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.