a team that can go all the way and right now the only thing that I think can hold them back is Jim Tressel’s playcalling. If he opens up his playbook the way he did in the Rose Bowl, look out.
Miami came into this game ranked #12 and leading up to this game it appeared that they wanted to let the world know that they had returned to prominence and that they were seeking revenge for a title game loss that occurred when the current crop of seniors was in 8th grade. On both goals, they fell flat. Their defense played well but had no answer for Terrelle Pryor and allowed too many big plays. Their special teams were solid but allowed a few big kickoff returns, including one where senior kicker Matt Bosher was juked by the Buckeyes return man, nearly fell down, and then recovered and ran him down a few yards later to make the tackle.
Offensively, the Hurricanes struggled with Ohio State’s defense. Even putting the four turnovers aside for a second, they managed to get into the red zone just twice and those two possessions resulted in a missed field goal and an interception that was nearly returned for a touchdown.
I understand that they were playing in a hostile environment against a top tier team. When the newest rankings come out this week, I don’t think they’ll be hurt too much by this loss and I don’t think that Ohio State will benefit too much from this win. The most important thing that I’ll take away from this game is these two teams are on two different levels.
To all you Alabama fans out there:
FEAR THE SWEATER-VEST!
#2 OHIO STATE 36, #12 MIAMI (FL) 24
THE STAR
Jim Tressel. With one exception, Ohio State’s coach got everything he wanted from a typical conservative game plan. Kicking, defense, special teams, and a quarterback who can manage the game.
Senior kicker Devin Barclay connected on 5-6 field goal tries (and it should have been all six since the one miss was from 32 yards) and the kickoff team performed well after their one blunder. Defensively, the Buckeyes asserted themselves, holding Jacory Harris to 23-39 passing and intercepting him four times. Admittedly, not all of the blame belongs on Harris’ shoulders. On one of the interceptions, it appeared that the receiver was lining up the defensive back for a run block when the ball went right over his shoulder into the hands of the guy he was going to block.
Terrelle Pryor appears to be much the same quarterback that lit up the Pasadena night last January in the Rose Bowl. While he only completed 12-27 passes, he threw for 233 yards and a touchdown without any turnovers. Some of his passes were offline but some of them were nothing short of stupendous and the only thing standing between him and being a Heisman finalist is consistency. One thing I saw in him today was that not too many of his passes were near interceptions. There were some but most of his passes fell into the category of “if my guy doesn’t catch it, nobody will”.
On top of his decent passing day, Pryor ran the ball 20 times for 113 yards and a touchdown and was by far the most reliable runner for Tressel.
The elephant in the room is special teams. In less than one half of football, the Buckeyes gave up an 88 yard kickoff return and a 79 yard punt return for two of the three touchdowns Miami managed. Without those, the score might have looked more like the 36-10 margin that it should have been.
BY THE NUMBERS
Ohio State outgained Miami 414-346, 233-232 through the air (let’s call that one a tie) and 181-114 on the ground. The Hurricanes committed 8 penalties for 59 yards while the Buckeyes (in typical Tressel fashion) committed just 2 for 25 yards. The biggest number in the entire box score though is 4. Miami threw four interceptions and Ohio State did not turn the ball over.
THE SPIN
First and foremost, I realize that this game was played in front of more than 100,000 fans, most of who were not pulling for the Hurricanes. Nevertheless, what I saw was two teams that both had the same goal and only one that had a chance to realize that goal.
Ohio State did make some mistakes but overall they played a very solid game. Their defense was excellent and opportunistic, their offense was efficient and just needs a few tweaks that can easily come with more game time this fall, and their special teams has room to improve. This is a team that can go all the way and right now the only thing that I think can hold them back is Jim Tressel’s playcalling. If he opens up his playbook the way he did in the Rose Bowl, look out.
Miami came into this game ranked #12 and leading up to this game it appeared that they wanted to let the world know that they had returned to prominence and that they were seeking revenge for a title game loss that occurred when the current crop of seniors was in 8th grade. On both goals, they fell flat. Their defense played well but had no answer for Terrelle Pryor and allowed too many big plays. Their special teams were solid but allowed a few big kickoff returns, including one where senior kicker Matt Bosher was juked by the Buckeyes return man, nearly fell down, and then recovered and ran him down a few yards later to make the tackle.
Offensively, the Hurricanes struggled with Ohio State’s defense. Even putting the four turnovers aside for a second, they managed to get into the red zone just twice and those two possessions resulted in a missed field goal and an interception that was nearly returned for a touchdown.
I understand that they were playing in a hostile environment against a top tier team. When the newest rankings come out this week, I don’t think they’ll be hurt too much by this loss and I don’t think that Ohio State will benefit too much from this win. The most important thing that I’ll take away from this game is these two teams are on two different levels.
To all you Alabama fans out there:
FEAR THE SWEATER-VEST!
Monday, September 6, 2010
Boise State 33, Virginia Tech 30
THE SCORE
Boise State 33, Virginia Tech 30
THE STAR
Kellen Moore. The junior went 23-38 for 215 yards and three touchdowns but more importantly, he went 4-5 on the final drive for 43 yards and the winning touchdown while maintaining the coolness that has made him a household name in the past year.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Broncos outgained the Hokies 383-314 (215-186 through the air and 168-128 on the ground) to help them offset the difference in time of possession (34:20-25:40 Hokies), penalty yardage (55 for the Hokies, 105 for the Broncos), and turnovers (2-1).
THE SPIN
The Broncos keep their hopes for a national championship berth alive by outplaying the Hokies down the stretch. Virginia Tech maintains some hope of making it that far given their high ranking in the coaches poll coming into this game (5th).
In short, the Broncos proved they can play on a high level and the Hokies proved that they may have one of their strongest teams in the past few years.
