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Does Silva's acceptance or rejection of a stat really carry that much weight?
Both my Blackberry and my friend's daughter's Hannah Montana toy phone are phones. But I rely on only the former for calls and emails. I'm not sure this is an untenable position.
I don't see how this would be an improvement on WAR. Or even Win Shares...
Here's a comparison of Guidry's and Doc's qualifications for the Hall that concludes that Guidry makes it and Doc doesn't: http://gator-hall.blogspot.com/2009/06/but-if-you-put-guidry-in-hall.html
Cone is a tough case. He's really hurt because arm problems really cost him in '96 and '97 when he was truly one of the top pitchers in the game. He made only 11 starts in '96 and was pretty much sidelined in '97 after mid-August when might have won 17 or 18 games with a sterling ERA (159 ERA+).
I haven't read the study (or the non-excerpt part of the article), so I offer my apologies if this is clearly addressed in the link.
1) For James' study, does it split up the difference between those elected to the Hall via the BBWAA and the VC?
2) Does it just take an average of all elected HOF pitchers to determine a threshold, or does it show a change in the number of "historic season bonus points" required depending on the time period?
3) How do Gooden, Guidry, and Cone rank among "historic season bonus points" for non-elected (but eligible) pitchers?
The general consensus seems to be that all of the above are deserving, but that Brown has no hope in hell of getting elected before reaching the VC, and little chance of getting elected at that point.
Personally, I'm not a supporter of Brown, but I don't have any particularly good reason why I'm not. For the sake of argument, I'll pretend that it's due to him allowing an abnormally large number of unearned runs for his era (about 15% of his runs allowed total), which means his ERA+ is a misleading representation of his value.
Heh. I'll grant that he applies the same reasoning to the ones he loves and hates.
is this a trick question?
If you change the point in baseball history when they came up for election, Gooden, Cone, and Guidry could all have made it in to the Hall. There are a bunch of lower-half, single stunning season, or short-career types who the BBWAA or VC have elected to which Gooden, Cone, and Guidry do compare favorably.
Personally, given the era in which those three played, I'd be much more interested to see how their "historic season point totals" compare to pitchers elected by (a) the BBWAA and (b) the BBWAA and VC, over the last 25 years or so. I think that would provide a much better point of reference than to compare them against the entire history of the HOF, since the HOF standards for the first 20 or 30 years seemed to be extremely volatile.
Haven't read it, but I nonetheless 100% absolutely guarantee you that James does not ever claim, nor has he ever claimed, that a certain score in a certain stat equates to HOF worthiness.
If James is supporting Gooden, Cone, Guidry, Hershiser, and Morris for the HOF based on this study, either his HOF is going to be huge (this would open the door to scores of pitchers) or the "study" (which I can't access) is worthless.
It kind of feels like Mike Emeigh's obsession with blown leads only in reverse.
This sums up my irritation. I haven't even heard of this James study before so I have no opinion on Silva's source material in this case.
You should read it, it's scary, I think James has lost his mind.
His defense of Pete Rose wasn't already proof enough?
Just skimming it, it seems like James is moving to an extreme peak argument. I shall investigate further...
I've now read at least the methodology, but not the individual pitcher comments. It is essentially an extreme peak argument, but it's also an extreme peak argument that skewed towards recent seasons by virtue of the league size adjustments. While I think it has some usefulness for evaluating candidates from the 8-team league era, I don't think it can tell us much about the modern 14/16-team league era, where three seasons are enough to get a player into the realm of HOF worthiness discussion.
I'm expecting that, if someone goes back to revisit this method 10 or 15 years from now, they'll find a ton of modern pitchers who exceed the "threshold" but who the BBWAA and VC have ignored.
I'd say "maybe." "No" if you assume that the talent pool expands at a rate less than the rate at which the league expands, "Yes" if the talent pool expands at a rate faster than the league expands, and "I don't know" if the talent pool expands at a rate equivalent to the league.
Of course, I don't have a good feeling for how to measure this expansion/contraction of the talent pool, other than to use something like the league quality measurements used by James and others (deviation in age from athletic peak, error/DP rates, and so on).
If this were Mike's actual MO, I could agree. In fact, his agreements and disagreements run from the derivation of the stat itself, to the track record of the person putting it forward, to yes, at times, the stat being an outlier from other stats and evidence.
If Jack's postseason is worth 10 WAR (not saying it is, just an if) then he's still behind these guys whose careers ended between 1920 and 2005:
Blyleven
Tiant
John
Koosman
Cone
Larry Jackson (?)
Tananananana
Finley
Saberhagen
Pierce
Steib
Hershiser
Bridges
Wells
Appier
Cicotte
Jack Quinn
That's not too big a list. Some, like Cicotte never go in for other reasons. If you think an excellent postseason record is worth the difference between David Wells (239-157, 108 ERA+) and Bob Welch (211-146, 106 ERA+)
I swear, the only players who get less of a benefit of the doubt here than that guy are DUIers and domestic abusers.
I have no problem with the idea that the 10th best pitcher in a 16 team league us worth more than the 10th best pitcher in an 8 team league
But that's not quite what James does- He gives the "best" pitcher in an 8 team league 9 points (top 8 pitchers: 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2)
he gives the "best" pitcher in a 16 team league 13 points (13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3)
No, your idea is based upon what I strong;y believe is a false assumption- that the overall baseball talent pool is stable over time.
