IS 2011 THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER?

Last year many writers lauded the Major League Baseball season as the second coming of the “Year of the Pitcher” with 1968 being the first incarnation. This season some of those same writers are saying that this is actually the next “Year of the Pitcher” and it even prompted one writer to say that we are entering the “Era of the Pitcher”. My goal is simply to examine those claims and put some statistical analysis in place to determine which year in the Cy Young era should truly be called the “Year of the Pitcher”.

METHODS

Anyone who has read (almost) any of my posts about pitching know my love of the Bill James metric, Game Score. It is specifically designed to reward good results (strikeouts, longer outings) while penalizing bad results (hits, walks, runs, earned runs) and it boils down an entire pitching performance into one simple number. The “typical” scale is 0-100 but there are examples (albeit rare ones) of starting pitchers going into the negative or above 100.

Here’s the wrinkle; for this analysis, I didn’t use just starting pitching. I used all the pitching numbers so essentially, I’m giving pretty much all teams credit for the innings bonuses in the Game Score (GS) metric. Thus, when I present the GS values, they are presenting the ability of that team or league to maximize strikeouts while minimizing walks, hits, and runs of all kinds. While I understand there is more to pitching than striking batters out, I also acknowledge that it terms of minimizing the chances for something to go wrong as the team in the field, nothing does it better than a strikeout. The batter does not hit the ball in fair territory and fielders are not given the chance to make an error. The astute baseball fan would point out that a batter can reach base on a third strike that comes in the form of a passed ball or wild pitch. However, so far in 2011, there have been 197 passed balls and 874 wild pitches… out of 407,666 total pitches thrown (0.26%). There have also been 1,749 errors committed out of 106,022 total chances (1.65%). Therefore, so far this season, the likelihood of a ball in play turning into an error is five times higher than the likelihood of a pitched ball ending up with a wild pitch or a passed ball.

The next step that I took is I compared the ERA of each individual season to the overall ERA of the Cy Young era (1956-present). I fully understand the pitfalls of ERA but over a large enough sample size, the aberrations will even out and give a decent snapshot of what is actually going on. Lastly, to obtain the single metric with which I compared individual seasons, I took the GS and divided it by 114 (the “perfect” Game Score) and multiplied it by the percentage deviation from the overall average ERA. For example, the league average ERA since 1956 has been 4.00. If the ERA in a particular year was 3.60, then the value I’d plug into this formula is 110.

(4.00-3.60) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1 + 1 = 1.1 x 100 = 110

An ERA of 4.40 would yield a value of 90

(4.40-4.00) = 0.40 / 4.00 = 0.1… 1 – 0.1 = 0.9 x 100 = 90

Thus,

(GS/114)*(ERAadj) = Pitching Factor (PF)

The results were quite almost exactly what you might expect. The following is a list of the top 10 individual seasons during the Cy Young Era and their PF’s (with the last two seasons thrown in for reference).

Rank (out of 56) – Year – PF
1 – 1968 – 0.676
2 – 1972 – 0.614
3 – 1967 – 0.614
4 – 1963 – 0.581
5 – 1965 – 0.575
6 – 1971 – 0.572
7 – 1966 – 0.570
8 – 1964 – 0.558
9 – 1976 – 0.554
10 – 1969 – 0.549
16 – 2011 – 0.523
34 – 2010 – 0.482
42 – 2009 – 0.438
56 – 2000 – 0.361 (last)

As you can see, progress has been made over the past few years but we are still a long ways from saying that the pitching today is on par with that of the late 60’s. Even if you want to throw out 1968 as an aberration (which is valid since it was the last year that the height of the mound wasn’t uniform and mandated) let’s compare this year to #2 overall, 1972. The league wide ERA in 1972 was 3.26 and the overall GS was 59.13. This year those numbers are 3.85 and 57.43, respectively. That 57.43 GS this year ranks 9th overall, up from 16th in 2010.

What we are truly seeing is a combination of factors. First of all, steroids are making their way out of baseball and while I’m sure some players still use, I’m sure that number is significantly down from 2000 when the league wide ERA was 4.77, the highest of the Cy Young era. Secondly, we are seeing a number of young pitchers that are threats to throw a shutout or even a no-hitter every time they go out to the mound. On top of that, teams are getting smarter with their young pitchers and we’re finding a crop of pitchers under 30 that are pitching longer innings than in the last decade and they are effective later in games and later in the season. Lastly, the cut fastball is becoming more and more popular around MLB and pitchers are finding that it is an extremely effective pitch. If you need any proof at all, just look at Mariano Rivera, who has thrown one pitch for virtually his entire career and even though his velocity has decreased through the years, he is on pace to put up an ERA+ over 200 (over 100% better than league average) for the eighth time in nine years… at the age of 41.

Before I move on to the individuals that are driving the increase in chatter about this being the “Year of the Pitcher”, I want to shed some light on another factor that is showing up in the raw data. If you look at a graph of the league wide ERA’s or the runs per game or even the hits or walks allowed per game, there isn’t a ton of deviance. Obviously you have some, given that in 1968 the ERA was 2.98 and it was 4.77 in 2000. There is one statistic that I didn’t mention that features very prominently in the GS calculation that has not stayed constant over the years and is one of the driving forces behind the impression that we are in a golden age of pitching; the strikeout.

