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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Thursday, December 27, 2007
As a suave-swelled Allen Ludden offers up a toss-up question for ten points...to team Rogers and team McAdam.
Rogers:...I think a lot of us have just been slow to recognize relief pitchers. I’m hoping Bruce Sutter’s election two years ago serves as a springboard to get Gossage in this time around. I’ll admit that I’m an easy voter. I believe in giving guys the benefit of the doubt whenever possible (although Gary Carter got elected without my vote and I’m still on the fence with Jim Rice). I was probably one of the few voters who put three relievers on their ballots in previous years when I checked Sutter, Gossage and Lee Smith. I’m down to one this year, as Smith has been passed by Trevor Hoffman for the all-time save lead and my vote for Lee Arthur was based on his being the leader. Sorry, Lee.
McAdam:...Not long after the likes of Bobby Thigpen saved 57 one season, the significance of the save became devalued and I think, like many of my BBWAA brethren, I began to view even elite closers differently.
Of course, Gossage in his prime didn’t have inflated save totals. You’re right, Phil: Goose routinely pitched multiple innings and six times in his career topped 90 innings out of the bullpen. But there’s been such a blacklash against relievers and their place in the game’s modern history that I think some of us—insert uncomfortable throat-clearing sound here—threw the closers out with the bathwater.
I plead guilty—and throw myself at the mercy of the court.
Repoz
Posted: December 27, 2007 at 12:57 PM | 43 comment(s)
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5th alltime strikeouts
9th alltime shutouts
11th alltime starts
287 wins 26th alltime
Career Earned Run Average (ERA) of 3.31
Pitched one No-Hitter - September 22, 1977, vs. California Angelswhile pitching for the Texas Rangers. The game was played in Anaheim, CA.
Pitched five one-hitters.
Played in two All-Star games - 1973 & 1985
Top 10 in Cy Young Award four times - 1973, 1984, 1985 & 1989
Top 10 in ERA 10 times - 1971, 1973-77, 1981, 1984, 1985 & 1989
Top 10 in league strikeouts per nine innings 14 times - 1970-81, 1984 & 1985
Top 10 in league strikeouts 15 times - 1971-81 & 1984-87
Top 10 in league complete games 12 times - 1971, 1973-78, 1981, 1984-86 & 1989
Top 10 in league shutouts 10 times - 1971, 1973-78, 1981, 1984-86 & 1989
Member of the 1979 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates
Member of the 1987 World Champion Minnesota Twins
I wish people would stop trotting his out like it's meaningful. With only 3 places on the CYA ballot, anything beyond the top 2 is essentially meaningless. His top 10 in 1973 consisted of one third place vote, one fewer than Jim Colborn, two fewer than Wilbur Wood. All of Bert's CYA votes combined would be barely enough for one second place, in a fractured year.
Why not go old school and have a Bruce Sutter thread.
Bert only played in 2 AS games? Damn. If youre writing his plaque (or arguing his case) I'd leave that one out. That's the same number as Scott Cooper.
Am I the only one who thinks this is EXACTLY as wrong as it could possibly be?
The fact that there are only 3 votes means that guys who had very good seasons will often be shut out of the voting completely if they happened to have their year when 3 other guys had better/more media-friendly years. Doesn't mean the year wasn't good, though.
I'm confused. Your second paragraph seems to support my position. If a guy has a good, but not great year, he can get a home town shout out in the form of a third place vote. Boom! all of a sudden, it's top 10 finish, despite not being any appreciably better than many others who didn't get the home town boost.
And I had no idea Blyleven ever pitched a year for the Rangers. Weird.
All the more reason to ignore it. Top 1 & 2, and sometimes 3 are meaningful. They frequently are the consensus top pitchers in the league. Beyond that, very little useful information can be gleaned from the vote totals, so why bother? When a guy can get a top 10, and frequently top 5 finish by getting 1 third place vote from 1/32 of the electorate, well, that's beyond small sample size.
