As I may have mentioned before, when I was a young student, I desperately wanted to be a sabermetrician ... someone who analyzed baseball statistics for a living.
Of course, back then, there really weren't many of these roles (this was before "Moneyball" came out). To be sure, my interest in *watching* baseball has waned (it trails basketball and football, easily); but my love of the numbers, and my love of research of those numbers is still unparalleled.
I was driving home from Erie, Pa., last Sunday, and had the Red Sox-Tigers game on. Detroit had won the opener. 1-0, behind masterful pitching (something the Tigers had an abundance of this past year). Shutting out the Red Sox was no small task; they were the most proficient offensive team in baseball this year.
So, this was Game 2 ... in Boston ... Detroit leading 5-1 in the 8th inning, and sitting smugly. They were going to be heading back to Detroit up 2 games to none, and -- pretty much -- a sure thing for the World Series.
I think everyone knows what happened then. Leyland (the manager of the Tigers) pulled his starter, Max Scherzer, the odds-on favorite for the Cy Young Award, who had -- through 7 innings -- allowed *2* hits, 1 run and 13 strikeouts. Why was he pulled? He'd thrown 108 pitches.
The agony played out like this:
Jose Veras was brought in to pitch. After getting the first batter out, the next batter doubled.
Doug Smyly was brought in to pitch. He walked the only batter he faced.
Al Alberquerque was brought in to pitch. He struck out the first batter, and the next batter singled, loading the bases.
In 2/3 of an inning, the Detroit bullpen had let nearly as many runners reach base as Scherzer had all game.
The next pitcher -- the *fourth* pitching change of the inning -- was Joaquin Benoit, and, on his first pitch, David Ortiz hit a grand slam homerun, tying up the game (with the Red Sox winning in the 9th). It completely changed the dynamic of the series, and although Detroit grabbed on more win, they succumbed in 6 games.
So, why do I blame sabermetrics?
There was a movement, somewhere around the 1990s, where number-crunchers decided, beyond anything else, "pitch count" was the most important thing for a pitcher. So, although Scherzer was pitching a fantastic game, he'd pitched 100+ pitches. Whether the fear was that he'd lose his stuff or that he'd hurt himself, the logic was to pull him out.
I won't address the second concern here; but let's look at the first concern. He was pitching a magnificent game! And, four pitching changes later, the absolute worst case scenario had unfolded. Even if Scherzer had imploded, it couldn't have been worse than the actual reality that did occur.
This isn't new this year. Detroit had a great pitching staff ... well, starters, anyway. Third best WHIP and ERA in the league, the *best* SO/BB ratio. But the starters hid the relievers effectively.
In terms of WHIP -- just the starters alone would've been tops in the league. The relievers would've been 13th.
In terms of ERA -- again, the starters would've ranked first; relievers, 11th.
In terms of SO/BB ratio -- starters first; relievers 8th.
So, the point is, no one should've been surprised that the relievers got beat up, once the starter came out of the game.
Then, I decided to prod a little more. I sketched out the number of times pitchers pitched 250+ innings for the past 66 years (basically, back to 1945, removing the strike years of 1981, 1994 and 1995). And then, I decided to analyze these two groups -- breaking them (conveniently) into the 1945-1989 group (a total of 44 playing years) versus the 1990-present (a total of 22 years). Here's what I found:
1945-1989: 675 different occurrences
1990-present: 42
So, although 1945-1989 had only double the playing years, it had 16 TIMES the number of occurrences. This goes along with the increase of pitchers on the roster (from around 13-14 in the 1940s and 1950s, to around 15-16 in the 1970s, to 22-23 today).
But, surely, there's a reason for this -- lower innings must be resulting in far more dominating pitching, right? So, let's take a closer look.
The average age of the qualifying pitcher in the first group was 28.6; in the second group, it was 29.5, so the pitchers were roughly the same age. Here's a breakdown of the relevant statistics:
W/L - roughly the same, 18-12 for the first group, 18-10 for the second. They started the same number of games (36 for the first group, 35 for the second). The big change came in terms of complete games (16 average for the first group, 8 for the second), and -- on average -- the first group faced about 80 batters more each year.
Now, the nitty-gritty stuff:
1945-1989
ERA: 3.08
WHIP: 1.192
HR/9: 0.7
K/9: 5.6
K/BB: 2.1
1990-Present
ERA: 3.02
WHIP: 1.138
HR/9: 0.74
K/9: 7.7
K/BB: 3.29
Aside from the increased strikeouts (which can be attributed, in part, to the increased focus on "all or nothing" swinging from the batters), there's no marked difference in ERA, WHIP or HR allowed.