BLOW-BY-BLOW
While most people have to wait until September 13th for the first Monday Night Football game of the 2010 NFL season, college football fans were given their own treat a week earlier between the #3 Boise State Broncos and the #10 Virginia Tech Hokies. Leading up to this game, many people wondered how Boise State would respond to being given the third ranking in the preseason poll. Before the game, head coach Chris Petersen simply said that they had to “try and win every game, no matter the opponent”.
From the opening snap of the game, the Hokies of Virginia Tech was determined to knock the Boise State Broncos off of their game. While the flea flicker pass was drastically underthrown by Tyrod Taylor, it still resulted in a pass interference penalty and the raucous crowd of over 80,000 started cheering louder. It didn’t last long.
On the second snap of the game, Taylor fumbled the snap and immediately handed the ball to Kellen Moore and the potent Broncos offense. On their sixth snap of the game, Virginia Tech had a punt blocked and gave it to the Broncos on their own 12 yard line. Two plays later, it was 10-0 Boise State.
In the first quarter, the biggest difference between the two teams was discipline. Virginia Tech looked like they wanted to sprint around and make the big hit and get the huge crowd behind them while Boise State looked like they wanted to simply execute their game plan. This lack of discipline was extremely apparent on the Broncos third drive. On a third and long on their first set of downs, Kellen Moore threw over the middle for a fifteen yard gain and the Hokies safety came up and made a big hit on Broncos receiver Austin Pettis. While Hokies safety Eddie Whitley celebrated the big hit, Pettis hopped up and went back to the huddle with a subtle taunt, handing the ball to Whitley as if to say “is that the best you’ve got?”
After an illegal procedure penalty against the Broncos, they threw a screen pass for no gain and then Kellen Moore got hammered in a nine yard sack to set up a 3rd and 24 and the crowd began to rumble. The first big mental error occurred when the Hokies allowed the Broncos to rumble 23 yards on that play to set up a 4th and 1. The next play could very well be the play that we’ll look back on and say that was the play where the Hokies lost the game.
On the Broncos punt, Hokies wide receiver DJ Coles came through the offensive line and ran into the punter after the punt was away and a flag came out. Coles began to head downfield and hit the punter again, knocking him to the ground after the ball had been received. Not done yet, Coles continued downfield and hit another Broncos kick cover man after the tackle had been made. Instead of a 35 yard return and a 1st and 10 from their own 40 yard line, two penalties were called on Coles, 5 yards for running into the punter and another 15 for a personal foul. A few plays later, Kellen Moore threw a beautiful pass from the one yard line (where the ball had been spotted after a Hokies pass interference penalty in the end zone) to Tommy Gallarda who made a diving one handed catch. 17-0 Broncos.
In the first quarter, Virginia Tech had five yards of offense and was penalized four times for 28 yards.
However, with the start of the second quarter came a different Hokies team. After the whistle blew on the first quarter, they marched down the field, going 67 yards on 9 plays to make the score 17-7. The Hokies would actually go on to handle the second quarter, outscoring the Broncos 14-3 but the first half was scattered with mental mistakes by Virginia Tech and a dominate first quarter by the Broncos. It wasn’t until Boise State’s fifth possession that they failed to score and it wasn’t until Virginia Tech’s fourth possession that they even got a first down. Despite that and a laundry list of mental errors, the score at halftime stood at 20-14 Broncos.
From the end of the first quarter until midway through the third quarter, it appeared that the Broncos were sitting on the lead that they had built. Their offense seemed stale and their defense seemed like they had lost a lot of the spark they had in the first quarter. Most of this was probably due to the fact that Virginia Tech stepped up and began playing not only hard but also disciplined. In the third quarter the two teams traded touchdowns and where the first half was marked by defensive heroics, the third was marked by offensive fireworks.
After Boise State fell behind in the second half for the first time since November 23rd, 2007, against Hawaii (which was also the last time the Broncos lost a regular season game; they have since won 25 straight), they answered with a 71 yard touchdown scamper and seemed to retake much of the momentum they had lost in the second and early third quarters. On the ensuing drive, the mental mistakes that had bitten Virginia Tech in the first quarter finally reared their ugly heads on the Boise State side of the field.
The Hokies got backed up to 4th and 10 from the BSU 33 yard line. The 51 yard field goal sailed far to the right but a Boise State kick cover man dove for the block and rolled into the kicker for a five yard penalty. Rather than attempt a 46 yard field goal, Frank Beamer went for the first down and Tyrod Taylor hit his receiver who eluded a defender, and ran the last twenty yards for a 28 yard touchdown pass. Because of Boise State’s blocked extra point and Virginia Tech’s failed two point conversion, the score at the end of 3 stood at Virginia Tech 27-26.
Coming into the fourth quarter, I’m not entirely sure that either team wants to win this game. I think the combination of coaches playcalling getting a bit stale and execution getting a bit sloppy on this humid Maryland night is contributing to the fact that with just under 12 minutes to go in a one point game, I don’t see momentum squarely on one side or another and neither team has shown me that they are capable at this point of putting the game away. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh as this is the season opener for both teams and both teams are ranked in the top ten so on top of the early season sloppiness, there’s the fact that you’re going up against a very good opposing team, but I just feel like both teams should be showing me more. Whichever team wins this game will look back and see that they had many chances to lose it as well.
Back to the action. Boise State misses a 30 yard field goal after a good, prolonged drive which was reminiscent of the drives they put together at the beginning of the game. Speaking of mental mistakes, Tyrod Taylor scrambles around and tries to make a big play through the air and throws an incomplete pass. However, BSU defensive end Ryan Winterswyk hit Taylor late and drew a 15 yard personal foul penalty; the drive moves on. Third and eight from the Boise State 17 yard line; Taylor throws the pass high and his receiver can’t hang on. Field goal good; Virginia Tech takes a 30-26 lead.
