ERA+: Looking Behind The Stat

ERA+ is a great analytical tool. It permits comparisons of ERAs across different eras and different run environments by adjusting for general league scoring levels and park factors. Its advantages over simple ERA are obvious. It is the single pitching statistic most often regarded as the definitive tool for analyzing pitching careers. Some stat geeks have become so enamored of ERA+ and its derivatives that they deny certain baseball truisms that might call into question the validity of judging pitchers primarily on the basis of ERA+. They tend to deny the concept of clutch pitching, despite the fact that certain pitchers evince a tendency to pitch measurably better or worse in high leverage situations (see this post for a discussion of Leveraged ERA+, or LevERA+, which weights runs allowed (and runs prevented) based on the impact on win expectancy). They also tend to discount the theory that most pitchers "pitch to the score" by changing their pitching approach depending on the game situation.

A host of statistics confirm that most pitchers do indeed pitch to the score. Pitchers as a group adhere to the theory that when granted a big lead it is better to put the ball over the plate and make the opposition hit their way back into the game rather than risking a rally fueled by putting runners on base via bases on balls. Virtually all successful pitchers walk fewer batters when working with a significant lead. Virtually all pitchers, successful or not, surrender more runs when working with tremendous run support from their teammates. Baseball-Reference.com recently added pitching splits based on team run support, showing a pitcher's performance in games in which they received between 0 and 2 runs of support, 3 to 5 runs of support and 6 or more runs of support. The vast majority of pitchers will surrender more runs on average when working with 6 or more runs than they do when working with 5 or fewer runs. The run-support splits further confirm that variations in ERA in high run-support scenarios have little or no impact on a pitcher's winning percentage in these scenarios, with good pitchers winning between 90% and 95% of these decisions regardless of how much their ERAs increase with great run support.

Great Pennant Race Performances of the '20s and '30s

I've discussed the great pennant race performances of pitchers over the last 50 years. It's time to look at some of the legendary pennant race performances from long ago. It helps to explain why certain pitchers with conspicuously thin career qualifications for the Hall were nonetheless inducted into the Hall of Fame. Some names will be very familiar, others less so. But each of these pitchers put together performances in the heat of pennant races that lifted their teams to glory.

A Recipe For Catfish

Catfish Hunter is frequently cited by the stat geeks as a prime example of an unworthy HOF inductee. He doesn't have a plaque at the Baseball Think Factory's Hall of Merit, where Dave Stieb, Bret Saberhagen and Wes Ferrell are enshrinees. Hunter's ERA+ appears to be the problem the HOM balloters with Hunter. It can't be the 224 career wins, since Stieb, Saberhagen and Ferrell each have far less. I've offered my explanation for Hunter's induction into the HOF, an induction I believe was more than worthy. I thought I'd look at Catfish's Team Relative performance.

During his ten-year prime from '67 to '76 Catfish outperformed his team by 11.3%. That's not a very good figure for a Hall of Famer, and I wasn't particularly surprised by it. What I was surprised by was Hunter's Team Relative index for his five-year prime of '71 to '75, which covers the A's World Series years and his first season with the Yankees. I apparently had assimilated the argument of the stat geeks that Hunter's record during that period was purely a function of pitching for a great team and getting huge run support. Not true, as it turns out. Hunter's Team Relative index for that five-year period is 28%. If you remove the '75 season, Catfish outperformed his A's teams by 29.3%. And if you limit the analysis to just the three World Series championship years with the A's, Catfish's Team Relative index was 34.6%.

To be clear, I'm not arguing that Catfish didn't benefit from great run support. He did. And I'm not arguing that Catfish would've had five consecutive 20-win seasons if he'd played for Blyleven's Twins teams in the '70s. What I am arguing, however, is that the claim that Hunter's great record during this period was just a function of great run support from a great team is demonstrably untrue. Take away the great run support and Hunter was still outperforming his team by 28% over a five-year period and a robust 34.6% during the A's championship years. Those are Hall of Famer-type numbers, albeit for a relatively brief period. It is simply a myth to argue that any pitcher with a Team Relative index like Hunter's was merely a product of great run support and great teams.

Let's look at another pitcher generally dismissed by the stat geeks as a mere product of great run support: Jack Morris. Morris's Team Relative index during his peak nine-year period of '79- '87 was 15.8%, not particularly good by HOF standards but right there with Bunning's 16% index for his 11-year peak. That means if Morris had played for an average hitting team with a .500 record he still would have posted a .579 winning percentage over those nine years. I think it's fair to conclude therefore that Morris's actual winning percentage of .615 during his peak was perhaps 30% attributable to his run support; the bulk of the credit for that outstanding winning percentage, approximately 70%,  has to go Morris. If I'm not mistaken, Morris detractors would look at his 105 ERA+ and conclude that Morris's .577 career winning percentage was attributable 95% to his superior run support. This is plainly not the case. The Team Relative analysis demonstrates that Morris was able to perform far above the standard a career ERA+ of 105 would typically indicate.

It's no mystery why Catfish is in the Hall. He's in for the same reason Waite Hoyt, Jesse Haines, Lefty Gomez, and Red Ruffing are in the Hall despite falling well short of 300 wins, and for the reason Curt Schilling will make the Hall. They excelled on the big stage and made a huge impact for great teams. They put their imprint on legendary pennant races and World Series contests. That counts for a lot in HOF balloting, and it should.

The Celebrated Mr. K

His blazing five-year stretch from '62-'66 has become the standard by which all other great pitchers are measured. The Gold Standard. The definition of pitching dominance. Anyone who considers a new mode of analyzing pitching greatness has to insert his five peak seasons into the formulas and see what comes out. If you plug into your formulas his stats from these five seasons, during which he won five straight ERA titles, three pitching triple crowns and three 25+ win seasons in four years, and a historic result doesn't come out the other end, then maybe you need to double check your methods and formulas.

From '62 to '66 Sandy Koufax outperformed his team by 41%. If you exclude the '62 season, where Koufax's injury and the Dodger's decision to rush him back into the rotation in late September significantly skew the numbers, then Koufax outperformed his team by 49.5% from '63 to '66*. That's Randy Johnson territory. A 50% Team Relative performance over a period of years could be known as the Sandy-Randy Standard.

Lost In Translation

Not surprisingly, an analysis of Bert's prime years of '70 to '79 demonstrates that despite his superlative ERAs he didn't significantly improve his team when he was on the mound. Yes, Bert didn't get good run support from his teams, who scored .35 runs/game fewer for Bert than they did for other starting pitchers. It is also true that in measuring Bert's performance against his teams' Bert was competing against some pretty good pitchers. For the entire decade, Bert pitched on staffs that were slightly above average even without Bert's contribution, and the staffs on his '70, '72, '77 and '79 teams were among the very best in their leagues. But the Team Relative analysis controls for these factors, of course.

Even after increasing Bert's run support to team average, and adjusting his team's W-L record downward to reflect what it would have been with an average pitching staff, Bert still only outperformed his team's W-L record by 10.2%. That's down in Drysdale territory. As I've previously noted, Bert hugely underperformed his Pythagorean projection during those ten years, compiling a .536 winning percentage as compared to a .599 PythPro. If Bert had been able to perform to his PythPro he wouldn't be such a hot topic today because he would have been inducted into the Hall years ago.

