Win Values: Updated for 1969, 1974-1977

Introduction

The wonderful Retrosheet volunteers have recently released additional seasons of play-by-play data.  Thus, I am now able to extend my win value analysis for the 1969 & 1974-1977 seasons, in addition to the 1978-2001 seasons I reported in a previous article.

Yearly Results for 1969, 1974-1977

In this section I will report the top 10 Win Values for each league for each of the newly released seasons by Retrosheet.[1]

Table 57A: 1969 AL Win Value Leaders

Denny McLain and Mike Cuellar tied for the 1969 AL Cy Young award.  McLain had the better W-L record while Cuellar had the better ERA.  Win values indicate that McLain actually contributed more to his team.  McLain was coming off his stellar 31-win 1968 season.  The Cy Young tie led to a change in the balloting.  Starting in 1970 voters designated 1st, 2nd, 3rd place pitchers, whereas previously they just voted for number one.  With this change, there hasn’t been a Cy Young tie since 1969.

Table 57B: 1969 NL Win Value Leaders

1969 was a great year for starting pitchers in the NL.  Gibson, Seaver, and Marichal all had great seasons.  Seaver was the runaway winner of the Cy Young award (remember the Miracle Mets), but both WAA and win values indicate that Gibson was the best pitcher in the league.  Like Denny McLain, Gibson followed up his stellar 1968 season with a great season of his own.  Of course, this was not the first nor would be the last year in which Cy Young voters were overly impressed by a pitcher’s W-L record (though I am not saying that Seaver was not a deserving Cy Young winner).

Table 58A: 1974 AL Win Value Leaders

Catfish Hunter edged Fergie Jenkins for the 1974 AL Cy Young award.  Actually, according to both WAA and win values, Gaylord Perry was the league’s best pitcher.  Perry had another very good year for the Indians after previously winning the 1972 Cy Young award with Cleveland.  Note that this was Jenkins’ first year in the AL after being traded by the Cubs to Texas.  So the top two pitchers in the AL in 1974 (according to win values) were both formerly stars in the NL.

Table 58B: 1974 NL Win Value Leaders

Phil Niekro comfortably led the NL in both WAA and win values in 1974 .  But Knucksie was destined never to come close to winning a Cy Young award.  Mike Marshall and his 106 relief appearances copped the Cy Young for the pennant-winning Dodgers.  We see that Jon Matlack had a losing record for the disappointing Mets despite a great ERA.  Also, we see the remnants of the very promising season in which Tommy John hurt his arm in mid-July.

Table 59A: 1975 AL Win Value Leaders

Jim Palmer won the 1975 AL trifecta: winning the Cy Young award and leading the league in WAA and win values.  This actually doesn’t happen very often.  Palmer’s season was the 7th best win value figure since 1974 (including 1969).  Actually, he edged out Catfish Hunter for the Cy Young award as the voters continue to be obsessed with a pitcher’s win total, especially getting to 20 wins.  Not to mention that this was Hunter’s first year pitching for the Yankees during which he received tremendous notoriety.  The Frank Tanana listed above threw very hard (unlike his later self), and led the league with 269 strikeouts.

Table 59B: 1975 NL Win Value Leaders

Tom Seaver edged Randy Jones for the 1975 NL Cy Young award.  I look forward to Retrosheet eventually releasing all of the seasons covering Seaver’s illustrious career since I am very curious in seeing how Seaver compares to the other pitching greats of the modern era.  In our historical journey, we see that Andy Messersmith had a great 1975 season for the Dodgers, the year before he was declared a free agent (after which injuries allowed him to win only 18 games for the rest of his career).

Table 60A: 1976 AL Win Value Leaders

Jim Palmer won the 1976 AL Cy Young award.  Runner-up Mark Fidrych had his moment in the sun, leading the league in WAA and win values.  Palmer won 22 games in 40 starts whereas Fidrych won 19 games in only 29 starts.  Maybe Fidrych would have won the Cy Young had he gotten to 20 wins.  Vida Blue had another very good year, despite only an 18-13 record.  Blue’s career prospects might have never looked better than after his 27 year-old season; for his career to date he was 110-67 with a very good 129 ERA+. 

Table 60B: 1976 NL Win Value Leaders

1976 was a down year for NL starting pitchers.  Randy Jones won the Cy Young award in a fairly close vote over Jerry Koosman.  John Denny (and his 11-9 record) led the league in WAA and Don Sutton (gasp) led the league in win values.  If I were a Cy Young voter I may have looked for a relief pitcher, but this was the year before Bruce Sutter broke on to the scene.