I personally tend to believe that team expansion has roughly mirrored talent pool expansion- in which case someone's percentile rank (top 10% as opposed to top 10) is a more accurate indicator of value.
If you agree with James position (and the position of many other sabremetricians) that in any given year luck or randomness has a pretty big impact on conventional pitching stats, then James's decision to award extra points to top pitchers in leagues with lots of teams and pitchers makes sense. Whether he has the weighting right, I don't know. But the concept is sound if you buy his premise (and I do).
If you believe this (and I don't, 'luck' is a catch all for a bunch of other stuff), then use DIPS or FIP to value the pitchers. Don't use the wrong stats and then try to minimize their wrongness.
But James's article isn't about who would make the Hall in a perfect world, as he points out repeatedly. It's about how the HOF has traditionally judged pitchers and why some pitchers who had many excellent years aren't in the Hall while there are Hall of Famers who rarely were among the best pitchers in their league. And the Hall, of course, looks at conventional statistics.
James isn't trying to substitute his judgment for the Hall's, he's merely arguing that if guys like Drysdale, Lemon, Vance, Gomez and Newhouser are in the Hall, then there are others who should be in too using the same rationale the Hall apparently used: these guys didn't role up huge career win totals, but they were among the handful of best pitchers in the league for six, seven, eight or more years.
What if you are ignoring the size of the talent pool?
These "talent pool" questions get so complicated that I am tempted to ignore them. They involve too monstrously large issues that have nothing to do with baseball: civil rights expansions, population explosions, demographic shifts, cultural questions, health/nutrition/physiology issues, etc etc. Nobody can synthesize all of these different factors, each of which could probably demand years of study.
How can you have any idea of this at all?
DIPS and FIP are better for predictive purposes. They're not so great for evaluating what happened. Besides, with DIPS and FIP, there are certain pitchers who consistently defy expectations, either on the high or low side. Should those pitchers be penalized (or promoted) by their ability to defy a model?
He might as well try to rationally figure out why my girlfriend seems to like me. The Hall of Fame is nutty!
Exactly. Here's a guy whose baBIPs over the preceding five years ranged from .281 to .306 - all generally in the normal range. Suddenly last year he has a baBIP of .254. That means he gave up 20 fewer hits last year than he would have surrendered with a more usual baBIP of .285. Spread those 20 hits over his 176 innings and you'll see an impact on his ERA. It's not as striking an example was Wally Bunker in '64, but makes one wonder if Washburn was really a 116 ERA+ pitcher last year or closer to average.
I wouldn't use either. I'd use runs allowed (or earned runs) modified by defense. I think defying the model is a skill. Tommy posited that valuing players by ERA or ERA+ involves a great deal of luck (BABIP-based) and that the timelining was supposed to be accounting for that.
I suppose you could just normalize BABIP to deal with BABIP-problems, but my main point is that I don't think that's what the timelining was for. I think it was a mistake by James.
Then it's a different question, for which I don't currently have a good answer (not that I ever have a good answer). I'd lean toward still giving the top pitcher the same level of credit, but expanding the number of pitchers below that top man who also receive top-10 credit (in accordance with the relative league sizes), and decreasing the amount of credit each pitcher below the top pitcher receives - essentially the same thing James does, except I'd fix the number of "points" for first place as a constant across all league sizes. I have no real reason why I'd do this, other than it seems right to me.
You could probably get a rough idea based on the number of nations (and their populations) that regularly play baseball, and the time period at which that nation became open to (or represented in) MLB, and the degree to which they are represented in MLB (nationality among players, as a percentage of total players, or number of MLB/MiLB players as a percentage of national population). At best, however, it would be a crude estimate.
I don't know if you could do that. Isn't BABIP at least partially a function of GB/FB ratio? To normalize it would possibly have the effect of masking actual pitcher skill.
This is just one broad stroke, covering only a fraction of MLB players.
Korea and Japan are now more or less open to MLB. But how open? We can't just lump their populations into the pool yet because almost all of their players spend their entire careers in Asia. Are Asians less naturally gifted at baseball than white Americans? Do we apply a variable, a fudge factor, to account for that?
I definitely agree - it's not something we're ever likely to get an accurate answer for, so we're likely to get stuck using crude estimates, and all sorts of secondary characteristics to define the "true" size of the talent pool and the "true" level of talent within that pool.
I'll throw Guidry some love for this if Dave Stewart gets some!
Not that I want to get into this argument with you, since I know what's going to happen, but Schilling has 3261 IP at a 127 ERA+ in the regular season, and a 2.23 ERA in 133.1 post-season IP. Guidry, in comparison, had 2392 IP at a 119 ERA+ in the regular season, and a 3.02 ERA in 62.2 post-season IP. While Guidry's post-season performance is certainly very good, it's inferior in both quality and quantity (not his fault, since quantity is partially a function of the expanded playoffs) to Schilling. Even with Guidry receiving credit for his post-season work, and credit for pitching very well down the stretch in certain seasons, he's still significantly behind Schilling, with a gap between them that can definitely be argued to be large enough to separate a Hall of Famer from a non-Hall of Famer.
As for Morris, you're not going to get much support around here using him, since almost all regulars here see him as falling on the wrong side of the in/out line.
I understand why you give Brown a boost.