Agreed.
But saying that Blyleven is OVERRATED by his Cy Young totals, which is what I understood you to be saying, is crazy-talk. If that's not what you meant, no problem.
Because Blyleven's fourth on the backlog and Gossage is first.
(1) Gossage
(2) Rice
(3) Joe Carter
(2) Rice
(3) Joe Carter
I cannot imagine the length of the "Joe Carter inducted into the HOF" thread.
I'd imagine that it would be pretty short, actually. Most people would be preparing for the impending apocalypse.
Pitcher B: 1809.3 IP, ERA+ 126, 1497H, 1502/732 K/BB, 0 CYA
Pitcher B got to air it out, averaging 1.81 IP per appearance.
Pitcher A, on the other hand, averaged 6.42 IP per appearance.
No one (or at least no one I'm aware of) suggests Pitcher A belongs in the Hall, and I've rarely heard him referred to as even a borderline candidate.
Pitcher A is Bret Saberhagen, B is Gossage (no surprise, I'm sure).
Relievers just don't pitch enough to qualify for the Hall, though given Mariano Rivera's 194 ERA+ and 0.77 postseason ERA in 117.1 IP, I'm sure I'll be revisiting this assertion in a few years.
Sure they do, as you acknowledge with the Rivera comment. Sutter, Gossage, Rivera, Hoffman, Wagner, Lidge... will all be joined in the hof fraternity.
Lidge doesn't belong in that sentence. He's had two good years as a closer and is 30.
By mentioning Rivera I'm acknowledging the possibility that a reliever whose performance is an extreme outlier might nonetheless deserve the Hall despite pitching so few innings.
As for:
Sutter 1042.3 IP, 136 ERA+
Wagner 771 IP, 180 ERA+
Hoffman 942.7 IP, 147 ERA+
Lidge er... let's check back around 2014, Astros fans.
Wagner's clearly the class of this group, and yet his IP add up to a whopping 3 1/2 seasons of starting pitching. How do you figure that's Hall-worthy? Or take Sutter--with his IP, that's about 4 years of Randy Johnson's career. 4 years of RJ's career isn't Hall-worthy, by any stretch.
I didn't mean exactly that. Award voting is is fine to quote in a HOF argument, if it is meaningful. It can be an indication of how the player was perceived at the time. The problem with CYA votes, is that anything outside of the top 3 is not an indication of anything. Last year Carlos Zambrano got one second place vote. His 3 CYA points was good for a 5th place finish. That's illustrative of nothing, other than a (probably) Chicago writer awarding him Brandon Webb's vote. Last year, Jake Peavy was the consensus #1 with all 32 first place votes. Brandon Webb was the consensus #2 with 31 seconds and one 3rd. The voters were split on #3, with 14 of them voting for Penny, 10 for Harang. The rest of the top 10 were shout outs by (likely) home town writers: 2 thirds each for Hamels, Smoltz, Valverde, and one for Francis.
Top 5 in MVP is meaningful. You can't get there without some solid support. Saying Dave Parker has 5 top 5 MVP finishes is meaningful in a HOF discussion. It means that 5 times he was a consensus top player. Saying the same thing about Bert Blyleven does not.
April Fo - oops.
Happy New Year! ; )
It's not about Hall worthiness, it's about what it will take to qualify for the Hall. And given the way that goes, my un-scientific projection is that writer/voters will for better or worse evolve to think 'Trevor Hoffman, stud closer' and not 'Trevor Hoffman, only 1000 IP'.
"Lidge er... let's check back around 2014, Astros fans."
That would be Phillies fans, I suppose ..
And Gossage's case is a prime one, not a career one. The 2nd half of his career does nothing for his candidacy.
Oh, okay--as far as what the voters will do, that's a different subject, and I agree that they'll probably go for Hoffman. Gossage too.
It's amazing how much better Saberhagen's K/BB ratio was, and he was the guy who was the starter. If just goes to show how much easier it is to post impressive ERA's as a reliever, because the peripheral stats really seem to favour Saberhagen, although we haven't seen HR allowed.