Table 61A: 1977 AL Win Value Leaders

Sparky Lyle edged Jim Palmer (along with Nolan Ryan and Dennis Leonard) for the 1977 AL Cy Young award.  I guess the voters were tired of voting for Palmer every year; he had won 3 of the previous 4 Cy Youngs.  Palmer is another pitcher for whom I would love to see the complete record of win value figures.  We are currently missing the 1970-1973 seasons, in each of which Palmer had a great season.

Table 61B: 1977 NL Win Value Leaders

John Candelaria’s 170 ERA+ is the highest among this new batch of seasons (1969, 1974-1977).  Of course, there have been numerous seasons with higher ERA+ since 1977; in addition, there were five instances of a higher ERA+ in the intervening 1970-1973 seasons (Seaver, Wood, and Blue in 1971, Carlton in 1972, and Seaver again in 1973).  Steve Carlton easily won the 1977 NL Cy Young award; he had a great season and the voters loved his 23 wins.  Carlton is another modern pitcher for whom I’d love to have the complete win value record.  Tom Seaver had another great year, despite being shockingly traded in mid-June from the Mets to the Reds.

Top Starters

In this section I will present the partial season-by-season Win Value records for several of the top starting pitchers of the 1970’s (whom I did not include in the previous article).  In all cases, their entire careers to date will be presented.[2]  I tried to include any pitcher who started a significant number of games in their career in seasons for which we have win values data (1969, 1974-2001) and had either 200 wins or 450 starts in their career.

Along with Win Values, I will report the pitcher’s W-L, ERA+, and WAA figures.  We will then be able to see if some pitchers’ career Win Value significantly exceed their WAA.  In such a case, the pitcher can be said to be under-valued by traditional sabermetric methods.

Table 62: Win Values for Top Stars since 1973[3]

 We will now turn to a season-by-season review of each of these top starting pitchers.[4]

Table 63: Win Values for Tom Seaver

70% of Seaver’s career is covered by win values (as another reminder, the career win value figure in the table above uses the WAA figures for any seasons for which win values are currently unavailable).  Tom Seaver is clearly an all-time great.  Seaver falls just a little short of Clemens and Maddux in career win values according to the table above.  But we will have more to say about where Seaver belongs in the next section.

Table 64: Win Values for Jim Palmer

67% of career covered by win values.  Jim Palmer was one of the very best pitchers throughout the 1970’s, winning 20 games eight times.  Palmer’s win values are moderately higher than WAA, and we are missing some of his best seasons (1970-1973).

Table 65: Win Values for Bert Blyleven

82% of career is covered by win values.  I am confident that most people reading this will already be familiar with the puzzling case of Bert Blyleven.  By all sabermetric measures I have ever seen, Blyleven is a solid Hall of Famer.  There are reasons why Bert is having so much trouble getting into Cooperstown, but they are all crappy reasons.

Table 66: Win Values for Gaylord Perry

55% of career covered by win values.  Gaylord Perry really was a great pitcher, despite the reputation that has surrounded him for years.  He will look even better when account is taken of his longevity in the next section.

Table 67: Win Values for Steve Carlton

71% of career covered by win values.  Steve Carlton was a tremendous pitcher.  I am very curious to see how win values evaluates Carlton’s fantastic 1972 season (27-10 for the woeful 59-97 Phillies).  Like many players, he undoubtedly hung on too long but it is extremely difficult for any major leaguer, and especially stars, to pick just the right time to retire.

Table 68: Win Values for Fergie Jenkins

60% of career covered by win values.  Fergie Jenkins was a consistent 20-game winner for the Cubs in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s.  One key to his success was that Jenkins did not walk many batters (a key to winning in a hitter’s ballpark).

Table 69: Win Values for Nolan Ryan

80% of career covered by win values.  There is almost no way to accurately capture Nolan Ryan’s career.  He is the most extreme in many dimensions, so if there is any slight “bias” in a stat, it will be magnified the most for Ryan.  Win values indicate that Ryan truly was a great pitcher during his career (note that win values are moderately higher than WAA).  Remember that win values looks at run prevention in its totality; that is, it does not consider whether the pitcher was a strikeout artist or a control pitcher who relies on his defense.  I guess that means that win values may undervalue Ryan.

Table 70: Win Values for Phil Niekro

70% of career covered by win values.  Phil Niekro racked up a ton of innings in his career.  In the middle of his career, he started over 40 games three seasons in a row (and over 300 innings).  Note that Niekro’s win values seems significantly lower than WAA.  I am not sure why.  Possibly Niekro gave up a lot of unearned runs in his career, which would be reflected in his win values (but not his WAA).

Table 71: Win Values for Don Sutton

68% of career covered by win values.  Don Sutton was a notorious Hall of Fame case a few years back, but win values is pretty kind to Sutton, especially in comparison to WAA.

Table 72: Win Values for Tommy John

65% of career covered by win values.  Tommy John missed a season in mid-career, but more than made up for it by pitching until he was 46.  Tommy John is a tough Hall of Fame call, though he is clearly greater than many HOF pitchers. 