But by doing so, you are essentialy punishing Palmer under the follow logic: "Palmer, you might have been a top 10 pitcher in real life, but had baseball been absurdly popular in Venezuela and the DR at the time, logic suggests that a certain number of pitchers from those countries would have been as good as you, and you probably would have missed that Top 10 cutoff a few times." Maybe that's accurate, but I prefer just giving the guy credit for what he did and not fudging it in any direction.
The other thing is that if you start taking this talent pool thing literally, you almost have to conclude that there are at least twice as many HOFers playing in the modern game than there were back in the day. People here blanch when they see that that the Hall of Merit elected Willie Randolph and Dave Stieb, using their fixed 3-per-year. Just imagine if their induction slots were curved to mimic the size of the talent pool.
Jim Rice might even be a HOMer...
He already has. If you think a guy with a 168-129 record, a 100 ERA+ and only four seasons with more than 12 wins gets any HOF consideration at all but for his post-season record, you're wrong. The only reason Dave got 7.4% of the vote in HOF balloting is because he pitched for some really good teams and had a generally good post-season record. Still, his 2-4 WS W-L record isn't exactly Gibson...
Broadly speaking, I agree with you, which is why (if I were to use such a system as proposed by James) I would use a system that would fix the maximum number of "points" a player could receive for a single system as constant across all eras, and modify the weighting for the others in the scaled "Top 10." To me (and without any analysis), that seems like the best available compromise, given the limits on our ability to estimate the true talent pool.
Aren't we sort of seeing that as it is? I don't know if it still applies, but James noted that throughout the histry of baseball, a roughly fixed percentage of IP and PA were used by players elected to the HOF - I think the percentage was roughly 10% of both, with a bump during the 30s (at least partially caused by the 70s era VC).
We've already had numerous people here voice concerns about the coming glut on the HOF ballot, where the number of statistically qualified eligibles are going to be colliding with a voting group that has been steadily decreasing the number of votes per ballot.
Not to me he hasn't. I won't rest until Dave Stewart gets all the credit I think he deserves to get.
I highly doubt that he'll ever be allowed to simultaneously hold the positions of POTUS and Pope.
Naw, that's Dwayne Murphy territory. Stew wasn't that good.
Has anyone given this a shot? I'm genuinely curious.
I'm not sure what we're seeing. The glut of supercandidates is difficult to analyze. The effect of expansion itself is difficult to analyze. PEDs make everything confusing. And there's definitely something happening when HOF voters can yawn at the likes of Jim Thome or Rafael Palmeiro.
The question for me is whether or not this is the way things should be.
Well, I beg to differ. Guidry was the better WS pitcher and was BY FAR the better pitcher in pennant races. As great as Schilling was in the post-season, he had real problems during pennant races. He was a disaster for the D'backs in 2000, and pitched terribly down the stretch for the D'backs in 2002 as they were blowing a big lead. If not for Randy Johnson, Schilling might have been the Jim Bunning of his generation (Bunning gets a lot of the blame of the Phillies' collapse in '64).
All in all, Guidry won 26 of 30 starts in five pennant races for the Yanks in '77, '78, '80, '83 and '85 (that's 26 of 30 STARTS, not DECISIONS). Schilling, by contrast, won only half of his 38 starts in pennant races, and posted a 3.86 ERA.
No disrespect to Curt, who was a great post-season pitcher, but aside from his performance in the '93 pennant race (for the Phils) and 2004 (for the Red Sox) he really wasn't very good at all.
Well, if you're ever going to establish a special wing for greatest regular season upsets based on the starting pitchers' past form up to that point, their teams' records, and the home park advantage, this game would be a strong contender, perhaps the all-time runnerup.
FISH: "How can you have any idea of this at all?"
I tend to agree with JPW, as long as we use "roughly" very liberally.
I start from the period in which baseball has become racially integrated. I also don't deal with two countervailing trends: the increasing population pool of foreign born and raised baseball players; and the declining percentage of American boys choosing baseball relative to other sports. My guess is that the loss from the latter is smaller than the gain from the former. But for argument's sake (that is, roughness), I will ignore those trends, as if they do off-set one another and look only at the number of major league franchises over the decades, the total U.S. population (yes, I ignore Canada, too, despite the Blue Jays and Expos) and see how many citizens per team there are over time.
(Another factor I ignore is urbanization. I imagine that as our population has become less rural, as agriculture has mechanized, a higher percentage of the U.S. population lives within 75 miles of a major league team.)
Here's the stats:
YEAR -- U.S. POP. -- Tms -- POP/TEAM
1952 -- 157,552,740 -- 16 -- 9,847,046
1962 -- 186,537,737 -- 20 -- 9,326,887
1972 -- 209,896,021 -- 24 -- 8,745,668
1982 -- 231,664,458 -- 26 -- 8,910,171
1992 -- 254,994,517 -- 26 -- 9,807,481
2002 -- 287,421,906 -- 30 -- 9,580,730
JPW's assertion seems "roughly" justified.
Except that Thome's a pretty damn good bet to make it in, and without the steroids taint, there's a very good chance Palmeiro would have made it as well.
That was just the beginning of Dave Stewart making Roger Clemens his #####.
And you're welcome to.
As a side question, would you be able to name a couple pitchers who straddle your in/out line for the hall, and provide a couple reasons as to why they fall on the in or out side?
Of course, that 3.86 ERA was good for roughly a 120 ERA+ during the bulk of Curt's career. That he only won half of the 38 games he started in pennant races (for however you've defined a pennant race) should probably be viewed as more of a problem with his team's offensive performance than with his pitching performance. And all that is ignoring the drop in the percentage of starts in which a starter receives a decision from Guidry's prime era to Schilling's prime era.