Big Unit, Indeed

It's an amazing sight when you're watching great athletes compete at the highest levels in their sport and one competitor is so great that the opposition is just overmatched. I mean dominated; not just beat, not just bested, but dominated, almost completely helpless. In the realm of baseball, the greatest pitchers, at their best, will do this. Major league hitters, the best in the world, men with preternatural reflexes and freakish hand-eye coordination, are left to wave futilely at pitches or are so flummoxed they can't even swing.

I remember watching Clemens pitch against the Yanks in '97 and wondering how in the hell anyone ever hit the guy. I remember watching Pedro against the Yanks in September '99, the game he struck out 17, and feeling sorry for Yankee batters. Jorge Posada couldn't even get the bat off his shoulder. He had no idea what was coming - 96 mph fastball, or slider, or change-up or curveball. Yankee after Yankee left the plate after striking out shaking their head on the way back to the dugout, no doubt feeling the way Mickey Mantle felt after facing Koufax for the first time in the '63 World Series, when he said to the umpire as he was turning to leave the plate after striking out, "now how in the hell am I supposed to hit that shit."

But for sheer dominance, the ability to induce not only helplessness in big league batters but terror, there has perhaps never been anyone like Randy Johnson. It was sometimes like watching little league baseball, where the big kid is on the mound, the one that seemed to mature about two years ahead of the rest of the kids, and the ball is blowing by the batter before they can even think about swinging. One kid gets smoked and the next batter approaches the batters box looking like they're going to the gallows. They have no chance. When he was at his best, that was Randy Johnson on the mound.  Too big, too nasty, too fast. And that slider - Christ, you pitied lefthanded hitters who had to face Randy Johnson.

More Team Relative Analyses: Lefty Grove

Lefty Grove weighs in at 36%. I didn't realize what tremendous run support Grove got from the Athletics in the early 30's.

It may be a shade behind Seaver and Maddux, but it doesn't change my opinion that Lefty was The Man among post-1920 pitchers. What it does do is make me appreciate how great Seaver and Maddux were. Man, that 35%+  improvement over team performance is one upscale neighborhood.

Reappraisals of Palmer, Bunning and Drysdale

The analyses of pitcher performance relative to his team have yielded some interesting results.

As I described in the "The Theory of Relativity" post, it is possible to compare a pitcher's W-L record and winning percentage to his team's and adjust for factors that distort the comparison. These adjustments involve adjusting the pitcher's run support to equalize it with the run support the team provided to the other pitchers on the team and normalizing the ERAs and runs allowed by the rest of the staff to league average. These two adjustments assure that a pitcher won't benefit or suffer by virtue of run support that deviated from team average, or by virtue of the fact that the rest of the pitching staff, to whom the pitcher is effectively being compared, were either better than league average or worse than league average. A pitcher may be a great pitcher but his W-L record relative to his team's won't be very impressive if the rest of the team's pitching staff is comprised of great pitchers. In comparing Greg Maddux's W-L record to his team's it is obviously necessary to adjust for the fact that the Braves' pitching staffs were great and produced tremendous winning percentages because of the presence of guys like Glavine and Smoltz.

Here are the new results. Curt Schilling's ten-year peak from 1997 to 2006 was pretty impressive, as his excellent winning percentage and ERAs would suggest. Schilling outperformed his team by approximately 27% over that decade. Bob Gibson outperformed his team by approximately 28% over his nine-year peak of '64 to '72; not sure whether people will find that disappointing or impressive. Both these results obviously cast Ron Guidry in a very good light, because Schilling's and Gibson's team relative performance figures are right in Guidry territory. Ron is in good company.

Here are the results I found surprising. I ran the numbers on Bunning, Drysdale and Palmer. I've always thought of Bunning and Drysdale as being very similar, and I've conceived of Palmer as an American League version of Tom Seaver, although a shade behind Tom Terrific. My team relative analyses have fundamentally changed my appraisals of these pitchers.

The Theory of Relativity

I love a lot of the new pitching stats. They're great analytical tools. Take FIP, for example ("fielding independent pitching"). It's based on the proposition that what happens on a ball put in play is frequently a function of random chance and team fielding. Bill James recognized its utility and cited Wally Bunker's 1964 season as an example of a pitcher apparently benefiting from some good luck insofar as his BAbip that year was .216. It turns out that Bunker in fact had a pretty good facility for generating low BAbip's in his career, presumably because, like Maddux in his prime, he was adept at keeping the ball away from the fat part of the bat and inducing batters to hit pitches outside the hitter's sweet spots in the strike zone. But Bunker never again came close to posting the .216 BAbip he posted in '64, despite being backed by the legendary team defense of the '60s Orioles.

FIP tends to understate the effectiveness of a pitcher with a demonstrated ability to consistently generate very low BAbips. Take The Great Rivera, for example. I was skeptical of Mariano's decision in '97 to move almost exclusively to the cutter because it seemed to sharply cut into his strikeouts. "Throw the high fastball!", I would shout, longing for Mariano's incredible strikeout ratio in '96 when he K's 130 batters in 107 innings. Still, I had to admit that batters seemed almost incapable of getting good wood on the cutter, but bloops and dribblers can and do become hits, while strikeouts can't and don't. Bloops and dribblers that found holes in the defense became, in my mind, "Mariano Specials." Obviously Mariano's decision to go with the cutter has been thoroughly vindicated and my early concerns were unfounded. But Mariano never fares too well in the FIP stat, and that's misleading because Mariano has demonstrated an ability to consistently generate low BAbips (Mariano's career BAbip is .265, as compared to a major league average of .299).

As Bill James has noted regarding FIP and various other new and sophisticated measures of pitching performance, they have a tendency to throw out a lot of information in an effort to isolate and identify a pitcher's performance independent of non-pitching factors. Bill is a little unsettled by this, and so am I. As he's argued, W-L records are the antipode to FIP and similar stats, incorporating all information, including unfortunately things that have nothing to do with a pitcher's performance, like offensive support and team fielding. However, the inclination of the stat geeks to summarily dismiss W-L records is extremely misguided. It is possible to start with W-L records and make appropriate adjustments, and that's what I'm about to propose.

The Theory of Relativity, in contrast to FIP, throws out nothing but attempts to adjust for everything (or at least most things) that happens outside of the pitcher's performance. Simply put, it compares a pitcher's W-L record to his teams record in games where the pitcher was not the pitcher of record (i.e., it subtracts the pitcher's W-L record from the team's), adjusting for factors that effect the pitcher's and team's W-L records  but are largely unrelated to the pitcher's own performance. If a pitcher received run support better or worse than the run support a team generally provided its pitchers, the pitcher's W-L record is adjusted (via the Pythagorean theorem) to reflect what his W-L record would have been had he received run support equal to his team's average. It also adjusts for the performance of the rest of the team's pitching staff, because even a good pitcher who receives excellent run support will appear to fare poorly relative to his team's W-L record if the rest of the starting pitching staff is comprised of Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Tom Seaver and Randy Johnson, with Gossage, Eckersley and Rivera coming out of the bullpen.

