Month: February 2011

The following guest post was written by Brendan Bingham

With Felix Hernandez having won the AL Cy Young Award and Bert Blyleven’s recent election to the Hall of Fame, it seems that wins and losses have fallen out of favor as the primary measures of a pitcher’s success.  However, we remain a long way from ignoring these stats altogether.

Vulture is a term applied to a relief pitcher who collects victories, often not so much through his own pitching prowess, but opportunistically, thanks to the timely late-inning hitting of teammates.  There is an air of deprecation in the use of this term.  In one scenario, the relief pitcher enters the game with his team losing.  This vulture is in a relatively invulnerable position.  If he pitches poorly, perhaps his ERA suffers, but he cannot be charged with the loss.  But if his team scores enough runs to take the lead, he stands to be credited with the win, sometimes after only a short and unspectacular time on the mound.  In a second – perhaps more sinister – scenario, the relief pitcher enters the game with the lead, but fails to hold it.  At least this vulture is at risk of taking the loss.  However, with his team’s rallying to retake the lead, he “earns” the victory, an unsavory accomplishment worthy of its being named for the large carrion-eating bird.

How common are vulture wins?

With the expansion and increasing specialization of relief pitching, we’re hearing more and more about vultures.  Modern day 25-player rosters are typically composed of no less than 11 pitchers, more often 12, sometimes 13.  In contrast, having 10 pitchers on the roster was the norm in the 60s and 70s.  The 4-man starting rotation has become a thing of the past.  Starters are pitching fewer innings and very few complete games.  Relief pitching has been broken down into three or four distinct sub-disciplines, and relievers as a group are pitching more innings.

The table below shows the number of wins collected by starters and relievers since 2000.  Please note that “% Starter Wins” is not a traditional winning percentage.  For the purpose of this analysis, losses and losing pitchers are ignored.  For each game played, we’re simply asking – was the winning pitcher a starter or a reliever

These percentages are remarkable in their lack of variation.  With only minor year-to-year changes, the win in about 70% of MLB games in the past decade was credited to the winning team’s starting pitcher.

It is reasonable to expect that the frequency of vulture wins has increased over time, given the transformation that has taken place in the bullpen, or at least that was my expectation going into this analysis.  However, a quick survey of every tenth year from 1920 to 1990 shows evidence of change, but not where I had expected it.  Indeed, wins by relief pitchers were once less common, but you have to go back to 1950 to see a noteworthy departure from the 70/30 split of recent years.  Before looking at these numbers, I had expected the percentage of wins by starters to have been higher in 1960, if not also in 1970.  Bear in mind that I am not including all years from these earlier decades; rather I am trusting that one year in ten is representative of the decade, always a dangerous assumption.

Traditionally, pitchers were expected to finish what they started.  Relief pitchers were often called upon only when the game was out of reach.  That’s an admittedly simple-minded view of relief pitching, but perhaps close enough to accurate for the 20s, 30s and 40s.  While it is only in the past two decades that our recognition of relievers’ contributions has included election to Cooperstown, it was during the 1950s that some well-known relievers emerged.  Two examples are Clem Lebine, who had double-digit relief wins for the ’55 and ’56 Brooklyn Dodgers, and Elroy Face, who performed the same feat for the ’59 and ’60 Pirates.

How important are vulture wins to team success?

We need look no further than the past season to see that vulture victories are sometimes key to team success, but more often not.

In the NL, Cincinnati’s league-leading relief wins were important to their making the post-season.  Based on starting pitcher wins, St Louis would have won the Central division.  The Giants also beat out the Padres due in part to their posting more relief victories.  Meanwhile, the Phillies, who finished the season with the most total wins, had 27 wins by relief pitchers, a good but not outstanding total.  Many teams, including the division-trailing Washington Nationals, posted vulture win totals similar to Philadelphia’s.

In the AL, the Texas Rangers benefited from posting a league-leading 32 relief wins.  They would have finished third in their division based on starter wins alone.  However, the other three post-season teams put up unspectacular numbers of vulture wins.  Moreover, the Baltimore Orioles, with the second-worst record in the league, had more relief wins than the division-leading Tampa Bay Rays or the wildcard Yankees.