On Boise State’s next possession, they never really got their offense rolling and ended up punting with about five and a half minutes to go in the game. The Hokies tried to run out the clock but then they called a pass play on 3rd and 8 with 2:08 to go and because of an incomplete pass, Kellen Moore and the Broncos get the ball back. After a decent punt, they returned the ball out to their own 45 but an apparent illegal block moved them back. However, the officials waved off the flag so they start their potential final drive at their own 44 with 1:47 to play.
Their first play takes just 8 seconds to get a first down as well as into Virginia Tech territory. On their next play, they gained another good chunk of yardage on a pass play and then gained 15 more yards on a questionable late hit penalty.
1st and 10 from the 13 yard line. An incomplete pass from Moore makes it 2nd and 10 with 1:14 to go. On their next play, Moore throws 13 yards to Austin Pettis for the touchdown and the first sign of life from the Broncos in what feels like ages. They go 56 yards on 5 plays in just 38 seconds.
Virginia Tech starts with the ball at their 35 yard line with 1:02 remaining in the game with two timeouts. On the first play, Taylor went deep the way they haven’t all night long but the senior defensive back Thompson for Boise State knocked the ball away inside his own 20 with 54 seconds left. On 2nd and 10, Taylor was sacked for a loss of a yard. 3rd and 11 with 46 seconds remaining. On 3rd and 11, Taylor threw the ball down the field over the middle to a WIDE OPEN receiver and the ball was underthrown and incomplete. 4th and 11: Taylor goes deep but the receiver drops the ball as he falls out of bounds for a turnover to Boise State.
Game Over.
Boise State 33, Virginia Tech 30
THE STAR
Kellen Moore. The junior went 23-38 for 215 yards and three touchdowns but more importantly, he went 4-5 on the final drive for 43 yards and the winning touchdown while maintaining the coolness that has made him a household name in the past year.
BY THE NUMBERS
The Broncos outgained the Hokies 383-314 (215-186 through the air and 168-128 on the ground) to help them offset the difference in time of possession (34:20-25:40 Hokies), penalty yardage (55 for the Hokies, 105 for the Broncos), and turnovers (2-1).
THE SPIN
The Broncos keep their hopes for a national championship berth alive by outplaying the Hokies down the stretch. Virginia Tech maintains some hope of making it that far given their high ranking in the coaches poll coming into this game (5th).
In short, the Broncos proved they can play on a high level and the Hokies proved that they may have one of their strongest teams in the past few years.
BLOW-BY-BLOW
While most people have to wait until September 13th for the first Monday Night Football game of the 2010 NFL season, college football fans were given their own treat a week earlier between the #3 Boise State Broncos and the #10 Virginia Tech Hokies. Leading up to this game, many people wondered how Boise State would respond to being given the third ranking in the preseason poll. Before the game, head coach Chris Petersen simply said that they had to “try and win every game, no matter the opponent”.
From the opening snap of the game, the Hokies of Virginia Tech was determined to knock the Boise State Broncos off of their game. While the flea flicker pass was drastically underthrown by Tyrod Taylor, it still resulted in a pass interference penalty and the raucous crowd of over 80,000 started cheering louder. It didn’t last long.
On the second snap of the game, Taylor fumbled the snap and immediately handed the ball to Kellen Moore and the potent Broncos offense. On their sixth snap of the game, Virginia Tech had a punt blocked and gave it to the Broncos on their own 12 yard line. Two plays later, it was 10-0 Boise State.
In the first quarter, the biggest difference between the two teams was discipline. Virginia Tech looked like they wanted to sprint around and make the big hit and get the huge crowd behind them while Boise State looked like they wanted to simply execute their game plan. This lack of discipline was extremely apparent on the Broncos third drive. On a third and long on their first set of downs, Kellen Moore threw over the middle for a fifteen yard gain and the Hokies safety came up and made a big hit on Broncos receiver Austin Pettis. While Hokies safety Eddie Whitley celebrated the big hit, Pettis hopped up and went back to the huddle with a subtle taunt, handing the ball to Whitley as if to say “is that the best you’ve got?”
After an illegal procedure penalty against the Broncos, they threw a screen pass for no gain and then Kellen Moore got hammered in a nine yard sack to set up a 3rd and 24 and the crowd began to rumble. The first big mental error occurred when the Hokies allowed the Broncos to rumble 23 yards on that play to set up a 4th and 1. The next play could very well be the play that we’ll look back on and say that was the play where the Hokies lost the game.
On the Broncos punt, Hokies wide receiver DJ Coles came through the offensive line and ran into the punter after the punt was away and a flag came out. Coles began to head downfield and hit the punter again, knocking him to the ground after the ball had been received. Not done yet, Coles continued downfield and hit another Broncos kick cover man after the tackle had been made. Instead of a 35 yard return and a 1st and 10 from their own 40 yard line, two penalties were called on Coles, 5 yards for running into the punter and another 15 for a personal foul. A few plays later, Kellen Moore threw a beautiful pass from the one yard line (where the ball had been spotted after a Hokies pass interference penalty in the end zone) to Tommy Gallarda who made a diving one handed catch. 17-0 Broncos.
In the first quarter, Virginia Tech had five yards of offense and was penalized four times for 28 yards.
However, with the start of the second quarter came a different Hokies team. After the whistle blew on the first quarter, they marched down the field, going 67 yards on 9 plays to make the score 17-7. The Hokies would actually go on to handle the second quarter, outscoring the Broncos 14-3 but the first half was scattered with mental mistakes by Virginia Tech and a dominate first quarter by the Broncos. It wasn’t until Boise State’s fifth possession that they failed to score and it wasn’t until Virginia Tech’s fourth possession that they even got a first down. Despite that and a laundry list of mental errors, the score at halftime stood at 20-14 Broncos.