The Guidry Decade

I've noted before the fact that Ron Guidry is the only pitcher in baseball history to lead the major leagues in wins and lead his own league in ERA and SO over a ten-year period and yet be rejected by the Hall. He averaged nearly 17 wins per season in the decade between '77 and '86 and had a 3.23 ERA (121 ERA+). When apprised of this achievement by Guidry, my fellow baseball fans have had remarkably similar reactions, initially expressing some surprise at Guidry's accomplishment but then arguing that Guidry's statistics during this period, while impressive, were pre-eminent during his ten-year peak only because this decade happened to occur at an odd interregnum in baseball, when greats like Seaver, Palmer and Carlton had just passed their prime and before the rise of Clemens, Maddux, Johnson and Martinez. They suggest that Guidry's performance really wouldn't have been that exceptional in any other era in baseball.

I must admit that I was inclined to give some credence to this argument. I assumed the win total wouldn't be that impressive when compared to all the titans who pitched during the eras of four-man rotations that prevailed in baseball until the '80s. I believed it was probably true that averaging about 17 wins a season over a decade while posting an ERA+ of 120 or greater was not all that unusual during many other eras in modern baseball history, and so I decided to check the record book. It turns out I was wrong. Averaging nearly 17 wins a season over a decade while compiling an ERA 20% better than the park-adjusted ERAs of your contemporaries has always been an achievement only the greats have attained. It turns out that this level of excellence over a decade gives a pitcher an almost automatic entree into Cooperstown. By my count, there have been 27 pitchers who accomplished this since 1920. All but four have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame or are almost certain to be inducted upon eligibility. And it further turns out that Guidry's accomplishment is becoming exceedingly rare in the age of the five-man rotation and seven inning starts.

The Sheer Improbability

My last post on pitchers who won two-thirds of their starts in a season got me to thinking again about Gator's amazing record in September division title races. I noted Lefty Grove's incredible '31 season in which he won 27 of 30 starts, a feat unmatched in baseball history. I noted that Bob Welch won a higher percentage of his starts in 1990 than any pitcher since 1954, and he won only 24 games during his best 30-start stretch.

I've noted before the sheer improbability of winning 26 of any 30 starts selected on the basis of any unbiased criterion. It's highly improbable that a pitcher would win 26 of 30 weekend starts, or starts in day games at home, or starts against teams in your own division. But to get an even clearer idea of how difficult it is to win 26 of any 30 starts, even 30 starts selected by a manifestly biased criteria, consider the following.

Start The Game, Win The Game

Trivia question: since 1920 there have been only two pitchers to win two-thirds or more of their starts in a season more than twice (minimum 30 starts). Who are they? While you think about that I'll give you some idea of how special this achievement is.

Since 1954 a pitcher has started 30 or more games in a major league season more than 3000 times. Only 30 times has a pitcher started 30 or more games and won two-thirds of his starts. That's less than 1% of the 30-start seasons since 1954.

Since 1954 only four pitchers have accomplished this feat more than once. Can you name them? Here are some hints. Sandy Koufax never did it, narrowly missing in '66. Greg Maddux never did it, either, although he came close in '95 when he won 19 of 29 starts. Whitey Ford came close in '56 and '63, but never did it. Steve Carlton never did it, although he won 27 of his 41 starts in '72.

The following all-time greats did it once: Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, and Tom Seaver. What year do you think Gibson did it? No, it wasn't '68, it was '70. Doc Gooden did it in his great '85 season. Denny McLain did it in '68 when he won 31 games.

Here are three of the four post-1954 pitchers who did it more than once: Roger Clemens did it twice, in '86 and '90. Juan Marichal did it twice, in '66 and '68. Pedro Martinez did it in '02 and would have done it '99, when he won 22 of his 29 starts. Let's give Pedro credit for that season, however, because he would have done it even if he hadn't won that 30th start.

The answer to our trivia question? Here's another hint first: both pitchers to have won 2/3s of their starts in a season more than twice are lefties. The answer? Lefty Grove did it four times, in '28, '30, '31 and '32. And Ron Guidry did it three times, in '78, '83 and '85. They are the only two pitchers since 1920 to have won 2/3s of their starts in a season more than twice.*

Leverage Adjusted ERA (Or "Not All Runs Are Equal")

It's been surprising to me, given the profusion of new pitching statistics (FIP, VORP, Component ERA), that we haven't seen an expression of ERA or ERA+ that adjusts for leverage, weighing runs allowed in high-leverage situations more and runs allowed in low-leverage situations less. The data is available in the game logs at Baseball-Reference.com, but poring through and aggregating the data would be a tedious exercise. Fangraphs.com aggregates the data on a seasonal basis in the WPA, WPA/LI and Clutch statistics, but expresses the statistics in terms of incremental games won or lost rather than adjusted ERA.

Fangraphs calculates "Clutch" by subtracting WPA/LI, which aggregates the unleveraged increase or decrease in win probabilities associated with each plate appearance against a pitcher, from WPA, which also aggregates the win probabilities but assigns a leverage factor to each event based on the game situation (score, inning, base and out situation). Generally speaking, a pitcher with a positive Clutch factor performed better in high-leverage situations relative to his overall seasonal performance, or declined in performance in low-leverage situations relative to his overall seasonal performance, or some combination of the two. A better performance in high-leverage situations means that the incremental outs the pitcher got in high-leverage situations count for more than an average out (i.e., an out obtained in a game situation with a leverage factor of 1.0). A worse performance in low-leverage situations means that the incremental runs the pitcher allowed in low-leverage situations count for less than the average run (i.e., a run scored in a game situation with a leverage factor of 1.0).

The significance of the Clutch statistic should be obvious: not all runs allowed (and runs prevented) are equal. For example, the run surrendered in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game should be counted differently than the run surrendered in the bottom of the first inning after the visiting took a six run lead in the top half of the inning. ERA and ERA+ count each run the same, notwithstanding that the two runs I used as examples are likely to have had hugely disparate impacts on the outcome of the game. The advantage of expressing the number of leverage-weighted runs allowed as a variation on ERA should also be obvious: most fans will not know whether a Clutch factor of 0.74 is merely above average, or very good, or a spectacular achievement, but fans know how to compare a 116 ERA+ to a 135 ERA+.

Did You Know...

There are eleven pitchers since 1954 who won at least 50% of their starts. Here they are:

Pretty heady company for Gator. I count nine pitchers who are already in the Hall or are mortal locks, and one pitcher - Roy Halladay - who's making a pretty strong case. And then there's Ron Guidry.

Spahn's figure includes just his starts from and after 1954. It is likely that many pitcher's from the pre-1954 era would make this list because pitchers completed a far higher percentage of their starts in those days and accordingly tended to have fewer no-decisions. Pitchers like Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove and Christy Matthewson would probably top this list.

The presence of Guidry, Martinez, Halladay, Mussina and Clemens is impressive because they pitched in an era when pitchers generally incurred no-decisions in more than 20% of their starts. Spahn, Gibson and Marichal, by comparison, had no-decisions in only 12%, 14% and 17% of their starts, respectively.