In general, the number of wins by starters is a better predictor of team success than wins by relief pitcher.  Poor teams and good teams often have similar numbers of relief pitcher wins.

Bottom Line

Although modern-day relief pitching has become very specialized, its primary purpose is to preserve starting pitchers’ wins, not to generate wins from the bullpen.  Closers are the most highly respected (and best paid) relievers, and the key stat by which they are judged is saves, not wins.  Wins from the bullpen are great, but they’re unpredictable, and when a team generates lots of them, the accomplishment speaks more to the team’s clutch hitting than its pitching.  If you had to summarize the Texas Rangers’ pennant-winning season with one phrase, I suspect you would more likely choose “timely late-inning hitting” than “dominant relief pitching.”

Post Script

It was my interest in the distribution of starter and relief pitcher wins that prompted my prediction about Denny McLain (see Graham’s Jan 27^th post).  On the reasoning that 1) the percentage of wins by starters doesn’t change much between eras and 2) in any era, there is only one winning pitcher per ballgame, I asserted that McLain’s 30-win season should survive his being transported to another era, provided he winds up on a winning team and is given the opportunity to pitch as much as he did in 1968.  Sound reasoning, or so I thought, but stat converter says otherwise.  1968 remains a special year for pitchers, particularly Denny McLain.

This guest post was written by Brendan Bingham. Email him at Brendan@calibertherapeutics.com

Snow is snowing and the wind is blowing here in my Pittsburgh hometown. But despite how awful the weather may get, no one cares. We’re all about the Steelers, 24/7. With only a handful of days left until the Super Bowl, no Steelers’ story has gone uncovered.

The most over-analyzed player is quarterback Ben Roethlisberger: Is he really remorseful for his long history of inappropriate off-field behavior? While Big Ben has won over some fans, he’s still got a long way to go. A Hollywood Reporter poll found that Ben is three times as unpopular as any Super Bowl player.

For the most part, Steelers fans are more concerned about how Roethlisberger stacks up against his Green Bay opposite, Aaron Rodgers.

Having heard the Roethlisberger versus Rodgers debate non-stop for nearly two weeks, I’ve added another dimension to the argument. Here’s my version of the big question—Who would you rather have in the biggest game of the year: Rodgers, Roethlisberger or old-timer Bobby Layne?

As every Steelers, Detroit Lions and University of Texas football fan knows Layne, whose college and professional career spanned 18 years from 1944 to 1962 is, a four-time All-Southwest Conference pick, a six-time Pro Bowler, six time All-Pro selection who was chosen for the NFL’s 1950s All Decade team and elected into the Hall of Fame in 1967. In 1995, Sports Illustrated named Layne the “toughest quarterback who ever lived” and in 1999, the Sporting News placed him #52 on its list of the 100 greatest players ever.

Layne remains a Pittsburgh legend not only for his heroic efforts to lift the Steelers out of the doldrums after his abrupt and controversial trade from the Lions but also for his late night, non-stop partying. Compared to Layne, some consider Roethlisberger an altar boy.

His propensity for heavy drinking aside, Layne’s achievements are beyond question. On the University of Texas campus, undergraduates and alums still talk about the 1947 Cotton Bowl game against Missouri where Layne scored every point in the Longhorns’ 40-27 win. For the day, Layne had three running touchdowns, two passing, one receiving and kicked four extra points. (See You Tube video here).

In 1948 when #5 Texas‘ beat #6 Alabama 27-7 in the Sugar Bowl, Layne got the Longhorns off to a quick start with a 99-yard first quarter touchdown strike.

For all of Layne’s football skills, he could just as easily have been an outstanding major league pitcher. During Layne’s three seasons as a Longhorns’ starter, he posted a 39-7 record including two no hitters.

Layne had bids from the New York Giants, the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals to join their staffs. But in the late 1940s, the road to the bigs was long and arduous. Rookies started out in Class D where teams were located in small towns with substandard facilities. From there, players progressed slowly—next stop, Class C, then B, A, AA, AAA and finally for the best of them, the major leagues. By choosing football, Layne went straight to the Chicago Bears.