From the end of the first quarter until midway through the third quarter, it appeared that the Broncos were sitting on the lead that they had built. Their offense seemed stale and their defense seemed like they had lost a lot of the spark they had in the first quarter. Most of this was probably due to the fact that Virginia Tech stepped up and began playing not only hard but also disciplined. In the third quarter the two teams traded touchdowns and where the first half was marked by defensive heroics, the third was marked by offensive fireworks.
After Boise State fell behind in the second half for the first time since November 23rd, 2007, against Hawaii (which was also the last time the Broncos lost a regular season game; they have since won 25 straight), they answered with a 71 yard touchdown scamper and seemed to retake much of the momentum they had lost in the second and early third quarters. On the ensuing drive, the mental mistakes that had bitten Virginia Tech in the first quarter finally reared their ugly heads on the Boise State side of the field.
The Hokies got backed up to 4th and 10 from the BSU 33 yard line. The 51 yard field goal sailed far to the right but a Boise State kick cover man dove for the block and rolled into the kicker for a five yard penalty. Rather than attempt a 46 yard field goal, Frank Beamer went for the first down and Tyrod Taylor hit his receiver who eluded a defender, and ran the last twenty yards for a 28 yard touchdown pass. Because of Boise State’s blocked extra point and Virginia Tech’s failed two point conversion, the score at the end of 3 stood at Virginia Tech 27-26.
Coming into the fourth quarter, I’m not entirely sure that either team wants to win this game. I think the combination of coaches playcalling getting a bit stale and execution getting a bit sloppy on this humid Maryland night is contributing to the fact that with just under 12 minutes to go in a one point game, I don’t see momentum squarely on one side or another and neither team has shown me that they are capable at this point of putting the game away. Perhaps I’m being a bit harsh as this is the season opener for both teams and both teams are ranked in the top ten so on top of the early season sloppiness, there’s the fact that you’re going up against a very good opposing team, but I just feel like both teams should be showing me more. Whichever team wins this game will look back and see that they had many chances to lose it as well.
Back to the action. Boise State misses a 30 yard field goal after a good, prolonged drive which was reminiscent of the drives they put together at the beginning of the game. Speaking of mental mistakes, Tyrod Taylor scrambles around and tries to make a big play through the air and throws an incomplete pass. However, BSU defensive end Ryan Winterswyk hit Taylor late and drew a 15 yard personal foul penalty; the drive moves on. Third and eight from the Boise State 17 yard line; Taylor throws the pass high and his receiver can’t hang on. Field goal good; Virginia Tech takes a 30-26 lead.
On Boise State’s next possession, they never really got their offense rolling and ended up punting with about five and a half minutes to go in the game. The Hokies tried to run out the clock but then they called a pass play on 3rd and 8 with 2:08 to go and because of an incomplete pass, Kellen Moore and the Broncos get the ball back. After a decent punt, they returned the ball out to their own 45 but an apparent illegal block moved them back. However, the officials waved off the flag so they start their potential final drive at their own 44 with 1:47 to play.
Their first play takes just 8 seconds to get a first down as well as into Virginia Tech territory. On their next play, they gained another good chunk of yardage on a pass play and then gained 15 more yards on a questionable late hit penalty.
1st and 10 from the 13 yard line. An incomplete pass from Moore makes it 2nd and 10 with 1:14 to go. On their next play, Moore throws 13 yards to Austin Pettis for the touchdown and the first sign of life from the Broncos in what feels like ages. They go 56 yards on 5 plays in just 38 seconds.
Virginia Tech starts with the ball at their 35 yard line with 1:02 remaining in the game with two timeouts. On the first play, Taylor went deep the way they haven’t all night long but the senior defensive back Thompson for Boise State knocked the ball away inside his own 20 with 54 seconds left. On 2nd and 10, Taylor was sacked for a loss of a yard. 3rd and 11 with 46 seconds remaining. On 3rd and 11, Taylor threw the ball down the field over the middle to a WIDE OPEN receiver and the ball was underthrown and incomplete. 4th and 11: Taylor goes deep but the receiver drops the ball as he falls out of bounds for a turnover to Boise State.
Game Over.
Starting Pitchers 2000-2009
Over the course of the past few months, I have done many statistical delving into the world of Game Score and I decided to do it once more while looking at the past decade of pitchers instead of this year. As the title so cleverly claims, I’ll be looking at starting pitchers from 2000 to 2009 but before I get too deep, I’d like to set some ground rules. First of all, I decided to only look at pitchers that qualified for the ERA title. I know that some teams play fewer or more than 162 games over the course of a season but that was my cutoff; 162 innings pitched. The number came out to 862 individual seasons so I think our sample size should be just fine.
Secondly, some of the pitchers on this list pitched in relief as well as starting and to solve this dilemma, I had two options and I went with the one that was much easier. One, I could go through the game logs for the past ten seasons and adjust their statistics to reflect only the games that they started. Two, I when determining their average pitching performance, I could divide by the number of games instead of games started (which is what I did). This does not accurately reflect how well Tim Wakefield pitched as a starter in the 2002 season when he made 45 appearances but just 15 starts but considering the small number of pitchers that made a significant number of relief appearances, I’m comfortable with any inaccuracies that might be present. For the basic analysis I’m going to be doing, it won’t harm anything.
This brings up another question? Why am I only looking at pitchers that qualified for the ERA title? Simply because if I use that cutoff, then I am looking at a group of pitchers that threw a large number of innings every year. For instance, of the 862 seasons in my sample, 860 of them made at least 20 starts and 705 of them made at least 30 starts. If we assume that only 9 innings were played in every game for the last ten years (and yes, I realize the faults in that assumption) then these seasons account for 36.7% of the total innings pitched over that time span. In other words, I wanted to look at the guys that were pitching lots of innings whether or not they were pitching well.