True. But Guidry's ERA+ in those five pennant races where he went 26-4 was 141.
No, he was just really bad on too many occasions. In 2000, the D'backs were just 1.5 games back on Aug. 18 after Curt pitched a complete game win. But Curt lost his next four starts, getting bombed in each game and posting a 7.27 ERA. That basically knocked the D'backs out of it.
Same story in 2002. The D'backs were on the verge of putting it away (up 7.5 with 10 games to go) when Curt gave up 14 hits and 8 runs in 7.1 innings to cut their lead to 6.5. The D'backs lost each of their next four games to cut the lead to 3 with five games to go. It was panic time in Arizona when Curt took the mound against the Cards and gave up 6 runs in 8 runnings, cutting the lead to 2 with four to go. Randy Johnson (who was brilliant down the stretch) won the next day, however, and the D'backs clinched the following day.
Look, Curt pitched in three pennant races for the D'backs where they were in the race going into September (2000, 2001, and 2002) and he went 6-5 with a 4.54 ERA in those Septembers. The problem wasn't run support. The problem was Curt.
How was he in 2001, and in the other pennant races?
And, more importantly, what exactly are you arguing? That those 80 or so innings in 2000 and 2002 are enough to bring Schilling and Guidry in line for the overall value of their career performances (in which Schilling has an 800 IP advantage at a rate above that of Guidry)?
1983 is a pretty half-assed "pennant race" for Guidry and the Yankees, at least as far as the home stretch goes. Baltimore was up 3 games in the AL East on September 1st, and 4.5 on New York. The Orioles then went 15-3 to give themselves a 7/8-game lead (and 10 on New York) that was never seriously threatened.
I'm quite familiar with Tommy's work. I'm just curious as to the exact "GUIDRY IS TEH AWESUM" position he's going to take.
The Yankees were only four games back of the Orioles with 23 to go after Guidry beat the Orioles on Sept. 9th. That's a pennant race.
By the way, Guidry's record in these five pennant races against the other contenders? 6-0, 1.97 ERA, including two 2-hit shutouts.
I was never comparing Guidry and Schilling. I merely suggested that it's obvious that Schilling gets huge credit for being a "big game pitcher" - a reputation he richly deserves - but Guidry didn't seem to get any credit for this. I plainly argued that Guidry was even a better big game pitcher than a lot of other guys from the '70s and '80s who are routinely lauded as clutch, guys like Palmer, Seaver, Tiant and Morris.
I'm sorry if I've upset all those who love sucking on The Bloody Sock, but if we're talking big game performances, I think you have to look at pennant race performances. The fact is that Curt never dominated down the stretch like Guidry in '77 and '78, or Randy Johnson in 2002, or Tiant in '72, or Palmer in '77, or Seaver in '69, or Gooden in '85. All these guys were just monsters in these pennant races, winning five or more games in September while being almost unhittable. Schilling never did that, and he had plenty of opportunities.
Randy Johnson gets dinged for having some rough Octobers, even though he was unbeatable in pennant races. Isn't it just as relevant that Schilling struggled in a lot of pennant races, even though he was brilliant in October?
Guidry does get credit for this. However, that credit isn't enough to make up the massive difference in playing time between Guidry and current and future Hall of Fame candidates like Schilling, Brown, Mussina, Blyleven, Glavine, and so on, so the BBWAA considered him for a while and passed. As great as he did or didn't pitch in those pennant races, that can't make up for a difference of 800 or more IP at an average level of performance equal to or greater than Guidry's career rate.
He may have better luck with the VC, but that's hard to say, given that the makeup of the VC seems to change on a fairly regular basis.
I doubt you've upset anyone like that. I haven't noticed any Red Sox' fans here, and I personally can't stand Schilling.
No. But those 80 innings represented 16 critical starts in pennant races in 2000, 2001 and 2002 (and it was only 80 innings because Curt too often got bombed and couldn't make to the 7th inning). If we're going to give Curt credit for 19 post-season starts, I think we need to look at those 16 starts he made when his team was fighting for a post-season berth.
That deficit doubled in a week. The Yankees lost the next three games of that four-game Orioles series, including being swept in a Saturday doubleheader the day after Guidry's win. It was a "race" in the sense that the Yankees got to eat Baltimore's dust.
An offshoot of the Cthulhu Mythos' Cult of the Bloody Tongue?
One of James's points was that these kinds of aggregate numbers don't really reflect valid HOF considerations. There were too many years like '94, '95, '96, 2000, 2003, 2005 and 2007 where Curt, either because of injury or just poor performance, didn't really have much of a positive impact for his team. In many of these years he had good ERAs but low win totals and generally poor records. The ERAs might look nice, but they don't qualify him as one of the better pitchers in the league in those seasons. James makes the same point about Tommy John: too many seasons where the ERAs were good but the innings and W-L records don't translate to HOF-worthy performances. John had a 119 ERA+ in the 9 years from '66 to '74, almost as good as Fergie Jenkins. But did that make them similar pitchers? Hardly. Was John ever one of the best pitchers in those seasons? No.
Curt's ERAs are good, but there were too many seasons where you just didn't know what you were getting; too many seasons where a team planned on Curt filling a spot at the top of the rotation and he simply didn't. He's kind of like Saberhagen in that respect. Sure, arm problems and injuries were generally the issue, but you don't get a pass for that.
