Baseball’s Surprising Stats: Pedro Martinez
This is Part 7 of the series, “Baseball’s Surprising Stats.” If you’ve missed any or all of the first six, you’ll find them under “Recent Posts” over to the right.
Recently, I read that Pedro Martinez lost only 100 games in his entire career in over 400 starts.
English: Pedro Martínez (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Losing just 100 games out of 409 career starts (against 219 wins) is a pretty remarkable statistic.
It led me to ask the following question: What was the greatest number of games Pedro lost in any one season?
Indirectly, this also led me to wonder, if wins are an overrated statistic that don’t often reveal the true value of a pitcher, then how about losses?
In other words, are the number of losses a pitcher suffers in a particular season fairly representative of his overall performance?
Lists are often my favorite visual aid, so of course you know what’s coming. Here’s a list of 26 pitchers, (do we always have to work with multiples of five?) and the highest number of losses they suffered in a season, from fewest to most.
Every pitcher on this list made at least 300 career starts, the vast majority making over 400. The number in parentheses indicates the number of seasons the pitcher lost that many games. A number in bold print indicates they led the league in losses that season.
1) Pedro Martinez – 10 (2)
2) Ron Guidry – 12 (and it wasn’t until he turned 35 that he lost that many.)
3) Lefty Grove – 13 (2)
4) Sandy Koufax – 13 (2)
5) John Smoltz – 13
6) Roger Clemens – 14
7) David Cone – 14 (2)
8) Randy Johnson – 14 (2)
9) Curt Schilling – 14
10) Tom Seaver – 14 (2)
11) Bob Feller – 15 (2)
12) Dwight Gooden – 15
13) Greg Maddux – 15
14) Mike Mussina – 15
15) “Pete” Alexander – 17
16) Bert Blyleven – 17 (4) (Led league in losses in one of those four 17-loss seasons.)
17) Tom Glavine – 17
18) Catfish Hunter – 17
19) Christy Mathewson – 17
20) Ferguson Jenkins – 18
21) Jack Morris – 18
22) Nolan Ryan – 18
23) Don Sutton – 18
24) Steve Carlton – 20
25) Luis Tiant – 20
26) Walter Johnson – 25
Boy, that Walter Johnson was a lousy pitcher, wasn’t he?
Actually, the year Johnson lost 25 games he was just a 21-year old kid still learning his craft. Although his ERA that year was a sparkling 2.22, his ERA+ was just a mediocre 111, meaning that lots of pitchers had very low ERA’s that year. Easy to see why this was the Dead Ball era, right?
So, do the number of losses a pitcher suffers in their “worst” season tell us much in the way of useful information? Is it possible for a pitcher to have an excellent year (as measured by other reliable stats) yet come away with a relatively high number of losses?
Well, we just saw that Walter Johnson was not yet a great pitcher when he lost those 25 games. Similarly, Tom Glavine was just a 22-year old with an ERA+ of just 80 when he lost his career high 17 games. In other words, it would not be inaccurate to say that he truly did “earn” those losses.
Although Nolan Ryan was already 29-years old when he lost 18 games in 1976, his ERA+ that year was only 99, and he was still walking far too many batters. In other words, those 18 losses can’t simply be written off as a lack of run support, or an unlucky “good” pitcher on a bad team. Ryan pretty much deserved to lose 18 of his 39 starts that year.
Don Sutton, like Bert Blyleven, is in the Hall of Fame due to a long career of notable, yet unspectacular, consistency. They are baseball’s equivalent of the 35-year career insurance salesmen who never miss a day of work, but of whom the best that can be said is that they never knowingly, intentionally, sold a questionable policy. They each stuck around long enough to earn their gold watch, enjoy their retirement party, and retire to Miami Beach to play golf, bare white legs set against the over-manicured greens draining into dying swampland.
So what of their 17 and 18 loss seasons? In 23 seasons, Don Sutton never led his league in ERA+, and in ERA just once. In 1969, his fourth season in the Majors, he posted an ERA+ of 96 in 296 innings. Durable? Sure. But it is clear that those 18 losses were generally representative of his pitching performance that particular year.
Bert Blyleven’s four 17-loss seasons, three of which occurred consecutively from 1972-74, were more of a mixed bag. In two of those seasons, (1973-74) Blyleven posted ERA+’s of 156 (which led the league) and 142, respectively. In 1972, his ERA+ was a decent 119, and in his final 17-loss campaign, 1988, his 17 losses led the league in a year in which his ERA+ was only 75.