THE GOOD
Since 2000, a starting pitcher has averaged a GS of better than 60 34 different times. To give you an idea of what exactly that looks like on a per game basis, the average line for those 34 pitchers was 7.0-5.5-2.2-2.0-1.7-7.7 for an average GS of 61.4. In other words, those pitchers averaged 7 innings per starts, gave up 2 earned runs (0.2 unearned runs) on 5.5 hits, walked 1.7 and struck out 7.7 batters per start. Not exactly a no-hitter but averaging that over the course of an entire season is very good.
The most interesting part of this grouping of 34 pitchers is that only 11 of them actually received a Cy Young Award during their respective season. The best season not to be awarded with a Cy Young was put forth by Jason Schmidt, who in 2003 went 17-5 with a 2.34 ERA and an average GS of 65.0. Unfortunately for him, he had his best season at the same time that Eric Gagne decided to rewrite a good portion of the record book for closers.
Also intriguing are the eight starters who did not average a GS of 60 or better and still managed to win the Cy Young. In 2000, the top starter (by average GS) won the Cy Young in both leagues (Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson). In 2001, Randy Johnson won again and once again he had the best GS of all starters that year. Roger Clemens won the AL award and he not only didn’t lead the AL in average GS (he finished 4th), he didn’t even lead his team (Mike Mussina had a GS of 57.5 to Clemens’ 55.0).
Here are the Cy Young winners for the rest of the years in the sample with their respective ranks (within their own league) and the leader if it wasn’t them.
2002
AL – Barry Zito (3rd, 57.7) – Pedro Martinez (63.5)
NL – Randy Johnson (1st, 66.3)
2003
AL – Roy Halladay (4th, 57.4) – Pedro Martinez (61.9)
NL – Eric Gagne – Jason Schmidt (65.0)
2004
AL – Johan Santana (1st, 63.1)
NL – Roger Clemens (6th, 58.5) – Randy Johnson (64.9)
2005
AL – Bartolo Colon (6th – 53.8) – Johan Santana (62.8)
NL – Chris Carpenter (3rd, 60.9) – Pedro Martinez (63.1)
2006
AL – Johan Santana (1st, 60.6)
NL – Brandon Webb (1st, 57.7)
2007
AL – CC Sabathia (3rd, 57.7) – Erik Bedard (60.0)
NL – Jake Peavy (1st, 61.2)
2008
AL – Cliff Lee (2nd, 59.7) – Roy Halladay (60.0)
NL – Tim Lincecum (1st, 60.5)
Both – CC Sabathia (61.2)
2009
AL – Zach Greinke (1st, 61.6)
NL – Tim Lincecum (1st, 64.5)
Note: in 2008 CC Sabathia led the entire league in GS but because he made 18 decent starts in the AL and 17 incredible starts in the NL, he didn’t garner enough votes to win the Cy Young Award.
What does all of that tell us? Well, for a very long time the Cy Young voters have been infatuated with a set of statistics that don’t necessarily say who actually pitched the best that season. Number one on that list of stats is wins. In 2001 Roger Clemens finished 4th in GS and still won the Cy Young award. That season he was 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA. Barry Zito (17-8, 3.49), Mike Mussina (17-11, 3.15), and Freddy Garcia (18-6, 3.05) all pitched better according to GS, but none of them won 20 games.
The same thing happened several other times with the most notable snubs being 2004 and 2005. These were the following lines for the Cy Young winner and another notable starter (IP-H-R-ER-BB-K-GS).
2004
Pitcher A – 6.5-5.1-2.3-2.2-2.4-6.6-58.5
Pitchers B – 7.0-5.1-2.5-2.0-1.3-8.3-64.9
I understand that sometimes average Game Scores can look very much alike but I have to say, this is not one of those times. Pitcher B allowed the same number of hits, fewer earned runs, walked one less batter per start, and struck out 1.7 more batters while pitching an extra half inning every time toeing the rubber. So what gave Pitcher A the Cy Young that year? Perhaps it was the fact that Roger Clemens went 18-4 for a Houston team that won 92 games and made the playoffs while Randy Johnson went just 16-14 for a Diamondbacks team that went 51-111, one of the worst records of the past decade.
Let’s try again, the very next year…
2005
Pitcher A – 6.7-6.5-2.8-2.6-1.3-4.8-53.8
Pitcher B – 7.0-5.5-2.3-2.2-1.4-7.2-62.8
Again, I understand that sometimes Game Scores can be very close and two stat lines can look very similar, allowing more hits and fewer walks, so on and so forth… 9 full points though? This example becomes even more laughable the more I look at it. Bartolo Colon had a good season, going 21-8 for a 95-win Angels team. Despite the fact that Johan Santana won “only” 16 games (16-7) and the Twins only won 83 games, I would think that the stat lines above should tell you that Santana (Pitcher B) pitched much better.
Ok, one last example before we move on…
Pitcher A – 7.0-5.3-2.2-1.9-2.1-8.2-64.5
Pitcher B – 6.9-5.9-1.9-1.7-1.5-7.3-61.6
This is actually a bit of a trick. Pitcher A is NL Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum’s line in 2009 and Pitcher B is Zach Greinke’s Cy Young winning line the same year in the AL. Why would I ask this trick question? To point out that Tim Lincecum was 15-7 and finished 4th in the NL in wins and still won the Cy Young while Zach Greinke was 16-8 and finished a distant 7th in the American League in wins. The two of them combined to beat out four 19-game winners (some with very good lines). However, they led their leagues in average GS and pitched the best throughout the year. Maybe there’s hope for the voters yet…
THE BAD (WITH THE UGLY THROWN IN)
In the past ten years, only six times has a pitcher averaged a GS under 40 and still threw more than 162 innings in a season. Out of those, only one player managed to do it twice (for two different teams no less). Jose Lima never managed to pitch “well” in this decade but he was decent in 2004 with the Dodgers (13-5, 4.07). However, in 2000 with the Astros and 2005 with the Royals, he didn’t do quite as well. In 2000 (the “better” of the two seasons), Lima was 7-16 with a 6.65 ERA. His average stat line was 5.9-7.6-4.6-4.4-2.1-3.8, for an average GS of 38.3. Five years later he managed to surpass himself with a stat line of 5.3-6.8-4.4-4.1-1.9-2.5, a GS of 37.8, a 5-16 record, and a 6.99 ERA which is the standard for futility over the past ten years.
