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Saturday, September 06, 2008
Dugout Central: Ehrke: Another 30-game Winner Just Isn’t Possible
Shhh...Don’t tell that to Chuck Seelbach. (brought up from the Htrae Facefolders...Seelbach won 30 games in my old Strat-O league!)
No one today pitches 28 complete game victories. Starters are too dependent on their bullpens to win 30 games. Let’s “go Pythagorean” one more time. Let’s assume our possible 30 game winner averages seven innings per start – 245 innings, a real workhorse by today’s standard. This means he needs his bullpen to pick up the other two innings. The average major league bullpen has an ERA of 4.03. Allowing 7% more unearned runs, they surrender about 4.31 runs per nine or 0.958 runs in their two innings of work. Remember, to win 30 games for a typical team the pitcher must keep his runs allowed below 1.89 per nine. The bullpen just surrendered 0.958 of those 1.89 runs. The starter can only allow 0.932 runs in his seven innings of work. That means that after making adjustments for unearned runs the starter must maintain an ERA of 1.11 or less to win 30 times.
No one’s going to record a 1.11 ERA.
Repoz
Posted: September 06, 2008 at 09:33 AM | 30 comment(s)
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typical team
Okay, let's put him in front of a good bullpen on an atypical team. Or is "no one going to do that"?
On a more serious note, Halladay is one of the few pitchers I could see making a legitimate run at 30 (assuming things break right). After all, he throws a ton of innings in general, always goes deep into games, has been relatively free of arm trouble, and has expressed a willingness to pitch in a 4 or 4.5 man rotation (for a GM who has also previously expressed interest in using a 4 man rotation), which could get him into the high 30s in starts. He also pitches for a team with a very good defense and bullpen, both of which will help him.
Now, with all that being said, I think the likelihood of him even getting 25 wins in a season is at maybe 5% at the high end, and the odds of getting 30 wins being somewhere less than 1%.
EDIT: Interesting fact - Halladay has gone less than 6 innings in only 1 start this year.
Don't see that happening either, though.
Halladay has made more than 32 starts in a season only twice - in 2002 and 2003. Sure, if everything breaks his way he could do it, but he does seem to have to be shut down for a couple starts every year.
Sabathia seems almost as likely to win 30. Speaking of which: would it be easier to win 30 in the AL or NL?
In 2002, he led the AL in innings.
In 2003, he led the AL in innings.
In 2004, he had shoulder weakness, and was shut down for a good chunk of the second half
In 2005, he had a line drive hit off his leg, which is a fluke injury, and was on pace to lead the AL in innings at the time (141 IP at the ASB - damn bastard Kevin Mench).
In 2006, he missed a couple starts with forearm tightness, and still finished 4th in the AL in innings.
In 2007, he missed time with appendicitis, which is extremely unlikely to reoccur, and still finished 3rd in the AL in innings.
In 2008, he's on pace to clear 32 starts and lead the AL in innings.
For a pitcher, he's much more durable than most, and a significant percentage of his time missed can be accounted for as "fluke" incidents, unrelated to his arm.
Primey for Ryan Jones for this line!!!
And if anyone wants to say that pitchers finished what they started back then...Welch threw 2 complete games all season.
And the league leader had 36, so it's not like Welch was miles behind.
All it takes is a really great, durable pitcher and a really great offense. Volquez on the Red Sox with A-rod and Pujols at 3rd and 1st base. Santana on the Mets with the same two offensive additions. A really good bullpen would help, too. When you have 30 teams, there are going to be some outliers with really great offenses. Over the course of a number of years, one of those teams might have a really great starter and bullpen.
Well, the league leader is still usually at about 35, so it's not a big difference.
Not really. 35 starts is still the most common league-leading total.
Ugh, this is horrible, horrible, horrible analysis. If the starter is coming out after 7 with a lead, you're going to use the front end of your bullpen, which evan on an average team is much, much, much better than this (unless it's a blowout, in which case it doesn't matter anyway). Your basically eliminating the 4+ ERA guys, and going with the sub-3's...
Not saying anyone is going to win 30 anytime soon though...
I will go ahead and wager that the next 30 game winner will be a knuckleballer who can start and relieve, and be on a good team w/ great defense, etc.
What I think is more unlikely than a 30 game winner: Someone to win AND lose 20 in the same season.
I think you are implying correlation between the number of starts by a league leader and the top number of wins a pitcher could have in a year.
(I may be misinterpreting you).
Surely you are right in the sense that the more starts you make, the better chance you have of winning more games, but looking at recent years, I see pitchers with high win numbers that were high-up but did not lead their league in starts (Cliff Lee this year, Beckett and Wang last year, Schmidt and Pavano in 2004).
That would probably be the same pitcher who finally gives up 300 hits in a season for the first time since Phil Niekro. Livan Hernandez started this season incredibly strong, but he might not even get to his career hit (268 hits, in 2005), since he can only get to 32 or 33 starts this year.
Going back to 1990 (simply to include Welch's big year), we have 34 league leaders not including strike seasons. Avg leader had 21.1 wins.. and it's getting smaller over time. Welch's 27 win year is 3.2 stdevs above the mean. A 30-win year would be 4.0 stdevs; not gonna happen.
But the game does change, sometimes quicker than we think, so "impossible" is too stonrg a word. Managers might begin using stars in relief to vulture wins. Maybe the rule book will give wins for only 4 IP (ha ha, not likely). Maybe a team will go back to the 4-man rotation, and Halladay will get 42 starts and get pulled after 5 to 7 each time. Maybe.. a dozen other things I haven't thought of.
Shocking.
Then again, nobody did it between 1934 (Dean) and 1968 either though Newhouser managed 29 during the war years. It's happened once since integration and just 4 times since the deadball era. Since integration, only 6 guys have even managed as manay as 27 wins (add Koufax, Newcombe and Roberts).
It's a question nobody cares about, it's a question everyone knows the answer to and it's a question not well-suited to analysis ... and it was analyzed poorly.
And I know that winning 27 out of 35 is a whole lot easier than winning 30 out of 33 or 34, but it's not so far out of the realm of possibility. Welch was 6th in ERA, 7th in ERA+, and 9th in WHIP in 1990...not really even close to being the best pitcher in the league. If he could win 27, why can't someone else win 30?
But given that Welch's 27 is an insane outlier to begin with, as TomH points out in #22, obviously the chance of winning 30 is...well, not good.
And I have no problem with neither ever happening again...
Are they really? I find that hard believe. How many starters are going up to their managers after the 6th inning saying "well, I've thrown 107 pitches. better get someone up in the bullpen." The impression I get is that most pitchers want to go as deep into games as their managers will let them, and it is the managers that are dependant on the pen. The above line really seems to be just another example of someone that thinks W/L record is something that a pitcher can control.
I might like Yogi better if we slept together.
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