The Bats of Jack Stivetts adn Charlie McCullough
Posted by Chris J. on January 12, 2008
After my last post, I goofed around on PI for a second to see how pitchers hit in the 1890s (minimum 100 PA).
I knew they hit better back then, but what caught my eye was the man on bottom, Charlie McCullough. He's over 50 points behind next to last and over 100 behind the pack. OUCH.
So I gotta wonder - how much did his bat cost him. Ya know, using PI you can figure this out fairly easily. McCullough, thankfully, did all his pitching in 1890 AA. So, I do a new search - looking just at the 1890 AA for all pitchers with at least 1 PA, I search for runs created. Here are the results.
Now this gets fun - grab a calculator, add up all pitcher RC and PA. Then you can find out how many RC/PA a pitcher normally produced in the 1890 AA. Take that and multiply by the PA for any pitcher you'd like, in this case McCullough. The difference between that and what McCullough actually produced (in this case, he produced 0 RC, so it's just the RC/PA times McCu's PA).
You know why this is fun - you can then apply it to his RA/ERA to adjust his pitching line for his offensive contributions. An average pitcher would've contributed 6.2 runs in 101 PA.
Well, I should adjust that for park, right? He had 89 PA in a park factor of 97, and 12 in a park factor of 90, so an average park factor of 96 on the year. So an average pitcher would only contribute 5.98 runs. Same basic thing, but it's good to be accurate.
Well, now apply to his pitching line. Two-thirds of his runs allowed were earned, so he cost his team an extra 4 earned runs. His 4.88 ERA becomes 5.03. I would've guess more, but all the era's UER really helps. His RA moves from 7.41 to 7.63. Really, that's impressive if you think about it - a pitcher's bat cost his team a run every five games. Jesus. Oh, and his ERA+ drops from 79 to 77.
As long as I'm here - Jack Stivetts had an incredible 38 RC in 1890. Impact? An average pitcher would've had 14.98 in his PA. Well, he played in a huge hitters' park, so it's 17.08. Given his UER, about 11 of those would be earned. His ERA drops from 3.52 to 3.28. His ERA+ goes from 122 to 131. His RA transforms from 5.47 to 5.10. So his bat was worth a third of a run per game. Not too shabby.
See, PI isn't just fun - you can use it for real research, too. From 1957-onward you can just look at b-ref positional batting splits, but if you want to figure out how to adjust older hurlers' pitching line by their offensive contributions, you can do it this way.
Don't be too surprised if at some point this summer there's a column or two along these lines at The Hardball Times.