BlyLeverage

Bill James did a piece a few years ago on Bert Blyleven in which he addressed the great mystery surrounding Blyleven's conspicuously mediocre W-L record. While conceding that Bert's critics make some good points - "Blyleven did not do an A+ job of matching his effort to the runs he had to work with" - he ultimately concluded that Bert's biggest problem was his lack of run support, not his failure to pitch better in critical situations. Bill attributed roughly two-thirds of Bert's relatively poor record to lack of run support and one-third to Bert's tendency to pitch relatively poorly in tight games.

Bill's analysis was disappointing in certain respects, however. First, he didn't note that Bert's relatively poor career W-L record is almost purely a function of his performance in the first nine years of his career ('70 to '78). Had Bert compiled a W-L record commensurate with his ERAs and run support in the '70s Bert would already be in the Hall and Bill James and I wouldn't be writing about him. Second, Bill didn't discuss Bert's pertinent statistics from this period that likely explain the disparity between Bert's excellent ERAs during that period and his pedestrian W-L record. As I've previously noted, Bert had terrible record in "late and close situations" in that period, far worse than any premier pitcher of that era that I've examined, and lost a disproportionate number of close games. While it strikes me as reasonable and logical to infer that a pitcher who performs poorly in the late innings of tight games will lose a disproportionate number of close games, I thought I'd look at the records of various pitchers in one-run games and attempt to determine if there is any significant correlation between a pitcher's performance in close games and his record in one-run games.

Welcome To The Club, Bill

Bill James is coming out shortly with his Bill James Gold Mine 2010. He has a chapter in the book entitled "Comparing Starting Pitchers Across History." The chapter has been pre-released online and you can read it here.

In this chapter, Bill returns to one of his favorite subjects: Hall of Fame standards for starting pitchers. He's noted many times in the past that Hall of Fame voting in recent years appears to reflect a movement away from traditional HOF standards for starting pitchers toward an emphasis on longer careers and the accumulation of huge career statistics (high career win totals, strikeouts, etc.). If it were up to today's HOF voters would pitchers like Drysdale, Lemon, Newhouser, Bunning, Hunter, Gomez and Dean be in the Hall of Fame? It's not at all clear.

On The Subject of "Clutch"

It's a word you hear a lot about in discussions of athletics. It's a given among most sports fans and commentators that some performers are clutch and some aren't. Does anyone dispute that Michael Jordan was clutch? Does anyone dispute that John Elway was clutch? We all remember those game-winning shots and game-winning 4th quarter drives. Those were clutch, right? Ron Guidry's 26 wins in 30 September pennant race starts? That's gotta be clutch, doesn't it? And does anyone really dispute that Derek Jeter is clutch?

Well, yes, some people do dispute that Derek Jeter is clutch. And, frankly, they make some pretty good points. They correctly caution us that we should be careful about placing too much emphasis on "the flip" in '01 in the ALDS against the A's, or the walk-off home run in '01 against the D'backs in game 4 of the 2001 World Series. And they're right about relying on anecdotalism, or isolated instances of "clutch plays", or, more generally, very small sample sets. Those may have been clutch plays, but do they necessarily make Derek Jeter a clutch player? They point out that Derek Jeter in the post-season is pretty much like Derek Jeter in the regular season - almost identical batting average, OPS, and just a little bit more HR power in Oct/Nov than in April to September. Jeter's not being "clutch", they argue; he's merely being Jeter.

Reggie Jackson? Surely a .755 slugging average across five World Series establishes beyond question Reggie's clutch bona fides, right? Well, what about those 11 ALCS series, the skeptics ask. Those were big games, too, and Reggie slugged .380 and had an OBP under .300.

Bill James Ranks The Lefties

Bill James ranked the 100 greatest pitchers in baseball history in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. The book was written after the 1999 season (and ultimately published in 2001) and consequently greats like Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Mariano Rivera are not as elevated in James's rankings as they would be today (ranking 11th, 14th, 29th, 49th and unranked, respectively). Based on more recent commentary by James I think it's pretty clear that Randy Johnson, in particular, would make a huge jump in James's ranking.

Here is James's list of the top 20 southpaws of all time through 1999 (my list is here; open it up in a new window and do a side-by-side comparison of the lists):

A pretty good list, Mr. James. Bill's list is based on his Win Shares analyses, which combine career Win Shares, top three Win  Share seasons, Win Shares over the pitcher's best five consecutive seasons and career Win Shares per season. Accordingly, Bill has Sandy Koufax ranked ahead of Steve Carlton despite having barely half Carlton's career Win Shares.

Bill's top 10 would look pretty much the same today, I believe, with two exceptions: Randy Johnson would jump ahead of Koufax and probably even Spahn, taking the two spot behind Grove; and Glavine would likely crack the top 10 given his superior 2000 to 2002 seasons (55-27, 133 ERA+).

It's harder to speculate about what Bill's second 10 would look like today. Bill and his buddy Rob Neyer seem to think fairly highly of Andy Pettitte (Bill has said Andy will likely make the Hall of Fame, and Neyer has said that Andy is "qualitatively" better than Jack Morris). And Johan Santana is probably already on the cusp of Bill's second 10. However, the presence of Wilbur Cooper and Eppa Rixey on Bill's list suggests to me that he perhaps adhered too slavishly to his Wins Shares index, and I don't think either Pettitte or Santana fare too well on that basis (although Santana will certainly get there with another four or five good years).

Bill has seven pitchers ranked ahead of Guidry who I'd ranked behind: Plank, Newhouser, Waddell, Cooper, Pierce, John and Kaat. Conversely, Bill has Gomez ranked one spot behind Guidry whereas I had ranked Gomez one spot ahead of Guidry. The difference between our approaches to Plank and Waddell is easily explainable: I copped out and argued that it was simply to difficult to compare "deadball era" pitchers to post-1920 era pitchers. As for the rest, this is my take on Bill's take:

If You Had To Win One Game...

If you had to choose one pitcher to start a critical, late September game in a tight division race, who would you choose? Sabathia? Halladay? Santana? Carpenter?

I know who I would choose, and you know who I'd choose, too, because his picture is to the right. I'd choose Roy Oswalt, the Astros ace, hands down. Year after year Roy has put up Guidry-like numbers in September with the Astros in contention for a division title or wild-card spot. He's as close to infallible in a battle for the post-season as any pitcher of his generation.

Thanks to the three division, wild-card format, the Astros have been in contention for a post-season berth in every year of Oswalt's career other than 2007 and 2009. Oswalt has made 40 September starts in the seven tight races in which he's participated and his record is 28-7 with a 2.49 ERA in 267.1 innings pitched. However, two of his losses came in late September 2002 after the Astros had been eliminated (the only two starts of his 40 September starts that occurred after the Astros had either clinched or been eliminated). Take away those starts and Oswalt is 28-5 with a 2.39 ERA in 38 September starts while the Astros were still in contention.

Demythologizing Bert's Famous "Bad Luck"

The June 1976 SI article was published shortly after Bert's first appearance with the Rangers, in which Bert and Mark "The Bird" Fidrych each went 11 innings, with the Tigers prevailing, 3-2. Including Bert's last two starts with the Twins, this made the third consecutive start where Bert had pitched well and been tied going into the late innings but lost. But the SI article wasn't a product of Bert's disappointing results in tight games over the preceding few weeks. The SI article was prompted by two conspicuous aspects of Bert's record that had persisted for years. First, Bert's W-L record never seemed to match the rest of his record - the superior ERAs, the shutouts, the complete games and the strikeouts. Second, Bert had a propensity to lose a lot of close games in the late innings.