Yet somehow, the lowest average GS doesn’t belong to Lima, or even the second lowest. In 2008 Livan Hernandez pitched his was to a 13-11 record despite a stat line of 5.8-8.3-4.2-3.9-1.4-2.2-37.5 and an ERA of 6.05 (he had a good offense supporting him, apparently).
Before we move on, we have to throw a shout out to the Colorado Rockies, who spent absurd amounts of money on front line starters in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, hoping to raise the quality of starting pitching a mile above sea level. In retrospect, the humidor was a much cheaper alternative. In 2002, Mike Hampton was paid $9,503,543 and produced a WAR rating (wins above replacement) of -1.5. He was 7-15 with a 6.15 ERA that season. His stat line was 6.0-7.6-4.5-4.1-3.0-2.5 for a GS of 37.0. Yes, you read that correctly, in 178.2 innings that Hampton pitched that year, he walked 91 batters and struck out just 74.
Lastly, here is a list of the pitchers that finished last in the league in GS year by year. Included are their win-loss records and ERA’s along with their stat lines.
2000
Jose Lima
7-16, 6.65
5.9-7.6-4.6-4.4-2.1-3.8
38.3
2001
Dave Milcki
11-11, 6.17
4.9-6.0-3.6-3.4-2.2-2.9
39.6
2002
Mike Hampton
7-15, 6.15
6.0-7.6-4.5-4.1-3.0-2.5
37.0
2003
Mike Maroth
9-21, 5.73
5.9-7.0-4.0-3.7-1.5-2.6
41.3
2004
Brian Anderson
6-12, 5.64
4.7-6.2-3.5-3.0-1.5-2.0
39.3
2005
Jose Lima
5-16, 6.99
5.3-6.8-4.4-4.1-1.9-2.5
37.8
2006
Joel Pineiro
8-13, 6.36
4.1-5.2-3.1-2.9-1.6-2.2
40.6
2007
Scott Olsen
10-15, 5.81
5.4-6.8-4.1-3.5-2.6-4.0
40.8
2008
Livan Hernandez
13-11, 6.05
5.8-8.3-4.2-3.9-1.4-2.2
37.5
2009
Livan Hernandez
9-12, 5.44
5.9-7.1-3.6-3.6-2.2-3.3
42.3
THE LUCKY AND THE UNLUCKY… SORT OF…
After looking at the good, the rewarded (not necessarily the same as the rewarded), the bad, and the positively ugly, I want to shift gears a little bit.
What I wanted to look at next were the pitchers whose win-loss records were out of whack with the rest of their stat lines. Yes, I understand the problems with using wins and ERA to do any sort of serious analysis but the results are interesting, especially when viewed in a vacuum. If you were to delve into these seasons I found, I’m sure you could find some fascinating reasons why these pitchers had losing records with very good ERA’s or vice versa. I encourage you to do this and if you want any of my data, let me know and I’d be happy to dump it on your electronic doorstep.
Before I get going, I wanted to include a quick note about win-loss records. For them, I compared the pitcher’s individual win-loss record against the win-loss record of his team without him. For instance, if a pitcher went 20-10 for a team that went 100-62, I’d be comparing the pitcher’s .667 winning percentage against the team’s .606 (80-52) winning percentage.
The pitcher that most outpitched the rest of his team who deserved it the least was Scott Elarton in 2000 for Houston. While the Astros went just 72-90, Elarton somehow managed to go 17-7 despite a 4.81 ERA and average GS of just 47.0. Of the small selection of pitchers that I found who outperformed their pitching, Elarton was the only one who actually played on a losing team. Most of the others, such as Paul Abbott, who went 17-4 with a 4.25 ERA, had the good fortune to play on good teams. Abbott played for the 2001 Mariners who went 116-46.
On the flip side of the coin, nobody deserves more sympathy than Matt Cain of the Giants. In 2007 and 2008 he had the misfortune of playing on bad teams and still pitching well. For the 2007 Giants who had a record of 71-91, Cain was just 7-16 but had an ERA of 3.65 and an average line of 6.3-5.4-2.6-2.5-2.5-5.1-54.3.
The next year, his line stayed similar (6.4-6.1-2.8-2.7-2.7-5.5-52.9) and unfortunately for him, the results did also. He was 8-14 with a 3.76 ERA for a Giants team that went 72-90.
If that doesn’t shake your confidence in the use of wins and losses to judge starting pitchers, I’m not sure than anything ever will.
As always, thank you for your time and get ready because October is just 24 days away…
Secondly, some of the pitchers on this list pitched in relief as well as starting and to solve this dilemma, I had two options and I went with the one that was much easier. One, I could go through the game logs for the past ten seasons and adjust their statistics to reflect only the games that they started. Two, I when determining their average pitching performance, I could divide by the number of games instead of games started (which is what I did). This does not accurately reflect how well Tim Wakefield pitched as a starter in the 2002 season when he made 45 appearances but just 15 starts but considering the small number of pitchers that made a significant number of relief appearances, I’m comfortable with any inaccuracies that might be present. For the basic analysis I’m going to be doing, it won’t harm anything.
