Fraction of decisions going to starters
Posted by Andy on March 18, 2009
So I'm going to ease into a more detailed discussion of pitching decisions and innings.
First off, here's a basic plot of the percentage of all decisions that go to the starting pitchers:
This was calculated by using a bunch of Pitching Game Finder searches and then adding up all the wins and losses for starters, as well as all the wins and losses for relievers, then calculating a simple fraction for starters.
So this tells us that in the early 1950s, starters were getting about 75% of all the decisions while last year they got only about 69% of all decisions.
The reason for this should be pretty obvious: starters are pitching fewer and fewer innings, on average, per start. When they are around for a smaller fraction of the game, they have less of a chance of picking up the decision.
I'll back this up with more data tomorrow. For now, just soak this in. 🙂
March 18th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Interesting post. Though a drop in 6% difference is hardly a huge plummet. Many other things about the game have changed more drasticly over the last 50 years, most notably, home runs hit per game, which i believe you did a post on.
What interests me the most is the random spikes and drops. The first big comes, what i believe, is the 1968 season, self explantatory, pitchers just dominated, and were allowed to pitch long games and often got the decision.But that isnt the highest, which was 1972 and i cant recall anything about pitching dominance in that year, minus of course, steve carlton.
Other dips and spikes are of not as well, for instance the spike in 1988 and the drop in 2004
March 18th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Scoring dropped back down again even after the mound was lowered, so the early '70s were really an extension of that '60s modern deadball era. That led to the DH in '73. Scoring in the AL in '72 was almost as low as it had been in '68.