Bert's fanatical supporters always have two deceptively simple explanations at the ready for Bert's mediocre W-L records in the '70s: he received poor run support, and he was unlucky. Each of these two rationalizations offered by Bert's backers fail completely to explain Bert's relatively poor W-L records, and each are particularly absurd for having been offered by people who purport to possess some degree of sophistication in statistical analysis. Each can be dismissed quickly and definitively.

Boswell on Blyleven (or, "Bert Backers Bash Boswell")

Of all the commentary in the aftermath of the HOF voting results I was most struck by the following comments by Thomas Boswell during the course of an online chat at the Washington Post website:

"The push for Blyleven drives me crazy. I follwed his whole career. His reputation was that, more than any other top stuff pitcher, he would find a way to lose or not to win. He's just not a HOFer, in my book. He only won 20 games one time and more than 17 only twice! And he pitched in the era when top starters got 4-5 more starts a year and 20 wins was easier. BB had nine seasons with 36-to-40 starts and averaged 38 in those years. When Chuck Tanner got him in Pittsburgh the word went around that Chuck had decided, over BB's protestations, to take him out of late-and-close games because he'd never had the stomach for it. 'Take him out before he can lose.' Tanner never said it in public. But BB's winning opercentage gets better."

Bert Backers immediately denounced Boswell and charged him with trafficking in baseless rumors and innuendo. Sites like this one slammed Boswell, saying "Boswell will die with that 'word went around' crap in his head."

Well, we'll never know what was in Chuck Tanner's head, and Chuck is a classy guy and he ain't sayin'. But we do know the following: Boswell is absolutely correct regarding Blyleven's reputation, and Chuck Tanner did indeed resort to a quick hook with Blyleven beginning in the 1979 season, a strategy that succeeded wildly and was a critical part of the Bucs' march to the World Series that year.

I get the impression a lot of Bert Backers are too young to have closely followed the game back in the '70s, but Bert's reputation as a guy who lost the close ones and stumbled in the late innings of tight games is simply a fact, and also a matter of record. That was Bert's reputation; Boswell remembers it correctly. I remember it, too, and anyone else who followed the game back then would also remember it.

"But If You Put Guidry In The Hall...

...then don't you have to also induct [fill in the blank]?" I believe the name cited most frequently to fill in that blank is Dwight Gooden. It's true that the similarities between Gator and Doc are striking, so let's compare and contrast.

Any discussion of Dwight Gooden has to begin with the acknowledgment that he was the greatest pitching phenom in major league history. Only Feller comes close to Gooden's achievements before reaching the age of 21. He finished 2nd in Cy Young voting in his rookie year, shattering the record for most strikeouts per nine innings by more than two-thirds of a strikeout. He then had one of the greatest seasons ever in his sophomore year. He was Dr. K, and he was the biggest star in the game at the age of 20. There was talk that we might be witnessing the greatest pitcher in the history of the game. It didn't turn out that way.

The parallels between Guidry and Gooden are many. Both were absolute sensations in their first two full years; no pitcher has ever had a better two-year start than Guidry and Gooden. Each produced one of the greatest pitching seasons in history in his second year, winning the Cy Young Award unanimously. Neither again achieved the dominance he displayed in his second season, but each nonetheless proceeded to compile by far the highest winning percentage of any starting pitcher in his league over the next seven seasons. Each was a figurative runaway freight train down the stretch in pennant races in their first two full seasons. Each maintained a winning percentage over the first 200 decisions of his career approaching .700.

The similarities don't stop there.

Pick Five

Here are the averages of the best five seasons of various great pitchers. Each of the anonymous pitchers are already in the Hall or, if I don't miss my guess, will be. See if you can determine who they are based on their wins, losses, winning percentage and ERAs. The ERA figures in the following table are the product of their ERA+ and an assumed league average ERA of 4.00.

The identities of our hurlers are on the next page. Here are some hints: all had fewer wins than Blyleven, Kaat and John, and all were most certainly inducted (or, if not yet inducted, will be) on the strength of their amazing peak seasons rather than their accumulation of gaudy career totals. Here's one more hint: I'm not comparing Guidry to Blyleven, Morris or Sutton this time; the comparison is to many of the greatest pitchers of all time. All but one are Hall of Famers. The one non-HOFer is not yet eligible for the HOF ballot but is generally considered a very good bet to make the Hall.

The Greatest Southpaws In American League History

I suggested in this post that Ron Guidry may be the fourth greatest lefthander in the modern (i.e., post-1920) history of the American League, behind only Grove, Ford and Gomez. The more I look at it, the clearer the case becomes. The only other lefthander who might conceivably crack the top four is Randy Johnson, whose AL statistics are remarkably close to Guidry's. Let's look at the Guidry/Johnson comparison, and rank the top 10 southpaws in modern AL history.

Did You Know That Ron Guidry...

...is the only pitcher to have won a Cy Young and received CY votes in five other seasons and be rejected by the Hall?

There have been twelve pitchers to do this and other than Ron Guidry each is already in the Hall or, barring unforeseen circumstances, will be a first ballot HOFer. The twelve are Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Ferguson Jenkins, Steve Carlton, Ron Guidry, Dennis Eckersley, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine and Johan Santana.

There are three more pitchers who have received CY votes in six or more years but never won a Cy Young Award: Mike Mussina (nine years), Nolan Ryan (eight) and Jack Morris (seven). Nolan's already in, Jack's knockin' on the door, and Mussina's candidacy is certain to be stronger than Morris'.

That makes fifteen pitchers who have received Cy Young support in six different seasons, and every single one received or will receive more than 40% support for the Hall of Fame, except one. You know the name of this lonely exception. I'll remind you that he never even received 9% of the vote.

Incomprehensible. Really, just inexplicable.

P.S. Another interesting Cy Young fact: Guidry's six seasons in which he received CY votes happened within a nine year span. Randy Johnson took only eight years to accumulate six such seasons. Carlton, Glavine, Jenkins, Eckersley, Ryan and Morris each took more than nine years to accomplish the feat.

How Long Does a Hall of Fame Career Have To Be?

How many wins must a Hall of Fame pitcher have? How many innings are enough, and how many not enough?

The most frequently cited criticisms of Guidry's HOF qualifications are "not enough wins" and "he didn't do it long enough." Most agree that in Guidry's case the quality was there, it's just a matter of quantity. It's certainly true that the duration of Guidry's career, and his number of wins and innings, would place him on the low end of the HOF pitching roster, but does he really fail to meet some informal minimum for the Hall?

It seems this debate always veers to a discussion of Koufax and Dean (who had 165 and 150 wins, respectively) and a discussion of an apparent exception for great pitchers who careers were prematurely ended by injury. But there are also six 20th century starting pitchers in the Hall with fewer than 200 wins who are not named Koufax or Dean and don't qualify for the prematurely-ended-career exception, and thirteen who won fewer than 220 games. Each of these pitchers pitched in times when 4-man rotations were the rule, complete games the expectation, and 20 wins and 280 to 300 innings common for elite pitchers.