If Gossage has posted those stats as a starter his ERA+ would not likely be above 115.
Sure they do, as you acknowledge with the Rivera comment. Sutter, Gossage, Rivera, Hoffman, Wagner, Lidge... will all be joined in the hof fraternity.
I think this was meant to be a joke. Isn't Sutter already in. That just proves that this whole releiver thing is a joke.
Then somewhere along the line a few realities started to become apparent in baseball:
1) A starting pitcher pitched progressively worse, the further he went into a game.
2) Young pitchers who were over-worked freqently had career ending injuries. Actually this has pretty much been always known, although not necessarily documented well, but most GM's took the approach that there were always lots of other young pitchers who could step in and take their place. And some young pitchers did pitch successfully through heavy workloads, so virtually every talented kid was given the opportunity to see if he could do it.
3) A much inferior pitcher, who pitched only one inning at a time, could be vastly more effective in the late innings than a tired starter.
4) So in order to reduce injuries to young pitchers and get more effective pitching in the late inings of a close game the era of specialization in pitching gradually began.
5) Five man rotations also evolved.
This has vastly reduced the impact of the truly great starters. 300 IP has become 225 IP. But it, along with arthroscopic surgery, has increased the survival rate of young pitchers and introduced two new concepts in pitching, closers and set-up guys.
Now, are relief pitchers still the worse pitchers on a team? If not, how are they chosen. Well almost all young talented pitchers start out as starters. Many of them become relievers, some before they ever reach the majors. The reasons for the conversion are varied but usually follow at least one of the following scenarios: lack of stamina or endurance, lack of a third pitch, injury issues, lack of talent - not among the five best starters on a team.
So now we have two completely different classes of pitchers:
Starters - pitch between 6 and 9 innings every fifth game throwing between 90 and 125 pitches a game
Relievers - usually pitch one inning or less throwing their best pitches and maximum velocity on every pitch and facing no batters more than once.
Can we use ERA to compare the two groups. Well it would seem that there are lots of reasons that relievers should have lower ERA(s) assuming the talent level is equal - no fatigue issue, not having to pace oneself, never facing a batter more than once in a game, the opportunity to start at mid-inning on occasion, walk off losses saving the reliever some earned runs from scoring.
Using ZIPS's changes in projections for pitchers who have a change in role, we find the following difference when a specific pitcher changes roles from relieving to starting.
ERA as a starter = (ERA as a reliever - 1.50) * 1.425 + 1.50.
This means that a major league average reliever with a 4.21 ERA would be expected to have a 5.36 ERA as a starter.
This is pretty much what most would expect I imagine. The interesting thing is that the average major league starter actually has an ERA of 4.57, not 5.36. Using the same formula, this means that the latent talent of the starting pitcher pool is 25.7% better than the latent talent level of the relief pitcher pool. I'm not sure what this says about a top relievers Hall of Fame qualifications but it does give us a fair way to compare starters and relievers on the basis of ERA to determine their respective talent levels.
One thing we now know for certain is that there is a vastly different talent level between the major league starting pitcher pool and the relief pitcher pool, so the idea that the worst pitchers on a team are the relief pitchers still seems to be valid, but that still does leave open the possibility that the elite closers could have a talent level compared to the top starters.
