Run Support for Top Starters, 1954-2008
UPDATED 12/30: Fixed a math error in the way that I calculated expected run support, which changed some of the below-expected support counts as well. I also went back and looked at Don Newcombe, but he had only 192 starts in my DB, so I chose (again) to leave him out.
Minimum 300 starts, includes only the starts for which I have event data:
Player Starts Supp ExpSupp BelowExp %BelowExp
Schilling, C 436 4.69 4.94 273 62.6%
Brown, K 476 4.46 4.77 295 62.0%
Martinez, P 400 4.88 5.12 244 61.0%
Maddux, G 740 4.43 4.66 441 59.6%
Clemens, R 707 4.76 5.07 419 59.3%
Ryan, N 773 3.85 4.02 457 59.1%
Koufax, S 314 4.22 4.24 184 58.6%
Palmer, J 521 4.40 4.42 304 58.3%
Sutton, D 756 4.08 4.21 441 58.3%
Blyleven, B 685 4.19 4.39 399 58.2%
Ford, W 396 4.66 4.77 230 58.1%
Perry, G 690 3.89 4.09 401 58.1%
Bunning, J 516 4.20 4.28 299 57.9%
Seaver, T 647 3.92 3.89 374 57.8%
Drysdale, D 463 4.09 4.07 267 57.7%
Gibson, B 482 4.08 4.18 277 57.5%
Perry, J 447 4.21 4.37 257 57.5%
Smoltz, J 466 4.68 4.71 268 57.5%
Jenkins, F 594 4.48 4.44 338 56.9%
Mussina, M 536 5.34 5.35 305 56.9%
John, T 700 4.20 4.23 396 56.6%
Johnson, R 586 4.92 5.06 331 56.5%
Tiant, L 484 4.47 4.39 273 56.4%
Guidry, R 323 4.81 4.88 182 56.3%
Roberts, R 395 3.99 4.02 222 56.2%
Stieb, D 412 4.32 4.47 231 56.1%
Carlton, S 709 4.40 4.28 397 56.0%
Spahn, W 357 4.50 4.49 200 56.0%
Glavine, T 682 4.76 4.64 381 55.9%
Cone, D 419 4.83 4.90 234 55.8%
Morris, J 527 4.97 4.93 294 55.8%
Appier, K 402 4.71 4.68 223 55.5%
Niekro, P 710 4.26 4.22 391 55.1%
Hunter, J 476 4.38 4.17 260 54.6%
Kaat, J 625 4.43 4.42 341 54.6%
Marichal, J 457 4.63 4.35 249 54.5%
Gooden, D 410 4.95 4.68 222 54.1%
Saberhagen, B 371 4.58 4.51 195 52.6%
Most pitchers will have more than 50% of their starts with below-average support because they will sometimes be supported by oodles and scads of runs, which drives the average up. A starter who receives expected run support overall will usually have somewhere around 57% of his games below expectations.
Run support, as I calculate it here, is based only on actual innings batted in support of the starter. If a visiting team starter goes exactly six innings, he gets credit for the runs his team scores in innings one through seven. If his team scores 3 runs in those seven innings, then his team gets credit for 3*9/7, or 3.86 RS/9. Expected support is calculated the same way, based on how many runs per nine innings with which the team supported all of their starters. I don’t count runs scored, and innings batted, in support of relievers.
You don’t normally think of guys like Schilling and Pedro as being undersupported by their mates, do you?
The 50s Braves gave their top starters unusually good support. Burdette, who isn’t included here, was the only pitcher with 300 or more starts who got less-than-expected run support in fewer than 50% of his starts, and Bob Buhl also was pretty far down on the list.
Koufax netted out to being above-average in terms of support even though he had a high number of games below expectations because he had a good number of games in which he got a LOT of runs. Saberhagen netted out as below average because he didn’t have a lot of those high-support games; when he did get better than average support it wasn’t usually by much.
What I’m going to post next is a look at how these pitchers did in those games where they received less-than-expected run support.
Mike Emeigh
Posted: December 27, 2008 at 03:08 AM |
18 comment(s)
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1. Benny Distefano's Mitt Posted: December 27, 2008 at 05:05 AM (#3038781)You don’t normally think of guys like Schilling and Pedro as being undersupported by their mates, do you?