Here's the question for the BBWAA and the Veterans Committee: if the five Hall of Famers pictured above (left to right, Lefty Gomez, Hal Newhouser, Bob Lemon, Don Drysdale and Happy Jack Chesbro) are Hall worthy despite win totals ranging from 184 to 209, are 170 wins too few for the Hall if attained in the age of five-man rotations and seven-inning starts?

Guidry v. Schilling

I'm ambivalent about Schilling's qualifications for the Hall, but let's face it - he's going in. His big game reputation and outstanding post-season record will put him over the top.

Schilling Shills generally acknowledge that his record is very erratic, his inconsistency and periodic arm issues resulting in numerous single-digit win totals and poor winning percentages throughout his career. The Shills fairly argue, however, that Schilling's peak years were excellent and deserving of HOF induction. Let's compare Schilling's peak years to Guidry's, doing a year-by-year comparison.

The following table lists Schilling's and Guidry's peak years in descending order of wins.

I've inserted a "G" or "S" in the middle column to indicate which pitcher, in my opinion, had the superior year. Here's my reasoning for each year.

A Note About Catfish Hunter

Online commenters and kibbitzers tend to disparage Catfish Hunter's HOF qualifications - only 224 wins, an elite pitcher for only a six or seven year span, rather pedestrian ERAs, and, they argue, a big winner only because he played for great teams that gave him excellent run support.

These observations from Catfish's critics may have some merit, but they don't detract from the following consideration. Catfish Hunter made 34 starts for the A's in Sept/Oct of '72, '73 and '74. Almost all of them were big starts because the A's won the AL West by narrow margins each year, clinching only in the last week of each season. His record in these 34 starts was 20-5 with a 2.38 ERA in 246 innings pitched. He was the unquestioned ace of the only non-Yankee team to win three consecutive World Series, and he went 7-1 in the six post-season series the A's played on their way to those three world championships.

The BBWAA obviously thinks that carries a lot of weight. I do, too. I should point out that the same community of online commenters who question Hunter's HOF bona fides generally seems to attach great weight to Curt Schilling's post-season record and reputation as a big game pitcher.

20-5, 2.38 ERA in 246 of the biggest innings in his career and in the history of the Oakland A's franchise. That positively shouts "Hall of Fame" to me. It's enough to put a five time 20-game winner with a Cy Young award and five world championship rings over the top and into the Hall.

More September Big Game Records

It occurred to me that I've somehow omitted any discussion of Blyleven's pennant race performances.

Bert participated in seven tight division races - '70, '77-80, '87 and '89 (again, I've defined a tight division race as one in which the race was within five games at some point in September prior to elimination or clinching, and the pitcher made at least one September start when the race was within five games). Bert's teams won two world championships, three division titles and had an average winning percentage of .562 (equivalent to 91 wins in a 162 game season). In other words, these were good teams, and yet Bert's September records in these races were as strikingly mediocre as the rest of his regular season performances for these teams. Bert made 40 starts in these seven races and had a 13-14 record and 3.04 ERA in 278 innings pitched.

The Thin Man

The following is the opening paragraph from an article on Guidry in Sports Illustrated's September 19, 1977 edition entitled "Getting Fat With The Thin Man," a reference to the slender Louisianan's emergence as the Yankee ace as the team surged past the Red Sox and Orioles to win the AL East title.

"From Aug. 7 through the end of last week, the Yankees won 28 of 34 games and moved from third place, five games out, to two ahead in the American League East...And when a team goes on a tear, there invariably is a starting pitcher high on the list of streakers. Because the Yanks' staff is loaded with the likes of World Series heroes Catfish Hunter, Don Gullett and Ken Holtzman, it is hardly surprising that New York found a hot arm. The astounding thing is that the limb is attached to the left shoulder of Ron Guidry, a pitcher whose reputation had been as puny as his 5'11", 158-pound body."

Guidry's epic performance during the '78 pennant - the win in the one-game playoff at Fenway, the back-to-back two-hit shutouts of the Sox in September - didn't come as a surprise in Yankee fans. In fact, it seemed very familiar, because Guidry had been almost as dominant during the Yanks' 41-13 charge down the stretch in '77. It's likely Guidry's '77 performance would occupy a more significant place in baseball lore but for the shadow cast by the legendary '78 season.

El Tiante v. Louisiana Lightning

Baseball Crank has an excellent evaluation of Blyleven, Morris, Kaat, John, Tiant, Guidry and others in a January 2001 post. It's a very detailed, incisive and fair assessment of the HOF qualifications of various pitchers, and I agree with his conclusions that Morris, John and Kaat fall short, if just barely. And I really applaud his support of Luis Tiant's induction, particularly his citation of Tiant's outstanding September records for the Red Sox in '70s pennant races. We differ on Blyleven, but Baseball Crank's evaluation of Blyleven is one of the few I've seen that candidly acknowledges the faults in Blyleven's HOF resume: the generally mediocre win totals and winning percentages even when pitching for solid teams.

I'll discuss on the next page Baseball Crank's discussions of Luis Tiant and Ron Guidry. I think Baseball Crank would agree that upon closer examination Guidry has many of the same qualifications as Tiant. I also think that Baseball Crank would agree (fair-minded fellow that he is) that in one instance he grossly mischaracterized Guidry's record.

Pedro in '99, Grove in '31, Gibson in '68, Guidry in '78...

...McLain in '68, Koufax in '65 (or '66, or '63), Gooden in '84. These are some of the greatest seasons pitchers have ever had. Let's examine various measures of pitching dominance and compare Guidry's '78 season to many of the other greatest seasons in baseball history. A statistical analysis confirms that Guidry's '78 season is among the greatest ever. When one considers that this performance occurred during one of the most legendary pennant races in baseball history and fueled the greatest comeback in American League history, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Guidry's magnificent season is the greatest ever.

Jim Kaplan Nailed It 23 Years Ago

"Three kinds of players dominate the Baseball Hall of Fame: batters who hit a lot, sluggers who homer a lot, pitchers who win a lot. Their glitzy stats jump out of the bios sent to electors. But there are equally deserving players who don't make the Hall: men whose numbers aren't catchy enough and whose contributions are often too subtle to be summarized. Some of them are subsequently elected by the Veterans' Committee, but that group's deliberations don't begin until 23 years after a player has retired.

"One way to try to right these wrongs is to build up support for worthy but underrated players before they get lost in the shuffle. I have in mind three current players who merit election to the Hall but possibly will not make it based on past voting patterns: Tony Perez, Ron Guidry and Ozzie Smith."

Jim Kaplan, in the June 2, 1986 edition of Sports Illustrated

SI's Jim Kaplan was prophetic - or at least 67% prophetic. Tony Perez and Ozzie Smith have indeed been inducted into the cherished Hall. Ron Guidry, however...

Guidry Gets An Endorsement From Jim Rice

You know my opinion about Ron Guidry's HOF bona fides. How about getting Jim Rice's view?

Rice was asked about Blyleven and Morris on a conference call with the press shortly after his election to the Hall. Here's a link to the transcript of the conference call. The question about Blyleven and Morris comes up towards the end.