When Luis Tiant and Steve Carlton each led their respective leagues with 20 losses (Tiant in ’69; Carlton in ’73), neither pitcher was better than league-average that year. Tiant’s ERA+ was just 101, and Carlton’s was only 97.
Long-time Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez returns to Fenway Park in 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Generally speaking then, what is clear from this admittedly abbreviated list of pitchers is that great pitchers don’t tend to lose very many games, unless they are having an off-year, or unless they are still refining their craft.
Now, that may sound like the least surprising bit of information you’ve ever received. But what it means is that, although a pitcher can have a great year and not win very many games (see the list of recent Cy Young winners), it is not at all common for a pitcher to have a great year and still end up with a lot of losses.
Notice that only four of the 26 pitchers on this list ever led their league in losses, despite the large number of combined seasons represented here.
Therefore, although it is true that you should generally ignore a pitcher’s win totals when evaluating his actual value in any one season, the converse is not so true.
A pitcher’s loss totals are generally representative of what you would expect, given other statistical measures of performance.
By that measure, then, one can argue that Pedro Martinez was one of the top ten, if not among the top five, starting pitchers of all-time.
2011 Hall of Fame Vote: The Good, the Bad, and the Utterly Perplexing
Image via Wikipedia
The results are in, and there weren’t any major surprises. Bert (we suddenly loved you all along) Blyleven (79.7%), and Robbie (sorry we messed up last year) Alomar (90%), were the only two players on this year’s ballot elected into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
Looking over the percentage of votes each player received from the BBWAA revealed interesting results, some unexpected, some utterly perplexing.
THE GOOD:
1) Roberto Alomar will now be enshrined in The Hall. Alomar was a stunning offensive player, and although his defense was a bit overrated (see my last bl0g-post), he certainly belongs in The Hall. Some bloggers / writers have Alomar rated as among the top three 2nd basemen of all-time. I think that overstates his legacy a bit much. I am comfortable rating Alomar in the top 5-10 second basemen ever.
2) Bert Blyleven, the Bearded Dutchman, joins Alomar. Personally, I don’t think I would have voted for Blyleven. I know that some people will think it’s outrageous to hold this opinion, but if he was such an obvious HOF candidate, then why has he been passed over 13 previous times? Some people point to his 3,701 career strikeouts (5th all-time) as one bit of evidence that he should be enshrined. But he averaged 6.7 K’s / 9 innings in his career, good, but not great.
Voting for Blyleven isn’t voting for greatness; it voting for remarkable durability (he averaged 245 innings pitched per season in his career.)
So why file his election under THE GOOD?
First, because I have nothing against Blyleven personally, and there’s no reason to rain on his parade. Obviously, this vote means a lot to Blyleven and his supporters.
Second, because now that his enshrinement is a done deal, we can start to focus a little more seriously on some of the other players who also deserve enshrinement. Which brings us to…
3) Barry Larkin: Larkin received a promising 62% of votes cast, an improvement over the 51% he received last year, his first on the ballot. Larkin is one of the ten best shortstops of all-time, and the best N.L. shortstop of his era. It will be interesting to see if his relatively strong showing this year represents his high-water mark, or if it is a stepping-stone to future Hall induction.
Next year’s relatively weak class of first-time HOF candidates, however, could work in his favor. Let’s hope it does.
THE BAD:
1) Jeff Bagwell, an obvious Hall of Famer if there ever was one (unless you really weren’t paying attention), received a lower percentage of votes (41.7%) than I thought he would, and I had low expectations for him going into this election. His (hopefully temporary) rejection does not, however, come as a surprise because, and there is no way to sugarcoat this, many of the BBWAA voters are cowards.
What are they afraid of? They are afraid to induct a player that they know, statistically speaking, should be a first-ballot HOF’er because they believe he just MIGHT have used steroids.
Even though Bagwell’s name has never appeared on any list of users, and even though no former teammates of his have ever accused him of being a user, somehow an internet driven whiff of scandal has created a false cloud of controversy over his name and reputation.
And the voters are deathly, and unreasonably, afraid that if they were to induct Bagwell into The Hall, and then it was later revealed that he was, after all, a steroid user, then they would look foolish.