Starting in '92 there were sixteen seasons where his team slotted him into the rotation with reasonable expectations, and in only seven or so of those seasons was Curt a truly top-flight pitcher. In only four of those seasons did he get any Cy Young consideration as one of the best pitchers in the league.
If Schilling, why not Saberhagen?
in September /October he was 38-16, yet his tOPS+ was 98- meaning he was slightly worse than his usual self - and yet 38-16 is his best monthly W-l %
his best tOPS+ was July- and in July he had his worst WL%....
He was brilliant in Sept.Oct of 1977, 5-1 1.89, basically that was already peak Guidry - he was 10-2 2.16 after the all star break in 1977
In Sept/October 1978 he was 6-1 1.19
Basically he was peak Koufax (or better) for 1+1/2 years
In 1979 he went 6-7 2.51 1st half, 12-1 3.11 2nd half, he got much better run support in the 2nd half, not that it matters- the Yankees were never in the race.
In 1980 he went 4-0 3.19 in Sept after going 2-4 3.63 in August - prior to August it looked like the Yankees were going to run away woth it- a race emerged in August- and GUIDRY did not pitch well in August- Guidry started winning again after the Yankees had pulled back comfortably ahead
In 1983 Guidry had a 5.02 ERA in August- The Yankees were still in the race
he had a 2.51 ERA in September/Oct, but the Yankees were out of it except for maybe 1 start
In 1985 the race was very tight the first 2 weeks of September - and he won his 1st three starts in September- but he really only pitched WELL in one of those starts- he won the other 2 8-7 and 7-5, then on 9/17 he got lit up 9-1...
Guidry was a very good pennant race pitcher- he was brilliant in the pennant races of 1977/78- but he was brilliant then PERIOD, he really didn't pitch any better in Pennant Races than he did outside them- he did get better run support- and that's what driving his better than usual (for him) WP%
Jenkins had a 123 ERA+ in 800 more innings, no stathead/primate is going to argue that John was as good as Jenkins over that stretch
OTOH I would argue that Gaylord Perry was better over that stretch
:-)
If Guidry why not Saberhagen?
:-)
Uhh... lower OPS is better for a pitcher.
Between 1977 and 1985, Ron Guidry was the top Yankee pitcher on the Cy Young ballot three times, but finished behind a fellow Yankee pitcher four times! Sputter! Fulminate! How can Guidry be considered great when more than half the time, he wasn't even the best pitcher on his own team?!? He was even absent from the ballot TWICE as often as he won the award! That's the same as being last!
DOH!
Slaps forehead
I count at least two out-and-out factual misrepresentations here. You contend that Guidry didn't pitch well in August. But he won his first start, pitching seven innings and giving up four runs - INCLUDING THREE IN THE SIXTH INN AFTER THE YANKS HAD A 9-1 TO LEAD. I count that as pitching well. In his second start he goes 7.2 and gives up only three runs - that's called a quality start - but the Yanks score only 2. In his third start he pitches 8 innings and gives up only two earned runs, but the Yanks score only 1. Only in his fourth start did he pitch poorly. He then moves to the bullpen when the Yanks acquire Gaylord Perry because Guidry was the only starter with any bullpen experience (a stupid move by the Yanks), where he pitches 18.1 innings with a 1.96 ERA in eightappearances in Aug/Sept. Take away the three MEANINGLESS runs he gave up in the late innings with a 9-1 lead and his ERA for August is 2.89. That's not pitching well?
Here's the second misrepresentation. Guidry started winning again because he started pitching as a starter again. And the Yanks were not comfortably ahead when he returned to the rotation. They were up only five with 19 games to go when Guidry made his first Sept start - that's not a comfortable lead. They were only up 4 with 13 games to go when he made his second start. That's comfortably ahead? The Tigers blew a 4 game lead with 16 to go last year. The Mets blew a 4.5 game lead with 15 to go two years ago. Your idea of "comfortably ahead" is silly. The Yanks are up 4.5 with 9 games to go when Guidry makes his third start. Comfortable? The '87 Blue Jays blew a 3.5 game lead with SEVEN to play. The '62 Dodgers blew a FOUR GAME LEAD with SEVEN to play. The Yanks still hadn't clinched when Guidry made his last start and only four games to play. That's not comfortable.
JPW would have you believe that Guidry pitched poorly in September, but he won all four of his starts down the stretch and finished the month with a 4-0 record with a 3.19 ERA in September. It was probably Guidry's weakest pennant race performance, but Schilling was as good in only ONE of his seven pennant race performances.
This is more absurd than your distortion of 1980. Guidry pitched great in August, going 4-2 in six starts with four complete game victories. But he gave up six meaningless runs in the late innings after having a 11-0 lead in one start, and gave up two meaningless runs in the 9th while holding a 8-1 lead in another. Guidry was "comfortably ahead" in those games, right? Take away those eight meaningless runs in the late innings of huge Yankee blowouts and Guidry's ERA for the month is 3.64.
You claim the Yanks were out of it "except for maybe 1 start", but Guidry made three starts where the Yanks were 7 games or closer with 17 or more games to go. Again, I can point you to a half-dozen pennant races where similar leads have been blown in September.
Yes, Guidry had a 2.51 ERA that September, and he won five of six starts, including beating Baltimore (the other contender) to pull the Yanks within 4 with more than 20 games to go. JPW may not think much of that performance, but Schilling didn't perform as well in ANY of his 7 pennant races. All in all, Guidry won 9 of his 12 starts in Aug/Sept. Again, Schilling never came close to that kind of finish in a pennant race.