In 1956, pitchers struck out an average of 4.69 batters per 9 innings pitched, which works out to 17.4% of outs recorded. In 1968, the average was 5.89 per 9 innings (21.8% of outs) which is a tick above the overall average for the past 56 years (5.86). So far this year, that number is 7.00 per 9 innings, actually down from the all-time high set last year (7.13). Here’s the real question then; are strikeouts the measure of a good pitcher?

My answer is that they contribute but they are not all there is to pitching and I think that your answer to that question greatly defines how much of a renaissance pitching is having in baseball right now. It is certainly better than the time from 1998-2003 but it is still a far cry from a time when a pitcher allowed just 38 earned runs in 304.2 innings.

INDIVIDUALS

The question is simple; what was the best single-season pitching performance in the Cy Young Era (1956-present)? The answer is slightly more complicated because again, it depends on what you value. I tried to encompass everything and personally, I think I did fairly well but I will readily admit that I am biased towards my own method. I’ve talked about the formula I use to judge starting pitchers before but I’ll briefly recap its components.

ERA+
This is the part of my formula that relates one era to another. This metric adjusts a pitcher’s ERA to account for things like the field they pitched on as well as the opponents they pitch against and the league average for that particular season.

Game Score
Simply put, this metric rewards a pitcher for good results (more innings pitched, strikeouts) and detracts for bad results (hits, runs, and walks allowed).

Innings Pitched.
I’ve posed this exact same question before but I’ll do it again. You have two pitchers with identical stat lines; an ERA of 2.50 and a WHIP of 1.00. One of them pitched 200 innings and another pitched 250 innings. Which would you rather have? Obviously, you want the latter because pitching more innings is more valuable to your team.

The actual formula I use is this:

(ERA+/100)x(GS.ave/114)x(IP)

Using this formula, these are the top ten seasons of the past 56 years

Bob Gibson (1968) – 524.70
Pedro Martinez (2000) – 406.27
Dwight Gooden (1985) – 390.67
Steve Carlton (1972) – 383.36
Sandy Koufax (1966) – 370.66
Wilbur Wood (1971) – 353.88
Vida Blue (1971) – 353.25
Roger Clemens (1997) – 349.89
Gaylord Perry (1972) – 347.77
Ron Guidry (1978) – 344.15

The biggest difference between Gibson and Martinez at the top is simple.

Bob Gibson’s ERA+ was 258 and Pedro’s was 291. Advantage: Pedro

Bob Gibson’s GS.ave was 76.10 and Pedro’s was 73.34. Advantage: Gibson

Pedro Martinez pitched just 217.0 innings in 2000, the fewest of any pitcher in the top ten by 44 innings. Bob Gibson pitched 304.2 innings in 1968.

To put it simply, Pedro might have been slightly better than Gibson but Gibson was at that level of excellence for 87.2 more innings.

…

Yes, pitchers are performing better than they have in the past twenty years and if they do better in the second half of this season, we might be able to rank this season up there with some of the best seasons of the past thirty years. However, to put this year up there with the best pitching seasons of all time is nothing short of laughable. No-hitters and the best ten pitchers in the game do not set a precedent for the entire sport. If this were truly the year of the pitcher, then we would be saying that the worst pitcher on any staff would be a good pitcher on the staffs of other seasons and we aren’t to that point yet.

I am enjoying this rebirth of pitching more than anyone else I know and I have always liked 1-0 games more than 11-10 slugfests. Home runs are fun in batting practice but in the game I want to see the best hitters in the world acting like it.

I want to see them hitting behind runners to move them over a base.

I want to see them taking a pitch on the outside corner to the opposite field, taking a single instead of trying to hit a home run and making an out instead.

I want to see a middle of the order hitter square around to bunt and actually look like he knows what he’s doing.

I want to see a batter NOT try to hit a home run with two strikes and realize that a weak single helps the team more than a strikeout.

I guess when it all comes down to it; I want to see more batters hit like Edgar Martinez did.

And that’s the overwhelming impression that I get from all of this number crunching I’ve done. Yes, pitching is better now than at any point in the past ten years and there are more good or great pitchers that I would pay money to see pitch than at any point for quite some time. Since we’re giving credit where credit is due, let’s give blame where it is due as well. Batters are not adjusting to this new era of baseball well and the result is bad approaches to the plate and easy outs. In the 2009 World Series, the one batter that didn’t scare me in the Phillies line-up was Ryan Howard. This was the same guy who in the four regular seasons leading up to that had hit well (.278/.379/.589) and had hit the ball far (198 home runs and 572 RBI). Why wasn’t I afraid? He’s not a good hitter and he’s even worse against left handed pitching. What was the result?

Game 1 – 2-5 with 2 doubles
Game 2 – 0-4 with 4 K’s
Game 3 – 0-4 with 3 K’s
Game 4 – 1-4
Game 5 – 0-2 with 2 BB’s… and 2 K’s
Game 6 – 1-4 with a 2-run homer that came with the Phillies down 7-1

Total that up and it’s just ugly. Batters want to hit home runs and drive in runs. They want gaudy video game numbers that lead to contract’s like Howard’s 5 year, $125 million extension that he recently signed.


It’s time for the country to fall out of love with the home run and appreciate the nasty 2-1 slider that induces an inning-ending double play.

It ain’t sexy but it wins ballgames.