Without question, Layne would have contributed to those 1950s Giants, Red Sox and Cardinals teams. A quick look at their pitching shows little depth.

While we can only speculate about how effective Layne would have been on a major league mound, it’s safe to say that his competitiveness and no quit attitude would have made him a valuable addition to any team. Just as he did on the football field, Layne would somehow or another figured out a way to slip a fastball past opposing batters.

Getting back to the Super Bowl, I’m willing to go out on a limb. Please take into account that I’ve been barraged for two weeks on talk radio and local television about the Steelers’ greatness.

Nevertheless, I predict that the Steelers will score more points than most people think (many of them on defense) and the Packers will score fewer.

Final score: Steelers 31-Green Bay 17

The only thing missing here is Billy Dee Williams.

• For anyone who hasn’t seen it, Rob Neyer left ESPN.com on Monday, joined SB Nation on Tuesday, and gave a kickass interview here on Wednesday. Things really do move quickly on the Internet.
• It’s my turn today on the “Best of the Worst” series Bill Miller and I have been doing for his blog, The On Deck Circle. This week, I wrote about Walter Johnson, perhaps the greatest example ever in baseball history of a superb player with a moribund franchise.
• Here is a recap of the brief and colorful career of Detroit Tigers pitcher Boots Poffenberger. That name alone merits a post. If anyone would like to send me an unusual name of an obscure player, I’ll do an “Any player/Any era” for the one I like best.
• The Hardball Times notes why Jim Leyland, Mike Scioscia, and Ozzie Guillen could eventually be in Cooperstown as managers: Each won World Series without any future Hall of Famers on their postseason rosters. This has happened three other times in baseball history, 1981 and 1988 with the Dodgers and 1984 with the Tigers and the managers for those clubs, Tommy Lasorda and Sparky Anderson are each enshrined. My thoughts? Leyland: Yes. Scioscia: Probably, if he keeps doing what he’s doing for another decade. Guillen: No.
• Verdun2 has done it again with a fine profile of late sportswriter Wendell Smith who pushed for the integration of baseball and was the first black member of the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1948. This looks to be the first in a series of articles for February. Verdun2 ended his post by saying it would “begin a celebration of black history month in the US with a look at a black American writer. I intend to make a few more looks at the Negro Leagues and other aspects of black baseball off and on during the month. Hope you will enjoy them.” I’m sure we will.

What he did: Many fans probably know the story of Michael Jordan’s first retirement from the NBA, how he quit basketball in October 1993 and resurfaced the following spring as a 31-year-old minor league baseball player. Jordan spent one season with the Double-A affiliate for the Chicago White Sox, the Birmingham Barons, managing 30 stolen bases, a .202 batting average, and a .556 OPS. He looked so out of place Sports Illustrated put out a cover that screamed, Bag It, Michael! and while Jordan quit talking to SI thereafter, he abandoned baseball and returned to the NBA in early 1995.

Successful transitions from basketball to baseball are rare for professional athletes with success stories like Dick Groat, George Crowe, and former Harlem Globetrotters Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and Ferguson Jenkins few and far between. In Jordan’s case, there was simply no hope of a light-hitting outfielder debuting in the majors on the wrong side of 30, not now, not in any generation of baseball since 1920 when the livening of the ball shifted the balance of power in the game from pitchers to hitters. But what if Jordan played before all this?

Era he might have thrived in: In 1906, the Hitless Wonder Chicago White Sox won 93 games and a World Series title despite hitting .230 as a team, scoring just 570 runs, and having two outfielders with OPS ratings under .600. The thought here is that Jordan would be an upgrade on either man and offer a perfect style of play for these White Sox, assuming of course we suspend disbelief about him being able to play in the majors as a black man prior to 1947 and Jackie Robinson.