Yeah, it was tight the first 2 weeks, but it was tighter when the Yanks closed to within 2 games with three to go. AND WHEN THEY WENT TO TORONTO TO PLAY THE FIRST PLACE BLUE JAYS THEY WERE ONLY THREE BEHIND WITH FOUR TO GO!
But JPS would tell you that's not a pennant race. Well, I went to the first game of that series in Toronto, and I can tell you that BLUE JAYS FANS thought it was a pennant race. They were shitting bricks after the Yanks won the first game to close to within two.
And when the Yanks were 4 back with 5 to play and HAD to win, Guidry pitched 7 shutout innings, striking out 10. That made him 6-1 in September. JPW would tell you that's not a good performance, even though you count the number of pitchers who've won SIX games in Sept in a pennant race over the last forty years ON ONE HAND.
26 Wins in 30 starts says it all. No pitcher in modern baseball history has won 26 games in a 30 start stretch at any point in a season - not Koufax, not McClain in '68, not Gibson in '68, not Gooden in '85, not Pedro in '99. No one.
Here's Guidry's aggregate September/October stat line for those 5 pennant races, including the three post-seasons involved: 31-6, 40 starts, 308.1 innings, 232 SO, 141 ERA+. That's basically McClain's '68 season.
But JPW will tell you Guidry didn't pitch all that great in pennant races.
James:
"The line is: 43 points. At 43, you're in; below 43, you're not in."
Looks like Guidry had about seven "top-flight" seasons too, by that criteria (one of those being a strike-shortened season, which, as we know from the Bret Saberhagen debate, shouldn't count as much as full seasons). And Guidry had only three other reasonably full seasons of any quality.
Schilling has four non-"top-flight" seasons better than Guidry's best non-top-flight season, including one (2007) where he helped his team win a World Series. And even after those 11 seasons (7 top-flight, 4 non-top-flight better than Guidry's), I still haven't counted 1993, Schilling's first full year as a starter, when he won 16 games, had a strong pennant race, and took his team deep into the World Series.
Schilling even got "Cy Young consideration" -- with more support than three of Guidry's "Cy Young consideration" seasons -- while pitching on a last-place team!
Schilling already gets penalized by some for a short career, and Guidry is FOUR FULL SEASONS below Schilling in career length. Schilling's got 1 season starting and 2 in relief before Guidry's career even began, and four seasons after Guidry was basically done. And through it all, Guidry still has significantly worse rate stats than Schilling.
Pennant race and postseason performances are nuances to differentiate between close cases. Schilling and Guidry aren't particularly close.
Actually, real Trolls don't go ballistic like that, so I guess it should be Fanboy rather than Troll Boy
Too late for this but if this is Silva's actual MO then he does a HORRIBLE job of writing about it. I can't recall ever reading him making a sensible criticism of a method. In fact, I don't recall him ever showing understanding of what a particular statistic is supposed to be or the methodology behind it.
So take your pick: he doesn't understand stats at all or he's a horrible writer. Or both of course.
Now, as to Wally Bunker ...
this is why you don't rely heavily on seasons for pitchers. (You shouldn't for hitters either.) Was Wally Bunker one of the best pitchers of 1964? Who cares? Even if he was, he was a 95 ERA+ pitcher after that ... how much more evidence do you want that he wasn't a very good pitcher. (barring wishcasting injury discussions like "imagine how good X might have been if he hadn't blown his arm out at 20.)
Now, if you can show me a pitcher who puts up 5 consecutive seasons' worth of a 125 ERA+ by "luck" then ... well, then, James' methodology still doesn't make any sense but at least you'll have a better example than Wally Bunker.
And Guidry has no business in the HoF. His peak value is not extraordinary and his career value is trivial by HoF standards.
League size adjustments only make sense if you're going to do something silly like hand out points for top 10 seasons ... and the obvious way to do that would be to follow the %age model.
But that's silly because if you want to talk about "random" and "luck" then ranking people on their scores on a continuous measure where the differences relative to the random variation is small is about as random as you get.
Guidry had a nine-year peak stretch where he was one of the top pitchers in the league six times, was above average in two others, and had only one season - 1984 - where he won fewer than 14 games (Guidry's 11 wins in 2/3s of a season in the strike-shortened season of '81 translate to 17 wins over a full season. Schilling, by contrast, never had a nine-year stretch like that. He always had very poor or limited seasons interspersed. He only received Cy Young votes in four years.
This is Bill James's point in his article. Those ERAs might have looked good in '95, '96, 2000, 2003 and 2007, but Curt wasn't anywhere near one of the best pitchers in the league those years. The man pitched 20 seasons - he got Cy Young consideration in four. Guidry got Cy Young consideration SIX TIMES in a nine-year stretch.
Whom would you choose for your team if you had a choice between the following two hypothetical pitchers:
Pitcher A, who would usually be a Cy Young candidate over a ten-year stretch, who would lead the majors in wins over a decade and lead his league in ERA and strikeouts, who would have a .697 winning percentage over a nine-year period, or
Pitcher B, who would play 20 seasons, win 10 or more games only half the time, get Cy Young consideration in only four seasons, and have many seasons of less than 200 innings, less than 25 starts, and less than 10 victories interspersed among his good seasons?
