(MLB Has played five full seasons since I wrote most of this on February 20, 2006. It's a long one, and if you're not inclined to read it all, take note that there is a great quote at the very end.)
1) "Pitching is 75 (or some other high) percent of the game."
2) "You can never have enough pitching."
3) "Good pitching stops good hitting."
Anyone who has ever been a baseball fan for as little as a season or two has heard those Baseball Truisms, those three lines, or some variation of them for as long as they’ve been watching and reading about the game. As with much of what we’ve heard through the years from supposed baseball experts
, they are all incorrect. Take them one at a time:
Pitching is 75% of the game.
Pitching is actually not as big a "part" of the game as we’ve been told. While it has often been true throughout baseball history that
teams with the best ERA in their league have
won pennants, it is just as often true that the
teams with the most runs scored win. I won’t bore you with all the numbers, but simply state a few.
From 1903 through 1968, during the 66 seasons when there were only two teams playing in October, the team with the most runs scored (RS) won the pennant in the American League 40 times. The team with the best ERA won 28.
In the National League, the team leading RS won 30 titles, while the team ERA leader won 36.
There can be all kinds of debate over the value of knowing those numbers, but it’s a fact that out of 132 pennants won in those years, only 28 times did a team win without leading their league in one of the two categories.
A team with either the best ERA or RS total won almost 4 out of five pennants. Taking it one step further,
only twice in those 66 seasons did a team win a pennant and not have finished at least first or second in ERA or RS. (The team was the Dodgers, both times, in 1947 and 1959, when each club finished third in both categories).
Once divisional play started in 1969, the numbers get a bit more convoluted with first four, then 8-teams getting into the World Championship hunt. The change involved with a playoff began to allow a greater opportunity for a "lesser team" to get hot, or lucky, or both, and win a World Series or a pennant. That aside, the trend continued. "You can look it up," as Casey used to say, or just trust me.
Since the 1995 season, there have been 88 division or wild card winners in those years.
Only five times has a team led their league in RS, and not made the post-season. Just twice has a team led in ERA and not made post-season. That’s over 92%
All right and so what…does all of this stuff really mean anything? Yes, even though it proves nothing is certain. The facts seem to bear out that having the "best pitching" or "scoring the most runs" is going to win a team a place in the playoffs a vast majority of the time. What a concept!
However, I think it also shows that having the best pitching is not much more of a guarantee at post-season than scoring the most runs is. The difference
is there, in
favor of pitching, but it's very slight. That statement is based on teams that finished second or third in one of the two categories. Having the better pitching is an edge, but certainly not anything close to 90%, or even 75% of the game.
There is also one very crucial element to winning a baseball game. A team must score a run to win, regardless of how great their pitching may be, they can’t win without at least one run scored. It would seem that all a team needs is to have is enough pitching to get into the post season. Then they hand the ball to 2 or 3 starters, two set up guys, and a closer. That's who actually get all the innings.
From now on I am going to state that
pitching is 45% of the game; scoring runs is 40%; and the other 15% is a mix of fielding, speed, and managerial decisions. (By the way, the entire theory goes out the window if luck regarding injuries is factored in.)
You can never have enough pitching.
I don’t have any idea what that means. One would have to assume that the speaker is referring to injuries? Another part of the thought could be that a team needs enough good or at least decent pitchers, to contend?
But what is enough?
The history of baseball gives us all kinds of examples of teams that used four starters, and one or two guys out of the pen all season, and won pennants. In the last 30 or so years, with teams almost always using five starters and deeper bullpens (because a lot of managers getting caught up in the
lefty/righty thing), we’ve seen a change during the regular season. However, once the playoffs begin, most teams shorten their rotations, and seldom go more than two or three guys deep into their bullpen.
The facts behind this are obvious, and it all begins and ends with money.
As salaries began to rise in the 1970’s, and guaranteed and long-term contracts became the norm, we have seen a huge increase in the number of players on the disabled list, with injuries that old time ballplayers
played through. Pitchers have become things to be guarded, and to be
regarded as brittle, precious gems. No pitchers come close to getting 40 starts in a season anymore – few surpass 30 starts.
