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.