Deep, Solid, Starting Pitching…
Posted by Steve Lombardi on April 6, 2009
...and what to show for it?
Playing around with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Season Finder, I set the controls for "For single seasons, From 1901 to 2008, requiring IP>=160, BR<=250, ERAp>=95 and GS>=30, sorted by greatest number of players matching criteria " looking to find teams with some good starting staffs. And, here's the leaders of the list that it gave me:
Year Lg Team Number Players Matching +----+--+---------------------------------+------+-----------------------------------------+ 1991 NL St. Louis Cardinals 3 Bryn Smith / Bob Tewksbury / Ken Hill 1988 NL Pittsburgh Pirates 3 John Smiley / Doug Drabek / Bob Walk 2008 AL Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim 2 Joe Saunders / Jered Weaver 2008 NL Arizona Diamondbacks 2 Danny Haren / Randy Johnson 2008 NL Los Angeles Dodgers 2 Derek Lowe / Hiroki Kuroda 2007 NL Atlanta Braves 2 John Smoltz / Chuck James 2007 NL Chicago Cubs 2 Ted Lilly / Rich Hill 2007 NL San Diego Padres 2 Jake Peavy / Chris Young 2005 AL Cleveland Indians 2 Cliff Lee / Kevin Millwood 2005 NL Houston Astros 2 Andy Pettitte / Roger Clemens 2005 AL Minnesota Twins 2 Johan Santana / Brad Radke 2002 AL Boston Red Sox 2 Derek Lowe / Pedro Martinez 2002 AL Oakland Athletics 2 Cory Lidle / Mark Mulder 2000 NL New York Mets 2 Glendon Rusch / Rick Reed 1997 NL New York Mets 2 Rick Reed / Bobby Jones 1997 NL San Francisco Giants 2 Kirk Rueter / Mark Gardner 1990 NL New York Mets 2 David Cone / Sid Fernandez 1990 NL Montreal Expos 2 Dennis Martinez / Oil Can Boyd 1988 NL Houston Astros 2 Mike Scott / Jim Deshaies 1986 AL New York Yankees 2 Dennis Rasmussen / Ron Guidry 1979 NL Cincinnati Reds 2 Fred Norman / Tom Seaver 1968 AL Cleveland Indians 2 Luis Tiant / Sonny Siebert 1965 AL Chicago White Sox 2 Joe Horlen / John Buzhardt
Those 1988 Pirates finished in 2nd place - 15 games back of the Mets. And, those 1991 Cardinals finished in 2nd place - 14 games back of the Pirates. Go figure, huh?
April 6th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
I don't know what BR is, but it seems odd that there were no good starting staffs before 1965. Are you sure the software didn't limit the search to the Retrosheet years?
April 6th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Gerry, BR is base runners. And, for sure, the query looked back beyond the retrosheet years.
It did also ID the 1913 NL Boston Braves with Hub Perdue, FWIW.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Limiting the number of baserunners to =30 also eliminates most of the good starters from prior to the 1960's. They typically pitched considerably more innings, and of course would allow more baserunners. If a guy starts 30 games now, he may pitch as few as 170-180 innings, and his baserunners allowed will often be less than 250. But in years past, a pitcher who started 30 games would complete half or more than half of them. That would probably add up to a minimum of 210-220 innings, and his baserunners would easily be over 250.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
That's a fair point. Still, it's interesting to see the 1988 Pirates and 1991 Cardinals here. They're not the first two teams to come to mind when I'm thinking solid pitching rotations...
April 6th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Change the base runner search to WHIP and I think you'll get a better set of results. For example, the '54 Indians come to mind as a deep pitching staff (111 wins, Bob Feller as 5th starter). But each of their top 4 starters allowed over 250 base runners. And it's not like they were pitching 400 innings either.
April 7th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Thanks for the explanations. If you just look at all pitchers, 1920-1940, with 30 or more starts, there isn't a single one with 250 or fewer baserunners - the minimum is 259, Babe Adams, 1920. That's without any filtering on IP or ERA+. There must be a better definition of "deep, solid starting pitching."
April 7th, 2009 at 9:30 am
The reason that the generated list doesn't correlate with good/playoff teams is because 2 or 3 good starters doesn't ensure a team of much these days. You didn't search for excellent starters, just good ones. I did a search a while back that looked for 4+ very good starters, and that list did correlate with playoff teams.
April 7th, 2009 at 11:42 am
definitely a less than optimal query... We see the 2008 DBacks on the list with 2, but leave off the Brandon Webb.
Lincecum's Cy season doesn't qualify him either. The problem is the 250 base runner stipulation. As mentioned above, changing that to a WHIP maybe under 1.25 should give a much more desirable result.