I do, but then again I crunched the numbers for this years ago. Going purely by memory, prior to going to Boston, Curt Schilling's run support was about as poor as Dazzy Vance and Bobo Newsom. Vance had BY FAR the worst career run support by any HoF. His Boston years has caused his career numbers to rise considerably.
If anyone's curious, the ESPN Encyclopedia put together by Pete Palmer & Gary Gillette includes a stat for pitcher run support. It's centered at 100, with higher better and lower indicating worse than league average. The book is worth buying for that reason alone, IMHO.
Mike, I know it's out of your time frame, but Don Newcombe and Allie Reynolds would also score near Juan Marichal on this.
What I’m going to post next is a look at how these pitchers did in those games where they received less-than-expected run support.
Do you have Jim Perry and Frank Tanana. My hunch is that Perry would do pretty damn well by this approach and Tanana rather poor.
Indirectly. I divide by home starts and road starts and look at expected support on that basis.
I don't agree with figuring run support based on league context - I use team context. As I've said before, a pitcher's job IMO is to work with what his team gives him - what the other teams for their pitchers is immaterial. If Pedro plays on a team that scores 5 runs per 9 innings for their other starters, and he only gets 4.9 runs per 9 innings, he's getting less support than expected for his context - even if the other teams only give their starters 4.7 runs per 9 innings - and it's not appropriate in my view to punish him for playing on a good offensive team, or to reward a guy who is getting more support than expected for his context on a poor offensive team.
I probably should have put Newcombe on this list. I've limited this to pitchers who have drawn some mentions in the HoM discussions (as Newcombe has) because I don't particularly care how a pitcher did relative to an average starter; all of these guys should be well above that. I'm interested in how they compare to each other. Newcombe, like Roberts and Spahn, will have a good portion of his career that is NOT included, obviously.
I know what you are saying, but for most of these guys there is not normally of an impact to make a significant difference, because you can't score fractions of a run and the median and mean usually fall in the same space between, say, 3 runs in seven innings and 4 runs in seven innings.
Not normally. The starting pitching distribution gets skewed pretty quickly after the first couple of weeks of the season; there's no strong tendency for #1 starters to be matched against each other.
Not sure what you are asking here. I'm trying to separate things into "above expected" and "below expected". I expect (and it's normally true) that just about any pitcher will win games when he's getting above expected run support - so that the true separation between the great pitcher and the less-great is what they do when they don't get good run support.
-- MWE
Huh? It's not punishing anyone for anything. It's noting. If a guy's offense gives him 4.9 runs per game and league average is 4.7, then you're noting what his team gives him.
But he's not getting above-average support in his team's context - and that's what I want to know. His context is his team - not the league.
-- MWE
1 Roger Clemens 525.1
2 Greg Maddux 442.8
3 Randy Johnson 378.8
4 Nolan Ryan 321.9
5 Pedro Martinez 313.7
6 Tom Seaver 304.9
7 Robin Roberts 278.4
8 Curt Schilling 276
9 Mike Mussina 274.7
10 Gaylord Perry 272.8
11 Warren Spahn 267.2
12 Bert Blyleven 260.8
13 Don Sutton 253.3
14 Kevin Brown 247.7
15 Tom Glavine 247.3
16 Bob Gibson 241.3
17 Tommy John 207.3
18 Jim Palmer 206.1
19 Fergie Jenkins 204.5
20 Steve Carlton 199.3
21 Jim Kaat 196.9
22 Phil Niekro 191.7
23 Dave Stieb 188.2
24 Jack Morris 186.2
25 David Cone 178.2
26 Luis Tiant 174.3
27 Jim Bunning 174.2
28 Rick Reuschel 170.1
29 Kevin Appier 167.4
30 Sandy Koufax 161.2
31 Bret Saberhagen 149.4
32 John Smoltz 144.7
33 Don Drysdale 134.3
34 Juan Marichal 122.1
35 Catfish Hunter 101.8
You know, considering the extent of his run support Marichal really should have gone better than 243-142...
nevermind post 11
this is the same mistake Bill James made when he first worked on offensive winning percentage
League context is a hell of a lot more important than team context.
You are assuming that pitchers can and do pitch to the score
until that is shown, your statement
is completely useless.
If someone gets 4 runs from a team that usually scores 3.8, he is NOT better supported than a guy who gets 4.2 runs from a team that usually scores 4.4- but your method says/assumes he is.
Case in point- Jack Morris, expected support of 4.8? For the times he played????? No you are just giving him credit for the luck of playing almost exclusively for good offensive teams- and using it as the denominator understates how extraordinarily lucky he was in the run support he received- compared to his contemporaries.