Rice made the point that it's about more than numbers. For a player, it was about what great competitors these guys were. Rice plainly thinks Blyleven and Morris are HOF quality candidates. What was really interesting, however, is that he goes out of his way to mention two other pitchers he felt epitomized great competitors:

"So when you look at pitchers like [Blyleven and Morris], like a Ron Guidry, you look at a Goose Gossage, that you go out there and you face everyday, and you knew they were going to be the best."

I think Jim Rice knows a thing or two about Hall of Fame pitchers. Thanks, Jim, from the Gator Guy and all the Ron Guidry fans.

Cooperstown Chronicles

I've posted a link to Cooperstown Chronicles at LestersLegends.com. Ryan Lester is the proprietor of LestersLegends and he offers his views of the HOF qualifications of various Hall of Famers and HOF prospects. While I don't always agree with Ryan, I find his insights interesting and illuminating. Here's his take on Ron Guidry's candidacy for the HOF:

"I would have liked to see Ron Guidry get more than the 170 victories he totaled. If he got 30 more at the same winning percentage (.651), I think he would have been a no-brainer. He had a nine-year stretch when he was one of the very best pitchers in the game. His 25-3, 1.74 ERA in 1978 is legendary. His 3-1, 1.69 ERA in World Series play shows he could elevate his game. I’m a Red Sox fan, but I appreciate how good Ron Guidry was. I think he should be a HOFer. If he’s good enough for to have his number retired by the Yankees and a spot in Monument Park, then he’s good enough for Cooperstown."

I think Ryan touches on the key issues: Guidry's winning percentage, nine-year stretch of excellence and superior post-season record merit induction.

How Dominant Was Guidry At His Peak?

Pretty damn dominant. There are various measures of pitching dominance, but in the final analysis it's about not surrendering runs. Guidry was the best in the business at Job One for pitchers in the years '77, '78 and '79, leading the American League in ERA twice and compiling a major league leading 161 ERA+ over those three years.

It turns out that Guidry's 161 ERA+ over a three year period is a pretty unusual achievement, so unusual that Guidry was only the third American League pitcher in the modern era (i.e., post-1920) to accomplish the feat. If you exclude the War Years (when Hal Newhouser did it) then Guidry was the first American League pitcher to turn the trick since Lefty Grove in the '30s.

We'll look at the select group of pitchers who've managed to maintain this level of dominance over a three-year span and examine the curious concentration of these achievements in two brief and distinct periods in baseball history.

More "Did You Know..."

There have been 19 pitchers who led all starting pitchers in their league in MVP balloting in consecutive seasons. Fourteen have been eligible for the Hall of Fame. Ten have been inducted into the Hall. (Five of those ten are pictured above; from left to right: Dizzy Dean, Hal Newhouser, Red Ruffing, Bob Feller and Dazzy Vance.)

The only pitchers to have been rejected so far are Bucky Walters, Mort Cooper (who did it during the War years), Denny McLain (whose personal life imploded the year after pulling off the feat 1969) and Ron Guidry. Guidry led all AL starting pitchers in MVP balloting in '77 and '78.

Roger Clemens, Pedro Martinez, Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Chris Carpenter each led all starting pitchers in their league in the MVP balloting but have yet to be eligible for the Hall. All but Carpenter are certain to make it (unless Roger is rail'roided). The ten Hall of Famers who've achieved this are Dazzy Vance, Burleigh Grimes, Carl Hubbell, Dizzy Dean, Red Ruffing, Bob Feller, Hal Newhouser, Warren Spahn, Sandy Koufax and Jim Palmer.

Did You Know That Ron Guidry...

...is the only American League pitcher to win consecutive ERA titles and be rejected by the Hall of Fame? Did you know that he is the only pitcher since WW II - A.L. or N.L. - to win consecutive ERA titles and be rejected by the Hall?

Walter Johnson, Red Faber, Lefty Grove, Hal Newhouser and Ron Guidry are the only HOF-eligible American League pitchers to have won back-to-back ERA titles. All are in the Hall except Guidry. Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez are the only other A.L. pitchers to win consecutive ERA titles, and they'll enter the Hall in their first year of eligibility (again, assuming Clemens doesn't run aground on the steroids issue).

Christy Mathewson, Pete Alexander, Ray Kremer, Carl Hubbell, Bucky Walters, Sandy Koufax, Tom Seaver, Gred Maddux and Randy Johnson are the only N.L. pitchers to win consecutive ERA titles, and all but Kremer and Walters are either in the Hall or are surefire bets to be first-ballot inductees.

This isn't to say that winning consecutive ERA titles should qualify one for automatic induction into the Hall. It's just to point out that it's rarely done, only very good pitchers do it, and those who do it almost invariably go into the Hall of Fame.

Just something for the Veterans Committee to consider.

Guidry's Best Seasons v. The Best of Two All-Time Greats

My last post compared Guidry and Drysdale and argued that they had very similar Hall of Fame qualifications - relatively brief careers but sustained excellence and exceptional records as big game pitchers. As I've noted, however, there are many who consider Drysdale's HOF qualifications marginal, a view apparently shared by many in the BBWAA, who waited ten years and ten ballots before inducting the Dodger great.

I'm very conscious of the fact that comparing HOF candidates to the most marginal inductees can lead to a gradual loosening of HOF standards. If a sufficient argument for induction is that a candidate is 95% as great as the most marginal Hall of Famers, then HOF standards will gradually be eroded. That's not to say that Guidry is any less deserving of the Hall than Drysdale, because in my opinion he is every bit as deserving and his induction would in no way represent a loosening of HOF standards. If there's any doubt about that, just compare Guidry to two Hall of Famers whom no one would suggest were marginal inductees.

Guidry v. Drysdale: A Year-By-Year Comparison

Here's a year-by-year comparison of Guidry and Drysdale. The seasons are listed on the basis of wins, in descending order.

I've inserted a "G" for Guidry or "D" for Drysdale in the middle column to indicate which pitcher had, in my estimation, the superior season (and, in one instance, an "E" for even).

Did the HOF Really Reject the 10th Best Lefty Ever?

Is it really possible that the tenth greatest lefthander in the modern history of the game was rejected by the Hall of Fame? Is it really possible the Hall rejected the fourth greatest leftie in modern American League history? Put together your list of the premier southpaws in baseball history - mine's on the next page. Just click below to see my ranking of the 15 greatest lefthanders of all time. I'll tell you right now that the five guys pictured above - Hubbell, Spahn, Grove, Johnson and Carlton - all rank near the top.

Here's my list.

I found it difficult to rank pitchers from the pre-1920, "dead ball" era - it was just such a different game before Ruth revolutionized it. But Eddie Plank and Rube Waddell are definitely my top two from the pre-1920 era.

I rate Guidry ahead of three Hall of Fame lefties: Hal Newhouser, Herb Pennock and Eppa Rixey (who is not on my list at all). Had two of Newhouser's great years not occurred during the war years I probably would have rated him ahead of Guidry. Pennock's claim to Fame rests on his great six-year stretch with the Yankees in the 1920's ('23 to '28), which I judged comparable to, but exceeded by, Guidry's nine-year stretch from '77 to '85. As for Rixey, I'm not really sure why he is in the Hall of Fame.