But they are wrong. If (as unlikely as it is) that Bagwell was elected and then, at some later date, it turns out he was a user, then the shame of his tainted induction would be on him, not on the voters.
In other words, placing the onus of responsibility on a particular player to prove that he didn’t use steroids is unreasonable and unjust. Guilty until proven innocent is the fallback position favored by cowards in an irrationally fearful society, and history is seldom kind to those who accuse others of some perceived crime, who then later turn out to have been innocent.
Prediction: Bagwell is eventually elected into The Hall, but it could take a while.
2) Larry Walker: Much of what I have just written about Bagwell can be applied to the case of Larry Walker as well. And, as an added obstacle to The Hall, Walker is penalized for having played in the best hitter’s park ever constructed in one of the better era for hitter’s in modern history.
Only one in five voters (20%) believe Walker had a HOF career.
Setting aside the steroid issue, on which you have probably already formed an opinion, yes, Walker benefited from playing at Coor’s Field. But I can’t think of any other player in baseball history who was penalized for having similar good fortune. For example, if you had put Jim Rice in the Astrodome for his entire career, he certainly would not have ended up in The Hall. Conversely, if you had put Jimmy Wynn in Fenway Park for his career, he would have put up HOF numbers.
As another example, Mel Ott hit 323 (63%) of his 511 career home runs at the Polo Grounds, the highest total any player ever hit in their home ballpark.
Walker was already an outstanding player before he signed with the Rockies. He was a great defensive player, an excellent base-runner, and could hit for power and average.
Yet his relatively poor showing in this year’s Hall of Fame vote does not portend, I fear, an eventual Hall induction. More likely, he will continue to languish in the Dale Murphy/ Ted Simmons limbo, never taken quite seriously enough by the BBWAA that the full weight of his career will ever receive anything other than token appreciation.
3) Tim Raines: Raines was named on 37% of the ballots cast. It is clear that Raine’s cocaine use, as well as the Conventional Wisdom that other lead-off hitters such as Rickey Henderson and Lou Brock outshone him, will probably keep Raines out of the Hall. I can’t think of any other reason why someone would not vote for him. The Conventional Wisdom in this case is, as it often proves to be, just plain wrong.
The Utterly Perplexing:
1) Edgar Martinez: (33% support) – What to do with Edgar Martinez, one of the greatest pure hitters in baseball history? The crux of the issue is, there is no consensus on what constitutes a legitimate baseball player. And don’t wait for the Baseball Hall of Fame to clarify the issue of what to do with the virtual life-time DH anymore than they will the issue of players linked to steroids.
The Hall of Fame, an institution that should be jealously guarding its reputation, has been cryptically, irresponsibly silent on the salient issues of the day regarding baseball, and the players it accepts for enshrinement.
2) Lee Smith: Smith, 3rd on the all-time Saves list, was snubbed, appearing on 45% of the ballots cast. What is a closer to do? Either Saves, as a statistic, impress you, or they do not.
Smith emerged from the single-inning “clean” Save era, where 9th inning specialists usually entered the game with no one on base, and three outs to work with. Sounds simple enough, and Smith did his job well. But is this task, however well-performed, impressive enough to merit HOF recognition?
I believe, despite the large number of closers who compiled over 300 saves, that the voters will ultimately reward only a small handful of these specialists. Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman come to mind as probable future inductees. But I don’t believe that the BBWAA membership is all that impressed by raw Save totals. Nor do I believe that they should be.
3) Fred McGriff: (18% support) – Why the lack of love for the Crime Dog? If I told you that a player who hit just under 500 home runs, registered eight 100+ RBI seasons, who had the same OPS+ as Al Kaline, and who has never been linked to steroids, appeared to be on the road to nowhere regarding Hall of Fame enshrinement, what would you think? Frankly, I don’t know what to think, either.
4) Marquis Grissom received four votes. Tino Martinez received six votes. B.J. Surhoff nailed down two, and Brett Boone and Charles Johnson received HOF support from one voter each. How is it that each of these decent but unspectacular players received votes for The Hall, yet so many writers do not see Bagwell, Raines, Larkin or Walker as Hall material? It’s a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie, without the inevitable “now it all makes sense” ending.
So what are your thoughts on today’s BBWAA Hall of Fame voting results? I’d like to know.
The complete results from the BBWAA:
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