Few, if any pitchers are willing to risk a prosperous career, and millions of dollars by pitching through an injury. A guy making 5 to 10 to 15-million dollars a year is yanked after throwing 100 to 110 pitches, which often won’t give his team 6-innings. Relief pitchers innings are guarded as well. Closers almost never pitch three days in a row, and seldom go more than one inning when they do pitch.
It’s not all the pitchers at fault. Owners allow their general managers to give out guaranteed contracts that will be paid regardless of whether a guy can actually play or not, and the manager has to protect his own job by not risking a guys arm that his owner had paid millions of guaranteed dollars for.
Still, with all of that, the numbers don’t lie. Up until the 1930’s, most teams used 4 or 5- pitchers to throw 80% to 90% of their innings. Back then, most teams carried only 7 or 8 pitchers most of the time. The numbers have changed over time, but with 11 and sometimes even twelve pitchers active on a major league roster today, it’s still (only) about 7 of them who throw the same percentage of innings now, for almost every team.
The fact is that a team
can have too much pitching, and many often do have too much. If pitchers don’t pitch and they
can and do become ineffective, angry, or both. Maybe they would be ineffective anyway, but they often never get the chance, which absolutely gets them angry. If they have been good in the past, and they are not being used, it can jeopardize a future contract they will be trying to get.
Finally, if pitching is 75% of the game, why is it that almost every team invariably has 3 or 4 pitchers making somewhere close to the MLB minimum salary?
The reason is money, so if teams still only need 7 or 8 pitchers to win, then why wouldn’t they have 4-5
sluggos to fill out the back end of a 5-man pitching rotation? One of those is the guy that gets pounded for 8 earned runs in 2 innings in late July, because every other pitcher on the team is worn out. The 5
sluggos are going to make the MLB minimum salary, or something close to it, and cumulatively making about 10% of what guys like CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee will be making.
Still, if pitching is 75% of the game, then why is it that they aren’t making anywhere close to 75% of the money?
Good pitching stops good hitting.
How did anyone ever "prove" that? What wag first said it, and who were the idiots that kept the thought alive?
Facts are that almost any kind of major league pitching will
stop almost any kind of major league hitting a large majority of the time, based on simple percentages. However, there are the following four facts to consider:
Ty Cobb used to kill Walter Johnson.
Willie Mays clobbered Whitey Ford.
Hank Aaron hammered Tom Seaver.
Pete Rose ate up Nolan Ryan.
Great pitchers, great hitters
More facts are that good hitters hit ‘mistakes’ by pitchers (great, good and bad) all the time, or they guess the oncoming pitch correctly as good hitters tend to do, and cream it.
I have some truisms for you. They are all mine, and I guarantee that they are all 100% correct:
1)
Good pitching will often stop mediocre hitting – and often, it won’t.
2)
Great pitching will always win, unless matched against pitching that’s just as great, and better hitting. Then great pitching will definitely lose, and win.
3)
Good hitting will almost always knock the snot out of mediocre pitching. The key words in that one are "almost" and "always."
My question is always about what happens when good pitching and good hitting face off against good pitching and good hitting? I guess "good" wins
and loses?
Anyway, next time you hear someone say that "good pitching stops good hitting," feel free to use any part of this rant, and then argue with whatever answers they give.
I will leave this you with one of my favorite (alleged) quotes from Babe Ruth.
Back before the 1927 World Series, between New York’s "Murderer’s Row" Yankees, and the Pittsburgh Pirates, a few writers gathered around the Babe just prior to him getting in the cage for batting practice.
"Hey Babe," one of the scribes asked, " what do you think of Pittsburgh having seven starting pitchers? Seven, pretty impressive, huh?"
"What the hell good," Babe thundered, "are seven starting pitchers in a four game series?"
Coda: the Yanks swept.