Any reasonable fan would rather have the guy who was consistently great over a 10 year period rather than a guy who was just as likely to be injured, inconsistent or non-productive every year.
The bad seasons and injury-plagued seasons count, too, unless you can string together five seasons like Koufax. If the bad years didn't count, Saberhagen and Bucky Walters and Mel Parnell and Jim Kaat and Tommy John and a lot of other guys would be in the Hall.
Not Guidry either. What's your point?
Oh, really? Here are the averages of the best 5 seasons of various pitchers. Which one was Guidry? Who are the others?
Pitcher A: 24.4 - 11.8, .674 WP, 2.79 ERA
Pitcher B: 21.2 - 10.6, .667 WP, 2.63 ERA
Pitcher C: 22.0 - 8.8, .714 WP, 2.80 ERA
Pitcher D: 22.2 - 6.8, .766 WP, 2.40 ERA
Pitcher E: 19.6 - 7.2, .731 WP, 2.75 ERA
Pitcher F: 23.0 - 10.0, .697 WP, 2.70 ERA
Pitcher G: 20.4 - 6.6, .756 WP, 2.86 ERA
The ERAs are based on the pitcher's ERA+ for each season and an assumed league average of 4.00.
Four of these pitchers are already Hall of Famers. One more is not yet eligible. One of them is Guidry.
Do you really mean to tell me that one of these pitchers peak period isn't comparable with the rest of the group as a whole?
I want to give Schilling -- and all players -- credit for all of their seasons:
Schilling: 3261 IP, 3116 K, 127 ERA+
Guidry: 2392 IP, 1778 K, 119 ERA+
You're the one picking and choosing seasons -- and days and months within seasons.
Who would you rather choose to make a hypothetical May 6th, 2000 start: Steve Trachsel or Pedro Martinez?
My point should be obvious: 26 wins in 30 starts is incredible, no matter what criteria you use for selecting the 30 starts. Guidry's criteria is starts in pennant races. Another criteria is a pitcher's best year. Another would be 30 starts in any given month of the year over his career. Another criteria would be 30 starts against losing teams. Even if you select a criteria with an inherent bias towards wins - like starts in which the pitcher gave up 3 runs or less - you're still not likely to find 26 wins in a 30 start stretch.
So his peak is ordinary among Hall of Famers. Just like Walt said.
How does his career compare to the same group?
What if your criteria is lossless streaks.
Discuss.
Or could he have meant prospectively? i.e., it's not currently true that every "modern" pitcher with 275+ wins is in, but if you believe it's safe to assume that Maddux, Clemens, Glavine, Unit, John, Blyleven and Kaat will all eventually be inducted, then you could say "at 275 wins for a modern pitcher, you're in."
He must have meant something, because I can't believe for a moment that James would suggest that someone be inducted to the HOF (lemme steal his own list-making rhetorical device):
A) on the basis of one stat that is not nearly as comprehensive as other stats he is aware of and/or created; or for that matter
B) on the basis of one stat, period; or for that matter
C) on the basis solely of statistical evidence, period.
That all seems tremendously unlikely. No?
Here's a short discussion: he didn't pitch in nine pennant races, he only pitched in 5. Are you now arguing that Schilling didn't pitch at all in all those seasons when he couldn't win 10 games?
FWIW the 20.4-6.6 2.86 one is Guidry
he has the highest ERA+ of the group and fewest IP.
Rk Player ERA+ W L IP From To1 Lefty Grove 148 300 141 3940.2 1925 1941
2 Walter Johnson 147 417 279 5914.1 1907 1927
3 Hoyt Wilhelm 146 143 122 2254.1 1952 1972
4 Ed Walsh 146 195 126 2964.1 1904 1917
5 Addie Joss 142 160 97 2327.0 1902 1910
6 Kid Nichols 140 361 208 5067.1 1890 1906
7 Mordecai Brown 138 239 130 3172.1 1903 1916
8 Cy Young 138 511 316 7356.0 1890 1911
9 Bruce Sutter 136 68 71 1042.0 1976 1988
10 Christy Mathewson 135 373 188 4788.2 1900 1916
11 Pete Alexander 135 373 208 5190.0 1911 1930
12 Rube Waddell 135 193 143 2961.1 1897 1910
13 John Clarkson 134 328 178 4536.1 1882 1894
14 Whitey Ford 133 236 106 3170.1 1950 1967
15 Al Spalding 132 252 65 2886.1 1871 1877
16 Sandy Koufax 131 165 87 2324.1 1955 1966
17 Dizzy Dean 130 150 83 1967.1 1930 1947
18 Hal Newhouser 130 207 150 2993.0 1939 1955
19 Carl Hubbell 130 253 154 3590.1 1928 1943
