The K-Zone

Before I begin, I just want to publicize that today is International Stuttering Awareness Day. As a former severe stutterer (and a current occasional stutterer), I feel that it's important for everyone to recognize this disorder and to try to be patient in our dealings with people who stutter. It can be an extremely embarassing and frustrating condition, az at least today, please try to be extra-sensitive. Thanks.

Intro #2: I'm on full-time baby-alert from yesterday until whenever my sister-in-law gives birth. If you're hanging out with me, or if you're in the car with me or something, just know that I might have to leave at a moment's notice. For G-d's sake, we're on the brink of having another Schmutter in the world; things are about to get a whole lot crazier.

And now, the steak.

You guys wouldn't believe how many of my readers were up-in-arms about my pitching list. Would you belive it was only one? Still, he was disgusted that I put Nolan Ryan on my list over Warren Spahn, Steve Carlton and Lefty Grove. Needless to say, all three had outstanding careers, and one could make a case that they belong on the list over Ryan. Grove has two things over Ryan:
1. His ERA+ of 148 dominates Ryan's 112, even though their raw ERAs are very similar (3.06 to 3.19).
2. His record of 300-144 rocks Ryan's 324-292
Grove also had one horrifyingly good MVP season in 1931:
31-4 Record, 27 CGs, 4 Shutouts, 175 Ks, 2.06 ERA, 1.077 WHIP

Carlton and Ryan have numbers that are almost identical. They both struck out a lot of guys (4136 and 5714), they both have the exact same WHIP (1.247), and their ERAs are virtually the same (3.22 and 3.19). Carlton also "suffers" from the Grove/Koufax "what do you say I go ahead and be ridiculously dominant for a coupla seasons." As my friend pointed out so astutely, Carlton literally carried his team in 1972, when he won over 40% of the games that the Phillies won:
27-10 Record, 30 CGs, 8 Shutouts, 310 Ks, 1.97 ERA, 0.993 WHIP (Phillies won 59 games that year)
We'll get to Warren Spahn in a second.

Now I've made cases for both Carlton and Grove to appear on my list. At this point I'd like to dip into something I learned in Pro Football Prospectus 2007. Using their complex statistical theory, they determined that a running-back who consistently gets three to four yards a carry but does not get any big runs of ten or more yards is more valuable in the long term than a back who gets stuffed at or behind the line sometimes but breaks for big runs more often. You feel me? Let me try that again. Let's say Player Q and Player J both have 200 carries for 1000 yards in one season; they both average 5.0 yards per carry. Now let's say Player Q gains exactly five yards on every single carry, but player J alternates between having five straight carries of zero yards each and five straight carries of ten yards each. Which player is more valuable in the long run? According to their analysis, Player Q is more valuable, because each time he carries the ball, he has a successful play. If they give him the ball on every play, eventually they will score a touchdown on every drive. However, player J will probably produce very few touchdowns, because his team will be forced to punt all the time.

Let's get back to baseball. Nolan Ryan, I believe, was a more valuable player over the course of his career than Grove or Carlton. Ryan was never a feast or famine pitcher like the other two; he never had a stretch of dominant seasons. His best ERA in any season in which he got more than 25 starts was 2.76, very nice but nowhere near as good as the seasons I mentioned above. But for basically 25 years you knew what you were getting with Ryan; a guy who was going to give you seven or eight (or nine) solid innings and a chance to win the game. Warren Spahn was very similar; he never had any over-the-top outstanding seasons (except maybe 1953: 23-7 record, 2.10 ERA, 188 ERA+), but he was always solid year-in and year-out. I just don't think he compiled good enough numbers to merit being on the list (2583 Ks, 3.09 ERA, 118 ERA+). Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, here's the key: The most predictable pitchers are the ones who have success with repeatable statistics. Here's what I mean:
As my friends at beyondtheboxscore.com (and many others) state, for the most part, the pitcher and the batter are in control of three things: walks, home runs, and strikeouts. Anything other than one of these "Three True Outcomes," or TTO for short, depends on luck and defense (at least for now. Baseball technology is always progressing, and eventually there will be substantial and trustworthy tools for determining trajectories and flight patterns of baseballs so that we can better analyze which players are better at hitting line drives and which pitchers are better at preventing them). As I've said before, a strikeout pitcher will tend to be more effective because a player can't get any hits if he doesn't put the ball in play. And if a pitcher can prevent hitters from hitting the ball in the air, then it's likely the ball will never leave the yard. Another words, the pitchers who will have the most success in the long run are the ones who consistently strike out a lot of hitters and give up few home runs. That's why Nolan Ryan was so successful for such a long time; he was really good at striking hitters out and at keeping the ball in the yard.

And just for argument's sake, don't ever mention Wins as a viable statistic when determining pitching skill. I mean, obviously a great pitcher will manage to win a lot of games, but when comparing pitchers you definitely can't use them. You can't say Spahn was better than Ryan because he had 39 more wins. I mean from 1953 onward, Spahn pitched on some pretty outstanding Milwaukee Braves teams; they averaged around 90 wins a year for the 13 years Spahn pitched there. Ryan pitched on some pretty awful teams in New York, California, Texas, and Houston. Those teams gave him fewer than four runs of support each game, and that made it a lot harder to win. I would venture to say that if he got half a run more support per game for his career, Ryan would have 50 more wins.

Anyway, here are the stats for Grove, Carlton and Ryan: (Strikouts per nine innings, Hits per nine innings, Walks per nine innings, and Home Runs per nine innings)
Grove: 5.175 K/9, 8.791 H/9, 2.711 BB/9, 0.370 HR/9
Carlton: 7.135 K/9, 8.059 H/9, 3.162 BB/9, 0.714 HR/9
Ryan: 9.548 K/9, 6.555 H/9, 4.670 BB/9, 0.536 HR/9

I think this presents a very compelling argument in favor of Nolan Ryan over the other two. Carlton was absolutely an amazing pitcher, maybe the best left-hander ever, but compared to these other two he sure did give up a lot of hits and home runs. Grove did an excellent job of keeping the ball in the yard, but he struck out so few batters (which was pretty standard during the 30s) and gave up so many hits that his WHIP was too high for me to put him in the top 19. As I mentioned in my paragraph about Ryan in my pitcher post, he walked the most guys of anyone ever. By far. It's for that reason, and that reason alone, that there's even a discussion about how great he was. But look how few hits he gave up! If you're basically walking or striking out every batter that comes to the plate, you're going to be pretty successful, especially if you have a rubber arm and can throw 150 pitches per game like Ryan did.

I think I've done an admirable job of defending myself, but since I love doing this I'd really love to hear some feedback from some of you, especially from the person who inspired to do this extra research.

Tomorrow's post: Why Sandy Koufax was head and shoulders above the Bobs (Feller and Gibson). I'll transcribe the comment I got from my brother through Blogger (he doesn't use facebook; he's an old fogey).