Why: There’s a scene in Major League where manager Lou Brown barks at wannabe power hitter and leadoff man Willie Mays Hayes, “With your speed, you should be hitting them on the ground and legging them out.” The same goes for Jordan, who didn’t benefit facing the modern, tightly-wound ball. Playing in the Deadball Era with a softer ball that rolled slower, I can only wonder how many more hits Jordan would have had. His average still might not have been much higher than .202 but that could have been enough for these White Sox, whose best batter hit just .279. Imagine if Jordan learned to bunt proficiently as well.

Jordan’s speed would endear him on a team that stole 216 bases and boasted five players with at least 20 steals. It could help Jordan in the field, too. Deadball Era outfielders played much shallower, which is why there are a lot of these men near the top of the outfield assists leader board almost a century later. With Jordan’s legs, he could play as close to the infield as he liked and cover enough ground to compensate, and he wouldn’t need much arm strength to make a difference.

It goes without saying that Jordan may have benefited, too from playing baseball in an age before basketball could have caused him to abandon his efforts. I think success in life is partly about persisting in the face of adversity, blinding ourselves to would-be detractors, and ignoring distractions. That was a lot easier in the days before Sports Illustrated and seven-figure basketball contracts. Any of us would struggle in Jordan’s shoes, really. That he even lasted a season in 1994 Double-A ball is, at least to some degree, a feat in itself.

Any player/Any era is a Thursday feature here that looks at how a player might have done in an era besides his own.

Others in this series: Albert Pujols, Bad News Rockies, Barry Bonds, Bob Caruthers, Bob Feller, Bob Watson, Denny McLain, Dom DiMaggio, Frank Howard, Fritz Maisel, George Case, Harmon Killebrew, Harry Walker, Home Run Baker, Ichiro Suzuki, Jack Clark, Jackie Robinson, Jimmy Wynn, Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Frederick, Josh Hamilton, Ken Griffey Jr., Lefty O’Doul, Nate Colbert, Paul Derringer, Pete Rose, Rickey Henderson, Roberto Clemente, Sam Thompson, Sandy Koufax, Shoeless Joe Jackson, Stan Musial, The Meusel Brothers, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays

Editor’s note: Rory Paap of PaapFly.com, who’s written a couple guest posts here in recent months has agreed to contribute an article every other week to this site. Rory’s on his way up as a writer and is light years ahead of me in terms of statistical analysis. I’m honored to have him here.

Over on my personal corner of the Web, I recently wrote about Matt Cain and his ability to tame the fly ball and defended that idea today, after it stirred some controversy.  I wrote that Cain’s skill did not make him overrated, but unique. While doing my best to unearth what exactly Cain is so good at, I brought in Koufax. At a glance, they don’t seem so similar at all, but upon further observation some similarities emerge: Koufax also excelled at turning balls hit in the air into outs. Unfortunately, because it is predominantly in this area that Cain excels (and it does little or nothing to light up the stat sheet otherwise), many choose to poke holes in it. But with Koufax, he excelled in each of rendering fly balls innocuous and striking out hitters in flurries; thus, no one bothers to question the former.

With Steelers mania in my hometown of Pittsburgh at full throttle during this week leading up to the Super Bowl, I decided to add a little balance to my life by finally sitting down to watch the 20-DVD Major League World Series set issued last year by Major League Baseball.

I worked my way up to the 1957 World Series that pitted the New York Yankees against the Milwaukee Braves. Watching the clips from Game 3, I was surprised to see Harry “Suitcase” Simpson at first base for the Yankees.

Even though I’ve never been a Yankee fan, my Bronx-raised father avidly rooted for the Bombers. And in 1957, my family lived in Puerto Rico where the Armed Forces Radio game of the week always featured, or so it seemed, the Yankees. So I was somewhat surprised that I had no clear recollection of Simpson’s brief Yankee days which totaled 99 games in parts of 1957 and 1958.

Still, as I watched Simpson stroke a first inning RBI single, I was happy to be reminded of him. “Suitcase,” I thought, is a great nickname. One of my minor peeves about modern baseball is the virtual disappearance of creative nicknames. “A-Rod,” “K-Rod,” “I-Rod,” and “Gorzo” aren’t nicknames in the true sense of the word.