20 Amos Rusie 129 246 174 3778.2 1889 1901
21 Bob Gibson 127 251 174 3884.1 1959 1975
22 Stan Coveleski 127 215 142 3082.0 1912 1928
23 Tom Seaver 127 311 205 4783.0 1967 1986
24 Tim Keefe 127 342 225 5049.2 1880 1893
25 Rich Gossage 126 124 107 1809.1 1972 1994
Rk Player ERA+ W L IP From To
26 Jim Palmer 126 268 152 3948.0 1965 1984
27 Lefty Gomez 125 189 102 2503.0 1930 1943
28 Dazzy Vance 125 197 140 2966.2 1915 1935
29 Juan Marichal 123 243 142 3507.0 1960 1975
30 Eddie Plank 122 326 194 4495.2 1901 1917
31 Bob Feller 122 266 162 3827.0 1936 1956
32 Babe Ruth 122 94 46 1221.1 1914 1933
33 Clark Griffith 121 237 146 3385.2 1891 1914
34 Don Drysdale 121 209 166 3432.0 1956 1969
35 Joe McGinnity 120 246 142 3441.1 1899 1908
36 Old Hoss Radbourn 120 309 194 4527.1 1881 1891
37 Rollie Fingers 119 114 118 1701.1 1968 1985
38 Monte Ward 119 164 103 2469.2 1878 1884
39 Bob Lemon 119 207 128 2850.0 1946 1958
40 Red Faber 119 254 213 4086.2 1914 1933
41 Warren Spahn 118 363 245 5243.2 1942 1965
42 Ted Lyons 118 260 230 4161.0 1923 1946
43 Vic Willis 118 249 205 3996.0 1898 1910
44 Gaylord Perry 117 314 265 5350.0 1962 1983
45 Dennis Eckersley 116 197 171 3285.2 1975 1998
46 Phil Niekro 115 318 274 5404.0 1964 1987
47 Steve Carlton 115 329 244 5217.2 1965 1988
48 Fergie Jenkins 115 284 226 4500.2 1965 1983
49 Eppa Rixey 115 266 251 4494.2 1912 1933
50 Candy Cummings 115 145 94 2149.2 1872 1877
Rk Player ERA+ W L IP From To
51 Jim Bunning 114 224 184 3760.1 1955 1971
52 Mickey Welch 114 307 210 4802.0 1880 1892
53 Robin Roberts 113 286 245 4688.2 1948 1966
54 Chief Bender 112 212 127 3017.0 1903 1925
55 Waite Hoyt 111 237 182 3762.1 1918 1938
56 Nolan Ryan 111 324 292 5386.0 1966 1993
57 Jack Chesbro 110 198 132 2896.2 1899 1909
58 Red Ruffing 109 273 225 4344.0 1924 1947
59 Jesse Haines 108 210 158 3208.2 1918 1937
60 Don Sutton 108 324 256 5282.1 1966 1988
61 Pud Galvin 108 365 310 6003.1 1875 1892
62 Burleigh Grimes 107 270 212 4180.0 1916 1934
63 Early Wynn 107 300 244 4564.0 1939 1963
64 Herb Pennock 106 241 162 3571.2 1912 1934
65 Catfish Hunter 104 224 166 3449.1 1965 1979
66 Rube Marquard 103 201 177 3306.2 1908 1925
There is obviously a significant win bias in that criteria, and yet you still won't be able to find me a pitcher who won 26 games in a streak of 30 lossless starts. Your pitcher will have five or more no-decisions. I challenge you to find one. Here's your criteria again: 30 consecutive lossless starts (meaning you can exclude all games he lost) where he won 26 of 30 starts.
Have at it.
Here is how many extra innings, and what ERA+ Guidry would have needed to pitch at, he would have needed to match their career IP/ERA+:
Player IP ERA+Cy Young 4964 149
Pud Galvin 3611.1 102
Walter Johnson 3522.1 175
Phil Niekro 3012 112
Nolan Ryan 2994 105
Gaylord Perry 2958 115
Don Sutton 2890.1 100
Warren Spahn 2851.2 117
Steve Carlton 2825.2 112
Pete Alexander 2798 152
Kid Nichols 2675.1 166
Tim Keefe 2657.2 135
Mickey Welch 2410 109
Christy Mathewson 2396.2 156
Tom Seaver 2391 136
Robin Roberts 2296.2 107
Early Wynn 2172 96
John Clarkson 2144.1 156
Old Hoss Radbourn 2135.1 121
Fergie Jenkins 2108.2 111
Eddie Plank 2103.2 126
Eppa Rixey 2102.2 111
Red Ruffing 1952 99
Burleigh Grimes 1788 94
Ted Lyons 1769 117
Red Faber 1694.2 119
Vic Willis 1604 116
Jim Palmer 1556 138
Lefty Grove 1548.2 237
Bob Gibson 1492.1 142
Bob Feller 1435 127
Amos Rusie 1386.2 151
Waite Hoyt 1370.1 99
Jim Bunning 1368.1 106
Carl Hubbell 1198.1 159
Herb Pennock 1179.2 87
Juan Marichal 1115 132
Catfish Hunter 1057.1 81
Joe McGinnity 1049.1 122
Don Drysdale 1040 126
Clark Griffith 993.2 126
Rube Marquard 914.2 76
Dennis Eckersley 893.2 109
Jesse Haines 816.2 85
Mordecai Brown 780.1 269
Whitey Ford 778.1 208
Stan Coveleski 690 165
Chief Bender 625 91
Hal Newhouser 601 205
Dazzy Vance 574.2 158
Ed Walsh 572.1 2716
Rube Waddell 569.1 309
Jack Chesbro 504.2 81
Al Spalding 494.1 279
Bob Lemon 458 119
Lefty Gomez 111 -1646
Monte Ward 77.2 117
Addie Joss -65 18
Sandy Koufax -67.9 29
Hoyt Wilhelm -137.9 30
Candy Cummings -242.8 173
Dizzy Dean -424.9 86
Rich Gossage -582.9 102
Rollie Fingers -690.9 119
Babe Ruth -1170.9 116
Bruce Sutter -1350 109
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