Now, let's look at the players who have achieved this lofty plateau:
1945-1989
Warren Spahn: 16 times
Gaylord Perry: 12 times
Steve Carlton: 12 times
Phil Niekro: 11times
Tom Seaver: 11 times
Fergie Jenkins: 10 times
Robin Roberts: 10 times
Bert Blyleven: 9 times
Mel Stottlemyre: 9 times
Bob Gibson: 8 times
Bob Lemon: 8 times
Catfish Hunter: 8 times
Claude Osteen: 8 times
Don Drysdale: 8 times
Don Sutton: 8 times
Jim Bunning: 8 times
Jim Palmer: 8 times
Juan Marichal: 8 times
Larry Jackson: 8 times
Early Wynn: 7 times
Jim Kaat: 7 times
Vida Blue: 7 times
Bob Friend: 6 times
Fernando Valenzuela: 6 times
Jack Morris: 6 times
Ken Holtzman: 6 times
Lew Burdette: 6 times
Mickey Lolich: 6 times
Mike Cuellar: 6 times
Nolan Ryan: 6 times
Steve Rogers: 6 times
Charlie Hough: 5 times
Dave McNally: 5 times
Frank Viola: 5 times
Hal Newhouser: 5 times
Jim Perry: 5 times
Luis Tiant: 5 times
Wilbur Wood: 5 times
Andy Messersmith: 4 times
Billy Pierce: 4 times
Carl Morton: 4 times
Clyde Wright: 4 times
Dave Stieb: 4 times
Dean Chance: 4 times
Dennis Leonard: 4 times
Frank Lary: 4 times
Fritz Peterson: 4 times
JR Richard: 4 times
Jerry Koosman: 4 times
Joe Coleman: 4 times
Joe Niekro: 4 times
Johnny Sain: 4 times
Larry Jansen: 4 times
Mike Garcia: 4 times
Mike Torrez: 4 times
Pat Dobson: 4 times
Randy Jones: 4 times
Rick Wise: 4 times
Roger Clemens: 4 times
Sam McDowell: 4 times
Sandy Koufax: 4 times
Whitey Ford: 4 times
1990-present
Curt Schilling (4 times)
Greg Maddux (4 times)
Jack McDowell (3 times)
Kevin Brown (3 times)
Randy Johnson (3 times)
Or, maybe that's not dramatic enough for you ... how about this:
Number of pitchers that have pitched more than 250 innings five times in their career:
1945-1989: 38
1990-present: Zero
I'm not disparaging the 1990-present pitchers. I consider Maddux one of the greatest pitchers of all time; and Johnson and Schilling are also amazing. But, ponder over that top list -- there are a ton of all-time greats there.
And, I think Schilling and Johnson would've fought with a manager who wanted to take them out (I do think Maddux wouldn't put up much of a fight), but, can you imagine the manager who tries to take out Perry? Carlton? Seaver? Gibson? Marichal? Drysdale?
If one of them had been pitching in the Red Sox game, they would've not-so-politely told Jim Leyland to get his *&$* back to the dugout, before they cracked open his skull on live television.
And then, they would've continued pitching, and won the game. And they would be in the World Series today.
Monday, October 21, 2013
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2 comments:
Don't blame sabermetrics. It wasn't statistical analysis that informed Leyland's decision, it was the lack thereof. Leyland made his decision based on a "guideline", and while that guideline may have come out of the analytics community, it's still a gross oversimplification that has been boiled down so that people don't need to do analysis. What I don't understand is why professional baseball teams that have millions of dollars in revenues can't do analysis on the fly. Coming into the game, you have data on all of your pitchers, and how they perform versus certain batter archetypes, and how their performance declines with each pitch and with each time they face a particular batter. Obviously, you also have data on your opponents' batters. Furthermore, during a game fans have instantaneous access to pitch velocity and location; there's no reason a manager shouldn't have this information too. Feed all of this information into a computer, do a little regression, and you can have a machine tell you exactly when to change your pitcher and to whom. Relying on some 100-pitch guideline without any context is hogwash. Analytics may have found a place in MLB front offices, but it's still unknown in dugouts.
Doug ... I absolutely agree. I think "sabermetrics" in and of itself is incredibly valuable (and, ironically, probably even more valuable in something like football or basketball).
So, it's ironic; while I applaud his decision to *not* match up leftie-on-leftie (and instead, went to his closer to face Ortiz); I think he should be closing out the World Series right now, because I *never* would've taken out Scherzer, with the *meat* of the Red Sox order coming up, UNTIL he started showing signs of struggling.
My title was a little more tongue-in-cheek; I don't think actual sabermetrics contributed to this; but I do think people's interpretation of what sabermetrics is, contributes to the problem.
Of course, you're 100 percent right. The outcome seemed to be one poor decision following one poor decision. Garbage in, garbage out, and all that ....
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