Tom Seaver- received 3.91 runs compared to 3.98 expected? One, just ONE of his Mets teams ever cleared a 100 OPS+, but most easily cleared a 100 ERA+- his "expected runs" is artificially low- he played for good pitching/poor hitting teams for more than half his career.
His context is the league. I want to know how good a pitcher IS, I want to know how well he would do compared to pitchers in the league, not just how well he does compared to his staff mates.
To get a handle on a starting pitcher's win efficiency while properly factoring out offensive and bullpen support, the easiest place to start is to look at performance by leverage. Blyleven, like almost every other great starter, performed better in low leverage situations than in high leverage ones. The exceptions to this rule from the retrosheet age are Koufax, Seaver and Clemens. Blyleven's low leverage delta was more than typical for a great pitcher, but much less than Sutton's (for instance).
I take it this method does not account for park effects, which I would imagine this issue would be even more problematical owing to a smaller sample size vice the entire season.
I would have liked to see how pitchers compared with pitchers from different teams, even from different eras. I think it should be ball park adjusted, but pitchers with good hitting teams shouldn't be rewarded. Also, Mike Cuellar shouldn't be penalized because Jim Palmer is on the team.
If this argument has any vitality then shouldnt we be thinking of a pitcher's ERA w/ respect to his team and not the league? That seems odd, as it is nearly always thought of as a statistic w/ respect to the league and not the team. What am I missing here?
> mean vs. median
I know what you are saying, but for most of these guys there is not normally of an impact to make a significant difference, because you can't score fractions of a run and the median and mean usually fall in the same space between, say, 3 runs in seven innings and 4 runs in seven innings.
I don't know what that is saying but I suspect it is merely a label for Mike's explanation, "because they will sometimes be supported by oodles and scads of runs, which drives the average up."
--
OCF
>>At what pct difference do you consider the spread statistically significant?
<<
Mike Emeigh
>Not sure what you are asking here. I'm trying to separate things into "above expected" and "below expected". I expect (and it's normally true) that just about any pitcher will win games when he's getting above expected run support - so that the true separation between the great pitcher and the less-great is what they do when they don't get good run support.
<
Mike's purpose here seems limited, not to rely on the frequency of below-average support (the last column), so it doesn't need much interpretation or analysis. Evidently the purpose is to set the stage for part two. The last column states the share of career starts that will be featured in part two. The point will concern exclusively his work as a pitcher, perhaps pitching and fielding but not batting and baserunning, so it doesn't matter whether the pitcher contributed a lot or a little to his run support.
OCF hopes to interpret the last column, ?lowExp, and probably too the difference between pitcher mean and team mean, Supp - ExpSupp. For example, what do those statistics say about whether a pitcher was "lucky"? Some other comments show great interest in that.
The interpretation or further analysis of these statistics must account for the pitcher's contribution to run support. Maybe we can say whether a the size or frequency of a pitcher's above-benchmark run support was statistically significant after accounting for his own batting/baserunning in the benchmark.
There may be some useful or interesting "quick and dirty" calculation given two more numerical variables, a pitcher's OPS+ as a batter and his share of career starts in DH leagues.
--
Mike Emeigh, from the preface,
Koufax netted out to being above-average in terms of support even though he had a high number of games below expectations because he had a good number of games in which he got a LOT of runs. Saberhagen netted out as below average because he didn’t have a lot of those high-support games; when he did get better than average support it wasn’t usually by much.
The table shows that Koufax and Saberhagen (my emphasis) enjoy relatively high mean support and relatively low mean support in comparison with most of their neighbors in this layout. That is, Koufax high and Saberhagen low team-relative mean support relative to their team-relative median support. Neither one "reverses the sign" Supp - ExpSupp in the way that Mike's remark means to me.
Reading the table from top to bottom, from the superficially unlucky to lucky,
the pitchers who enjoyed better than team-average run support Supp > ExpSupp are none from the top third; Seaver, Drysdale, Jenkins, Tiant from the middle; Carlton and everyone below him except Cone.
From the top and bottom thirds of the table, only Cone reverses the sign.
Everyone from Koufax or Palmer to Appier or Niekro seems to be in the unremarkable middle of the lot by frequency (the last column). Essentially that is what OCF hopes to see quantified statistically, whose run support (?lowExp) is statistically unremarkable?
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