Does WWII credit push him into borderline territory? Probably not, but the guy had a fine, fine career.

First name spelled "Murry."

He's good enough to merit serious study, for sure!

Add him to the list of excellent players of whom I had never heard before the HoM project . . .

First name spelled "Murry."

Thanks, Chris. The Scottish form of Murphy must have been on my mind. :-)

RA+-equivalent record of 183-156. His three best years all check in at an equivalent of 15-10. He was 29 going on 30 years old when the his career took off in the normalcy of the 1946 season. If you give him a couple more of those 14-11 or 15-10 seasons, he'd be competing with the likes of Mel Harder and Herb Pennock.

A fine, fine picher that I'd never heard of - but won't make my ballot.

Worth checking out, the SABR Bioproject entry for Dickson

Murray Dickson Biography

I believe that there is an error in Dickson's record, although it may concern only the allocation of his pitching record to starting and relief roles.

His 1946 relief record in TB3 (Pete Palmer) matches the Baseball Encyclopedia 1969 (Palmer's source).
28 games
24.1 innings
7.03 ERA

7.03 ERA is exceptionally high in context of Dickson's career and it is incredible for someone used 28 times by a pennant winning team. 24.1 innings is incredibly low both for the times and for Dickson.

His 1956 relief record in TB3 is nonsense. BE1969 confirms the separate lines (no activity with Phi, no innings with StL) in contrast to the year total. Palmer suspects a programming error concerning one of the zeroes.

It appears to me that Dickson will get credit for another 20 relief runs, as his -12 and -15 in those two seasons will be revised to near zero.

Ellis Kinder will still dominate the old time relievers by the Palmer measures, which I have compiled and posted in relief.csv

Ggod work, Paul, though I don't see it helping Dickson's case that much.

BTW, I'm going to set up a Relief Pitchers thread so you can post some of your fine analysis.

I just realized that we already had a thread about relief pitching, which is now in Hot Topics.

JTM, I simply noticed the Murphy anomalies when I transcribed part of the Relief Pitching Register from TB3.

Thanks to Dave Smith of Retrosheet, here is revised relief pitching data for Murry Dickson in 1946.

28 games
39.0 innings (was 24.1)
22 earned runs
5.08 ERA (was 7.03)

Darn, I was rooting for 54 innings or so, which is plausible. 39/28 ~ 1.4 is still exceptionally low innings per appearance, about one run less than other Dickson seasons, and the implied number of innings per start is still a career high.

Yet, because Palmer measures relief runs relative to average, this revision is sufficient to give Dickson -3 rather than -10 relief runs, plain or adjusted, and -6 rather than -22 runs adjusted also for leverage (RNK).

For 1956, Dickson allowed 2 runs in 0 innings (from Pete Palmer by email), so he should be charged with -2 relief runs rather than -12/-15, plain or adjusted.
<hr>
These revisions yield career relief pitching data

<u>Murry Dickson, career</U>
287 games, GR
689.2 innings (was 675)
3.16 earned run avg, ERAR (was 3.23)
55 relief runs, RR (was 35)
64 adjusted relief runs, R/A 1993 (was 44)
68 adjusted also for leverage, RNK 1993 (was 52)

bold data is within the scope of relief.csv

Certainly the 7 sabermetric runs in 1946, and probably the 13 in 1956, concern only the allocation between relief and starting roles, not Dickson's career totals.

This revision does not quite put Dickson above his predecessors.

last inn R/A name rankR/A1992
1957 611 99 Kinder (15)
1940 373 67 Grove (39)
1947 764 66 Murphy (40)
1959 675 64 Dickson (t43)
1961 776 64 Staley (t43)

It appears that Kinder and Grove were much better relief pitchers than Murphy, Dickson, and Staley.

(Kinder is a predecessor only by lastgame date.)

By the way, here are the R/A relief leaders with lastgame before 1940.

last inn R/A name rankR/A1992
1938 639 63 Hoyt (45)
1933 735 62 Quinn (48)
1936 730 59 Marberry (55)
1916 431 51 Brown (81)

Walbert 49, Rommel 48, Johnson 36, Walsh 31, Russell 30, Braxton 30

Most of the leaders pitched in the American League.