Where the Veterans Committee Gets It Right and the BBWAA Gets It Wrong

Joe Gordon, Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr and Bill Dickey

The Veterans Committee's selections over the last 30 years fall into two main groups: middle infielders (i.e., catchers, 2nd basemen and shortstops) and players with relatively brief careers or brief primes.

Joe Gordon, the pre-1943 Veterans Committee selection from last year, clearly fits in the "brief career" category. Ron Santo and Tony Oliva, two of the top three votegetters in last year's post-1943 Veterans Committee election, fit squarely into the latter category. Neither had huge career totals but each was considered one of the premier hitters in his league for a period of seven or eight years. Neither had a very long or distinguished career following his prime (in each case about five years).

The following are Hall Famers selected by the Veterans Committee since 1979, in reverse order of induction: Joe Gordon, Bill Mazeroski, Orlando Cepeda, George Davis, Lary Doby, Nellie Fox, Jim Bunning, Richie Ashburn, Vic Willis, Phil Rizzuto, Hal Newhouser, Tony Lazzeri, Red Schoendienst, Bobby Doerr, Ernie Lombardi, Enos Slaughter, Arky Vaughan, Rick Ferrell, Pee Wee Reese, George Kell, Travis Jackson, Johnny Mize, Chuck Klein, Hack Wilson, Addie Joss.

I've italicized the middle-infielders and bolded those who had relatively brief careers or brief primes. A reasonable inference from the foregoing roster of inductees is that the Veterans Committee apparently believes the BBWAA gives short shrift to (i) players who played positions generally considered more defensive in nature and (ii) players who were great for a relatively brief period and consequently did not compile particularly impressive career statistical totals. Of the remaining VC inductees - Bunning, Ashburn and Cepeda - it's pretty clear that the VC felt Ashburn's reputation as a great defensive centerfielder didn't receive sufficient consideration from the BBWAA (making Ashburn an outfield variant of the "middle infielder" phenomenon in VC voting).

Happy 84th, Yogi

Happy birthday to the greatest living Yankee.

That's Yogi, Ron and Derek at the original Yankee Stadium in 2008. Yogi's already in the Hall, of course, and Derek is certain to join him. I think Ron belongs there, too.

It's Up To The Veterans Committee

Phil Rizzuto, Nellie Fox, Bill Mazeroski, Tony Lazzeri and Red Schoendienst

Guidry is eligible for inclusion on the 2010 Veterans Committee ballot (the VC votes only every other year and won't vote in 2009). There's no assurance he'll be on it, but he'll be eligible. There is a winnowing process that reduces the number of candidates to ten.

The Veterans Committee consists of 65 Hall of Famers appointed by the Hall's Board of Directors. A list of the Veterans Committee members can be found at the bottom of this page at the HOF website.

As we all know, baseball Hall of Fame elections are controversial and hotly debated among fans. The Veterans Committee has come in for some heavy fan criticism for selecting players like Phil Rizzuto and Bill Mazeroski. Middle infielders in particular attract controversy, probably because they tend to have weaker offensive statistics. Joe Gordon, the great Yankees 2nd baseman from the '30's and '40's, is the most recent VC inductee. Other notable middle infielders who've been inducted by the VC over the last 30 years are Red Schoendienst, Nellie Fox, Tony Lazzeri and Bobby Doerr.

How Could HOF Voters Have Been So Misguided?

The apparent disregard for Guidry by the sportswriters who cast the ballots for the Hall of Fame is not wholly inexplicable. There are reasons why HOF voters may have missed what seems so obvious. Some of the reasons are specific to Guidry and some are not. Let's take a look at them.

Sutton, Niekro and Blyleven

My purpose here is to promote Ron Guidry's candidacy for the Hall of Fame, not deride Bert Blyleven's candidacy or anyone else's. I've raised the subject of Bert Blyleven in two posts for one very simple reason: Blyleven perfectly illustrates the difference between my conception of the Hall of Fame and the conception of those who focus almost exclusively on the accumulation of gaudy career statistics. In my view, the other camp is missing the forest for the trees. The best way to demonstrate the basic differences between the pro-Bert and anti-Bert camps (and, by so doing, describe how the two camps view the Hall of Fame differently) is to compare Bert once again to two pitchers whom Bert-Backers love to cite: Don Sutton and Phil Neikro.

The Bert Backers argue that Bert is essentially the same as Sutton and Neikro but with two important qualifications: Bert fell just short of the essentially arbitrary 300 win threshold, and Bert had materially better ERAs (in fact, Bert's advantage over Neikro in ERA+ is really not very significant - 118 to 115). These are fair and compelling arguments. Blyleven's statistics generally compare quite favorably to Sutton's and Niekro's.

But there's one area where the difference between Blyleven, on the one hand, and Sutton and Niekro, on the other, is quite striking. This difference virtually leaps from the pages of the baseball encyclopedias. Both Sutton and Niekro consistently and significantly outperformed their teams over an extended period while receiving run support comparable to that afforded the other pitchers on the staff. Bert Blyleven did not.

The Crux of the Matter

There is an army of Blyleven Backers deployed across the internet armed with three and four letter statistical acronyms - RSAA, WARP, RCAP - designed to demonstrate that Blyleven would have been a consistent big winner if only he'd played for better teams and received better run support. They purport to prove that Bert would have won 313 games with better run support, or that his mediocre .537 career win percentage would have been .570, or that he'd have won 20 games in a season more than once if only he had been backed by elite teams rather than also-rans. They have an explanation for everything, a rationalization for every glaring deficiency in Bert's Hall of Fame qualifications.

But there's one thing - one really big thing - that they just can't seem to explain: why wasn't Bert a consistent big winner when he actually played for good teams that gave him solid offensive support? Because it is a fact that Blyleven pitched for some very good teams that gave him very good support, and Bert still couldn't put up Hall of Fame numbers.

By my count Bert pitched eight seasons for teams that either won 90 or more games, were serious contenders for division titles, or both. These teams won two World Series, three division titles and finished 2nd three other times. They had a cumulative .562 winning percentage. Bert made 261 starts over these eight seasons and pitched more than 1800 innings. Here's his record for these eight seasons:

100-83, .546 win percentage, 3.55 ERA.

The simple fact is that Bert averaged 12.5 wins per season for these eight years and had a lower winning percentage - .546 - than the .562 winning percentage posted by his teams. But Bert's battalions tell us we should ignore what actually happened when Bert pitched for good teams and instead believe what they tell us Bert would have done if those mediocre Twins and Indians teams had been powerhouses.

The Biggest Games Of Their Lives

That's Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling after winning the 2001 World Series and being selected as co-MVPs. Here's what you get if you aggregate the September pennant race numbers and the post-seasons numbers for each pitcher, subtracting any games pitched after clinching or elimination.*

These were undoubtedly the biggest games in the careers of these pitchers. Again, it is notable that Guidry won more games in significantly fewer starts than Schilling or Johnson.

_______________________

* Schilling won games after his team clinched playoff spots in '93 and '05 and won a game after the D'backs were eliminated in 2000. Guidry won a game after elimination in '83. Johnson was blown out in a game after the D'backs had been eliminated in 2000.