I grew up with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Bob Prince who had a way with nicknames: Vernon “Deacon” Law, Don “The Tiger” Hoak, Bill “The Quail” Virdon, Gene “The Stick” Michael, and Dave “The Cobra” Parker all have solid baseball rings to them.

Prince and his broadcasting partner Jim Woods also had great monikers. They were, respectively, “The Gunner” and “The Possum”

Going back further in baseball history, nicknames were even more colorful: “Noodles” Hahn, “Hippo” Vaughn, “Piano Legs” Hickman and “Three-Finger” Brown for example.

Digging deeper, the story I found behind Simpson’s nickname floored me. If I asked 100 of my contemporaries to explain how Simpson became known as “Suitcase,” I’m confident that they would all answer that it was a reference to his numerous trades that caused him to constantly be packing his suitcase. After all, Simpson was traded eight times during the four years from 1955 to 1959.

But according to the Cleveland Indians official 1952 sketch book, Simpson got his nickname from sportswriters who likened him to the Toonerville Trolley character named Suitcase Simpson. The date of this revelation, 1952, was years before Simpson’s multiple trades. And the sketch book added the mostly useless information that Simpson’s childhood nickname was “Goody” which came from his willingness to help out his neighbors in his childhood hometown of Dalton, Georgia.

A few other forgotten facts about Simpson surfaced during my research. “Suitcase” was a better than average player during his short eight year career.  For the Kansas City Athletics during his All Star 1956 season, Simpson hit 293 with 21 home runs and 105 RBIs. That year, Simpson led the league in triples with eleven. He won the triples title again in 1957 with 9. In 1955 with the Athletics and the Cleveland Indians, Simpson hit .300

As the old saying goes, you learn something new every day– but rarely about “Suitcase” Simpson.

Everyone around the baseball blogosphere has been writing thank you posts for Rob Neyer, who announced this week he was leaving ESPN.com and joining SB Nation, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t add something as well. But before I thank Neyer, I should thank Joe Posnanski. Or ESPN.com. Or Twitter.

In September, Posnanski granted me an interview that went for one of the greatest hours of my writing life. I’d have been okay if the Sports Illustrated writer, blogger, and busy family man had offered five halfhearted minutes. Posnanski was one of the best subjects I’ve ever encountered. And I say this as someone who’s interviewed Rollie Fingers (who was dull), Jose Canseco (who subtly asked me if I’d read Vindicated— I hadn’t), and Ozzie Smith (who was the commencement speaker at my college my sophomore year and was wonderful.) If I ever make it as a baseball writer, I hope I’m half as humble as Posnanski.

Within hours of me posting the interview, it was up on Baseball Think Factory, and they referred a heavy amount of traffic by their standards (500 unique visitors– I’m happy to get 100-200 from them.) A few days later, a visitor commented that he’d seen my article up on Neyer’s ESPN blog, the Sweet Spot. That was the day my blog got almost 2,000 unique visitors, which was the record here until Neyer linked again in December and gave me so much traffic the server crashed. It remains my high water mark as a blogger, and friends give me high fives when I tell them about the server crash. I hear it’s called being aneyerated.

One other cool thing happened after Neyer linked to me: I got an email saying he was following me on Twitter. I thought it was a joke at first, and then after checking his page, seeing it was a Verified Account and that he had 300 people he was following and more than 15,000 followers, it just seemed surreal. Every other big name sportswriter has ignored me on Twitter. Even Posnanski. I keep worrying that Neyer will get sick of my random Sacramento Kings Tweets (a man has to rep his hometown) and attempts at humor, or that I’ll sneeze and he’ll unfollow me, but it hasn’t happened yet. He’s even linked to me a couple more times because of Twitter.

I wish Neyer well in his new endeavor and applaud him for trying something new. After reading his inaugural SB Nation post today, I Tweeted that Neyer had made the boldest move in sports journalism so far this year. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope to eventually write for ESPN or SI or most any other major publication that would have me. But maybe Neyer has the right idea, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out better for it, with the media landscape continuing to change. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s set a great example for an up-and-comer like me. I just hope he does a link post in his new space.