Using this formula to adjust the career ERA+ for some of the top relievers we can compare them to the top starting pitchers who are not inducted, at least on a talent level. (IP in brackets)
Mariano Rivera (953) 194 equiv to 168
Goose Gossage (1,809) 126 104
Hoyt Wilhelm (2,254) 146 125
Trevor Hoffman (943) 147 124
Bruce Sutter (1,042) 136 113
Rollie Fingers (1,701) 119 99
Bert Blyleven (4,970) 118
Bret Saberhagen (2,562) 126
Dizzy Trout (2,726) 124
Dave Stieb (2,895) 122
Billy Pierce (3,307) 119
Rick Reuschel (3,548) 114
Larry Jackson (3,263) 113
Luis Tiant (3,186) 114
Tommy John (4,710) 110
Jerry Koosman (3,839) 110
Frank Viola (2,836) 112
Jim Kaat (4,530) 107
Vida Blue (3,343) 108
Jack Morris (3,824) 105
On a sheer talent level none of the starting pitchers is anywhere near Mariano Rivera. Wilhelm and Hoffman are right there, Sutter not really, and Gossage and Fingers not close. One thing that does need to be noted is that both Rivera and Hoffman have pitched less than 20% of the innings that Blyleven has.
Now, we still have a real problem with how to evaluate relievers when comparing them to starters.
Consider the following two pitchers' one-year performance
Roger Clemens - 70 IP, 12 GS, ERA 3.00
Mike Timlin - 70 IP, 0 GS, ERA 3.00
Now as far as I know, all the traditional rating systems - VORP, WARP, Win Shares, ERA+ would value these seasons as equivalent. There are two huge issues with this.
You can't compare a reliever's ERA with a starter's ERA on an equitable basis. On a comparable basis Timlin's ERA would be 3.54.
In order to replace Clemens' performance you would need to acquire a Hall of Fame calibre starter to make 12 starts for you. If you had to replace Timlin you would need to pick-up an average set-up guy from somewhere.
In reality these two performances are not similar at all in terms of the talent required, the value to the team, or the ability to replace this performance.
To summarize:
- it does appear that some of the elite relievers have the "talent" to be considered on an equal footing with very good starters, especially Rivera, but also Wilhelm and Hoffman.
- traditional ranking systems or methods of evaluation totally over-rate relievers by not adjusting reliever's ERA to put them on a comparable basis. This is actually easily done.
- what other sport inducts players who only play between one-quarter and one-third of the playing time of a regular. And keep in mind that a regular starting pitcher only participates in 13% of his team's innings pitched, and 0% of his teams offense in the AL.
- an elite closer pitches only 4% of his teams innings (virtually never when his team is tied or down a run; only when the team is already ahead) and contributes nothing to the offense, and is almost always only a relief pitcher because his team judged him somewhere along the line to not be suitable for the starting rotation. Are these guys really Hall of Famers? How much do they really contribute? No matter how great you are, and other than Rivera, even that is not all that clear, you are still sitting on your keeester 96% of the time while your teammates are busy trying to build a league that they can entrust you to protect while throwing 10 to 15 pitches. And even the best closers still manage to not do that well over 10% of the time. I really don't get where all the love for closers is really coming from. Most likely it those artificailly impressive ERA(s). But when you see how any relievers are posting ridiculously low ERA(s) it should become apparent that it really isn't that big a deal.
- if we took ERA+, VORP, Win Shares, and WARP and adjusted the relievers ERA to put them on a comparable basis, they would not rate very highly at all.
- with the exception of Rivera, who looks like some kind of a freak of nature, with his amazing ability to continually post ridiculously low ERA(s) and Wilhelm, who maintained a very impressive ERA over 2,250 innings and certainly contributed a lot more than your classic short reliever, there doen't seem to be much of a case for including relievers with the top echelon of pitchers.
This is untrue. Elite relief pitchers have existed since the teens, and became more or less ubiquitous throughout baseball in the late '50s. Many of them were pretty good starting pitchers - Clem Labine, Wilhelm, who pitched a no-hitter, Turk Farrell, who actually became a useful starter *after* being a late-inning reliever, for example.
-- MWE
But you can compare a '70s reliever's ERA with a '00s reliever's ERA on an equitable basis? Got it.
Rivera may well be the only traditional closer who warrants the HoF due to his insane numbers, his postseasons, and his extraordinarily long and amazingly consistent career, but Gossage and Fingers weren't relievers in that sense at all, and they're both entirely legitimate HoFers. They were the last thing in the world from being easily "replaceable."