This brings up another question? Why am I only looking at pitchers that qualified for the ERA title? Simply because if I use that cutoff, then I am looking at a group of pitchers that threw a large number of innings every year. For instance, of the 862 seasons in my sample, 860 of them made at least 20 starts and 705 of them made at least 30 starts. If we assume that only 9 innings were played in every game for the last ten years (and yes, I realize the faults in that assumption) then these seasons account for 36.7% of the total innings pitched over that time span. In other words, I wanted to look at the guys that were pitching lots of innings whether or not they were pitching well.
THE GOOD
Since 2000, a starting pitcher has averaged a GS of better than 60 34 different times. To give you an idea of what exactly that looks like on a per game basis, the average line for those 34 pitchers was 7.0-5.5-2.2-2.0-1.7-7.7 for an average GS of 61.4. In other words, those pitchers averaged 7 innings per starts, gave up 2 earned runs (0.2 unearned runs) on 5.5 hits, walked 1.7 and struck out 7.7 batters per start. Not exactly a no-hitter but averaging that over the course of an entire season is very good.
The most interesting part of this grouping of 34 pitchers is that only 11 of them actually received a Cy Young Award during their respective season. The best season not to be awarded with a Cy Young was put forth by Jason Schmidt, who in 2003 went 17-5 with a 2.34 ERA and an average GS of 65.0. Unfortunately for him, he had his best season at the same time that Eric Gagne decided to rewrite a good portion of the record book for closers.
Also intriguing are the eight starters who did not average a GS of 60 or better and still managed to win the Cy Young. In 2000, the top starter (by average GS) won the Cy Young in both leagues (Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson). In 2001, Randy Johnson won again and once again he had the best GS of all starters that year. Roger Clemens won the AL award and he not only didn’t lead the AL in average GS (he finished 4th), he didn’t even lead his team (Mike Mussina had a GS of 57.5 to Clemens’ 55.0).
Here are the Cy Young winners for the rest of the years in the sample with their respective ranks (within their own league) and the leader if it wasn’t them.
2002
AL – Barry Zito (3rd, 57.7) – Pedro Martinez (63.5)
NL – Randy Johnson (1st, 66.3)
2003
AL – Roy Halladay (4th, 57.4) – Pedro Martinez (61.9)
NL – Eric Gagne – Jason Schmidt (65.0)
2004
AL – Johan Santana (1st, 63.1)
NL – Roger Clemens (6th, 58.5) – Randy Johnson (64.9)
2005
AL – Bartolo Colon (6th – 53.8) – Johan Santana (62.8)
NL – Chris Carpenter (3rd, 60.9) – Pedro Martinez (63.1)
2006
AL – Johan Santana (1st, 60.6)
NL – Brandon Webb (1st, 57.7)
2007
AL – CC Sabathia (3rd, 57.7) – Erik Bedard (60.0)
NL – Jake Peavy (1st, 61.2)
2008
AL – Cliff Lee (2nd, 59.7) – Roy Halladay (60.0)
NL – Tim Lincecum (1st, 60.5)
Both – CC Sabathia (61.2)
2009
AL – Zach Greinke (1st, 61.6)
NL – Tim Lincecum (1st, 64.5)
Note: in 2008 CC Sabathia led the entire league in GS but because he made 18 decent starts in the AL and 17 incredible starts in the NL, he didn’t garner enough votes to win the Cy Young Award.
What does all of that tell us? Well, for a very long time the Cy Young voters have been infatuated with a set of statistics that don’t necessarily say who actually pitched the best that season. Number one on that list of stats is wins. In 2001 Roger Clemens finished 4th in GS and still won the Cy Young award. That season he was 20-3 with a 3.51 ERA. Barry Zito (17-8, 3.49), Mike Mussina (17-11, 3.15), and Freddy Garcia (18-6, 3.05) all pitched better according to GS, but none of them won 20 games.
The same thing happened several other times with the most notable snubs being 2004 and 2005. These were the following lines for the Cy Young winner and another notable starter (IP-H-R-ER-BB-K-GS).
2004
Pitcher A – 6.5-5.1-2.3-2.2-2.4-6.6-58.5
Pitchers B – 7.0-5.1-2.5-2.0-1.3-8.3-64.9
I understand that sometimes average Game Scores can look very much alike but I have to say, this is not one of those times. Pitcher B allowed the same number of hits, fewer earned runs, walked one less batter per start, and struck out 1.7 more batters while pitching an extra half inning every time toeing the rubber. So what gave Pitcher A the Cy Young that year? Perhaps it was the fact that Roger Clemens went 18-4 for a Houston team that won 92 games and made the playoffs while Randy Johnson went just 16-14 for a Diamondbacks team that went 51-111, one of the worst records of the past decade.
Let’s try again, the very next year…
2005
Pitcher A – 6.7-6.5-2.8-2.6-1.3-4.8-53.8
Pitcher B – 7.0-5.5-2.3-2.2-1.4-7.2-62.8
Again, I understand that sometimes Game Scores can be very close and two stat lines can look very similar, allowing more hits and fewer walks, so on and so forth… 9 full points though? This example becomes even more laughable the more I look at it. Bartolo Colon had a good season, going 21-8 for a 95-win Angels team. Despite the fact that Johan Santana won “only” 16 games (16-7) and the Twins only won 83 games, I would think that the stat lines above should tell you that Santana (Pitcher B) pitched much better.