Table 73: Win Values for Luis Tiant

58% of career covered by win values.  Luis Tiant also missed significant time in mid-career with a bad arm.  His Hall of Fame case seems to be centered on the fact that he was better than Catfish Hunter.

Table 74: Win Values for Rick Reuschel

	Year	W-L	ERA+	WAA	Win Value
Rick Reuschel	1972	10-8	130	1.5	n.a.
Rick Reuschel	1973	14-15	132	3.0	n.a.
Rick Reuschel	1974	13-12	89	-1.6	-0.58
Rick Reuschel	1975	11-17	103	0.3	-0.14
Rick Reuschel	1976	14-12	112	1.3	1.37
Rick Reuschel	1977	20-10	158	5.0	5.67
Rick Reuschel	1978	14-15	118	1.9	0.32
Rick Reuschel	1979	18-12	114	1.5	1.77
Rick Reuschel	1980	11-13	115	1.8	0.93
Rick Reuschel	1981	8-11	119	1.2	0.44
Rick Reuschel	1982	Dnp	-	-	-
Rick Reuschel	1983	1-1	97	0.0	0.20
Rick Reuschel	1984	5-5	76	-1.6	-0.78
Rick Reuschel	1985	14-8	158	Rob Wood Posted: September 16, 2002 at 01:00 AM | 3 comment(s)   Related News: General Reader Comments and Retorts Go to end of page Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments. Page 1 of 1 pages    1. tangotiger Posted: September 16, 2002 at 08:47 PM (#606254) A big shout out to Rob for running the data. When you present a sound methodology, and data, with reasonable assumptions, with very little interpretation, there's very little to "debate". But, I just want to say thanks for the probably many countless hours you spent to run this.    2. emancip8d Posted: September 17, 2002 at 08:48 PM (#606313) In Part 4 ParkAdder is defined as ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF)=WinProb2(RS,Z,PN)-WinProb2(RS,Z,PF) In a hitters' park (PF>100), WinProb2(RS,Z,PN)>WinProb2(RS,Z,PF) which makes ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF)>0. When PF<100, ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF)<0. That is what is reflected in Part 6, Table 8 and the text that follows. For instance, Wells' 4/8 game at Tex had a ParkAdder>0 and Wells' 4/24 game at Oak had a ParkAdder<0. However, in Part 4, Eq. 7, ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF) is given as ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF)=PAddPct(RS)*(2*(100-PF))*(Z/9)+ which produces the opposite sign. I believe Eq. 7 in Part 4 needs to be corrected to ParkAdder(RS,Z,PF)=PAddPct(RS)*(2*(PF-100))*(Z/9)+ From the tables and the text it appears the calculations were correctly made using this last equation.    3. Rob Wood Posted: September 17, 2002 at 08:48 PM (#606322) Thanks Tango for your kind words. Yes, compiling and running the data through the Win Value routines takes hours. But the longer part, and the most fun, was developing the methodology in the first place. Of course, the tireless Retrosheet volunteers deserve a tremendous amount of credit (and gratitude) for doing all the original data collection and computerization. Thanks again to those good folks. I fear that emancip8d has caught an error in one of the formulas. As he suggests, the error is only in the exposition and not in the analysis. Thanks for catching the error. I will see if the error can be corrected and the article re-posted. Page 1 of 1 pages You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.   << Back to main	Support BBTF My Bookmarks You must be logged in to view your Bookmarks. Hot Topics How to Bet on MLB (72 - 4:33pm, Dec 04) Betting the World Series Means Concentrating on Pitching Match-Ups (17 - 12:55pm, Oct 19) The Case for the Six-Man Rotation (52 - 10:26pm, Sep 23) Fun with Leverage, Part 2: Leveraged Performance, 2004-2007 (11 - 10:22pm, Sep 23) Dale Murphy (36 - 11:13pm, Sep 22) Did the Phillies ruin the career of Brett Myers? (11 - 9:40am, Sep 16) Cricketball: Why Cricketers Make the Best Moneyballers (75 - 4:49pm, Apr 21) Winning Tout Wars (21 - 4:29am, Mar 10) The 3 Stages of Rotisserie Grief (41 - 3:27pm, Feb 19) Ruth, Maris, and Ned Williamson (22 - 3:33am, Dec 30) Andre Dawson (14 - 1:06pm, Dec 29) Predicting the 2007 Playoffs (41 - 8:22pm, Nov 21) Believe Pythagoras or not? A look back (7 - 3:07pm, Oct 04) Barry Bonds-Double Duplicity (88 - 11:46am, Aug 10) SABR 37: Who's Going? (111 - 7:17pm, Jul 30)
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