Mike Emeigh already covered a major problem with it. As early as 1950 a relief pitcher won an MVP award and in the 1940s pennant winners gave accolades to firemen like Hugh Casey, Johnny Murphy, and Joe Page.
Before then saying that relief pitchers were "the worse pitchers on any team were the relievers and everybody knew it" overlooks a huge key factoid - the split between pure reliever and pure starter didn't wasn't nearly as clear as it is now. Often times the best starter was also the best reliver. Dizzy Dean led the league in saves in 1936. Carl Hubbell did likewise in 1934. Lefty Grove a few years earlier. Heck, late in his career Lefty Grove was the career leader among saves among active players. Mordecai Brown was the career save leader for a while. Before him it was Joe McGinnity. Before him, Kid Nichols. For a while, the single-season record for saves was jointly held by Brown and Bender. Brown's single season and lifetime records were broken by Firpo Marberry, who many credited with putting the Senators over the top in 1924-5.
Sure, teams had their worst pitchers throw garbage time relief innings, but they sure as hell didn't want their worst pitchers out there in relief when it was close and mattered.
3) A much inferior pitcher, who pitched only one inning at a time, could be vastly more effective in the late innings than a tired starter.
Assuming all relievers were much inferior is a very dangerous thing to do.
This has vastly reduced the impact of the truly great starters. 300 IP has become 225 IP.
Minor point, but you're overestimating how common the 300 IP benchmark was prior to the 1970s, when you allege relief pitchers came into existance. In the AL from 1946-67, only three guys did it; and they each did it once. Heck, if I really want to cherry pick endpoints, from 1947-65, it only happened once. It was more common in the NL, but 300 IP as a benchmark was only routinely crashed by multiple pitchers a year in the 1960s.
Using ZIPS's changes in projections for pitchers who have a change in role, we find the following difference when a specific pitcher changes roles from relieving to starting.
ERA as a starter = (ERA as a reliever - 1.50) * 1.425 + 1.50.
This means that a major league average reliever with a 4.21 ERA would be expected to have a 5.36 ERA as a starter.
Question I don't quite no the answer to: isn't it supposed to be a bad thing to base one estimation off another estimation? My math skills ain't very good, but I tried something like that once and was told it was improper.
- traditional ranking systems or methods of evaluation totally over-rate relievers by not adjusting reliever's ERA to put them on a comparable basis. This is actually easily done.
Can one really assume that one adjustment will fit all the same?
And why not judge them based on what they actually did?
- an elite closer pitches only 4% of his teams innings (virtually never when his team is tied or down a run; only when the team is already ahead)
That depends what era you're talking about - both the % of innings, and if the team's behind or tied.
and contributes nothing to the offense,
True, but that's also true of all AL pitchers.
and is almost always only a relief pitcher because his team judged him somewhere along the line to not be suitable for the starting rotation.
Or better suited, which isn't necessarily the same thing as not suitable as a starter.
you are still sitting on your keeester 96% of the time while your teammates are busy trying to build a league that they can entrust you to protect while throwing 10 to 15 pitches.
And in the process, they face about 300 batters a year. The average hitter has about 600-700 PA a year. And those innings are a helluva lot more leveraged than it is for hitters batting order position.
if we took ERA+, VORP, Win Shares, and WARP and adjusted the relievers ERA to put them on a comparable basis, they would not rate very highly at all.
Aren't VORP, WS, and WARP already created to allow for comparisions between relievers and everyone else?
A good point, and another great example of this is Allie Reynolds, one of the more underrated postwar pitchers. If you look at his stat lines here, and even more, if you read the terrific new joint bio of Reynolds, Vic Raschi, and Eddie Lopat, you'll see that in the latter part of his Yankees' career (and earlier with the Indians), Reynolds was used in just about every high leverage situation his team could find, including starter, long relief, setup and even occasional closer. He both started and relieved in 4 out of the 5 consecutive Yankees' world championships between 1949 and 1953.
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