Ok, one last example before we move on…
Pitcher A – 7.0-5.3-2.2-1.9-2.1-8.2-64.5
Pitcher B – 6.9-5.9-1.9-1.7-1.5-7.3-61.6
This is actually a bit of a trick. Pitcher A is NL Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum’s line in 2009 and Pitcher B is Zach Greinke’s Cy Young winning line the same year in the AL. Why would I ask this trick question? To point out that Tim Lincecum was 15-7 and finished 4th in the NL in wins and still won the Cy Young while Zach Greinke was 16-8 and finished a distant 7th in the American League in wins. The two of them combined to beat out four 19-game winners (some with very good lines). However, they led their leagues in average GS and pitched the best throughout the year. Maybe there’s hope for the voters yet…
THE BAD (WITH THE UGLY THROWN IN)
In the past ten years, only six times has a pitcher averaged a GS under 40 and still threw more than 162 innings in a season. Out of those, only one player managed to do it twice (for two different teams no less). Jose Lima never managed to pitch “well” in this decade but he was decent in 2004 with the Dodgers (13-5, 4.07). However, in 2000 with the Astros and 2005 with the Royals, he didn’t do quite as well. In 2000 (the “better” of the two seasons), Lima was 7-16 with a 6.65 ERA. His average stat line was 5.9-7.6-4.6-4.4-2.1-3.8, for an average GS of 38.3. Five years later he managed to surpass himself with a stat line of 5.3-6.8-4.4-4.1-1.9-2.5, a GS of 37.8, a 5-16 record, and a 6.99 ERA which is the standard for futility over the past ten years.
Yet somehow, the lowest average GS doesn’t belong to Lima, or even the second lowest. In 2008 Livan Hernandez pitched his was to a 13-11 record despite a stat line of 5.8-8.3-4.2-3.9-1.4-2.2-37.5 and an ERA of 6.05 (he had a good offense supporting him, apparently).
Before we move on, we have to throw a shout out to the Colorado Rockies, who spent absurd amounts of money on front line starters in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, hoping to raise the quality of starting pitching a mile above sea level. In retrospect, the humidor was a much cheaper alternative. In 2002, Mike Hampton was paid $9,503,543 and produced a WAR rating (wins above replacement) of -1.5. He was 7-15 with a 6.15 ERA that season. His stat line was 6.0-7.6-4.5-4.1-3.0-2.5 for a GS of 37.0. Yes, you read that correctly, in 178.2 innings that Hampton pitched that year, he walked 91 batters and struck out just 74.
Lastly, here is a list of the pitchers that finished last in the league in GS year by year. Included are their win-loss records and ERA’s along with their stat lines.
2000
Jose Lima
7-16, 6.65
5.9-7.6-4.6-4.4-2.1-3.8
38.3
2001
Dave Milcki
11-11, 6.17
4.9-6.0-3.6-3.4-2.2-2.9
39.6
2002
Mike Hampton
7-15, 6.15
6.0-7.6-4.5-4.1-3.0-2.5
37.0
2003
Mike Maroth
9-21, 5.73
5.9-7.0-4.0-3.7-1.5-2.6
41.3
2004
Brian Anderson
6-12, 5.64
4.7-6.2-3.5-3.0-1.5-2.0
39.3
2005
Jose Lima
5-16, 6.99
5.3-6.8-4.4-4.1-1.9-2.5
37.8
2006
Joel Pineiro
8-13, 6.36
4.1-5.2-3.1-2.9-1.6-2.2
40.6
2007
Scott Olsen
10-15, 5.81
5.4-6.8-4.1-3.5-2.6-4.0
40.8
2008
Livan Hernandez
13-11, 6.05
5.8-8.3-4.2-3.9-1.4-2.2
37.5
2009
Livan Hernandez
9-12, 5.44
5.9-7.1-3.6-3.6-2.2-3.3
42.3
THE LUCKY AND THE UNLUCKY… SORT OF…
After looking at the good, the rewarded (not necessarily the same as the rewarded), the bad, and the positively ugly, I want to shift gears a little bit.
What I wanted to look at next were the pitchers whose win-loss records were out of whack with the rest of their stat lines. Yes, I understand the problems with using wins and ERA to do any sort of serious analysis but the results are interesting, especially when viewed in a vacuum. If you were to delve into these seasons I found, I’m sure you could find some fascinating reasons why these pitchers had losing records with very good ERA’s or vice versa. I encourage you to do this and if you want any of my data, let me know and I’d be happy to dump it on your electronic doorstep.
Before I get going, I wanted to include a quick note about win-loss records. For them, I compared the pitcher’s individual win-loss record against the win-loss record of his team without him. For instance, if a pitcher went 20-10 for a team that went 100-62, I’d be comparing the pitcher’s .667 winning percentage against the team’s .606 (80-52) winning percentage.
The pitcher that most outpitched the rest of his team who deserved it the least was Scott Elarton in 2000 for Houston. While the Astros went just 72-90, Elarton somehow managed to go 17-7 despite a 4.81 ERA and average GS of just 47.0. Of the small selection of pitchers that I found who outperformed their pitching, Elarton was the only one who actually played on a losing team. Most of the others, such as Paul Abbott, who went 17-4 with a 4.25 ERA, had the good fortune to play on good teams. Abbott played for the 2001 Mariners who went 116-46.
On the flip side of the coin, nobody deserves more sympathy than Matt Cain of the Giants. In 2007 and 2008 he had the misfortune of playing on bad teams and still pitching well. For the 2007 Giants who had a record of 71-91, Cain was just 7-16 but had an ERA of 3.65 and an average line of 6.3-5.4-2.6-2.5-2.5-5.1-54.3.
The next year, his line stayed similar (6.4-6.1-2.8-2.7-2.7-5.5-52.9) and unfortunately for him, the results did also. He was 8-14 with a 3.76 ERA for a Giants team that went 72-90.
If that doesn’t shake your confidence in the use of wins and losses to judge starting pitchers, I’m not sure than anything ever will.
As always, thank you for your time and get ready because October is just 24 days away…
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