Career run support for starting pitchers
For the little study I did last post, I used Retrosheet data to compile run support stats for every starting pitcher in recent history (specifically, pitchers whose starts all came in 1950 or later).
Comparing every pitcher to his teammates, and totalling up everything for a career ...the biggest "hard luck" starter, in terms of total runs, is Greg Maddux. In Maddux's 740 starts, his offense scored 238 fewer runs than they did for his teammates those same seasons. That's a shortfall of 0.32 runs per game.
Here's the top six:
Runs GS R/GS
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-238 740 -0.32 Greg Maddux
-199 773 -0.26 Nolan Ryan
-192 707 -0.27 Roger Clemens
-168 430 -0.39 A.J. Burnett
-167 690 -0.24 Gaylord Perry
-164 393 -0.42 Steve Rogers
Three four of the top five are in the Hall of Fame. You might expect that to be the case, since, to accumulate a big deficiency in run support, you have to pitch a lot of games ... and guys who pitch a lot of games tend to be good. But, on the flip side, the "good luck" starters, whose teams scored more for them than for their teammates, aren't nearly as good:
Runs GS R/GS
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+238 364 +0.65 Vern Law
+188 458 +0.41 Mike Torrez
+170 254 +0.67 Bryn Smith
+151 297 +0.51 Ramon Martinez
+147 355 +0.41 Mike Krukow
+143 682 +0.21 Tom Glavine
The only explanation for the difference, that I can think of, is that to have a long career despite bad run support, you have to be a REALLY good pitcher. To have the same length career, with good run support, you can just be PRETTY good.
But, that assumes that teams pay a lot of attention to W-L record, which would be the biggest statistical reflection of run support. And, we're only talking about a difference of around half a run per game.
Another possibility: pitchers who are the ace of the staff usually start on opening day, where they face the other team's ace. So, that game, against a star pitcher, they get below-average support. Maybe, because of the way rotations work, they face better pitchers more often, and that's what accounts for the difference. Did Bill James study this once?
In any event, just taking the opening day game .. if those games are one run below average for the team, and Nolan Ryan got 20 of those starts, there's 20 of his 199 runs right there.
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UPDATE: see the comments for suggestions from Tango and GuyM. The biggest one: GuyM points out that good pitchers lead to more leads, which means fewer bottom-of-the-ninth runs when they pitch at home. Back of the envelope estimate: suppose a great pitcher means the team goes 24-8 in his starts, instead of 16-16. That's 8 extra wins, which is 4 extra wins at home, which is 2 runs over a season, which is 30 runs over 15 good seasons like that.
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Here are the career highs and lows on a per-game basis, minimum 100 starts:
Runs GS R/GS
--------------------------------
- 85 106 -0.80 Ryan Franklin
- 94 134 -0.70 Shawn Chacon
-135 203 -0.66 Ron Kline
- 72 116 -0.62 Shelby Miller
-154 249 -0.62 Denny Lemaster
- 68 115 -0.59 Trevor Wilson
Runs GS R/GS
--------------------------------
+127 164 +0.77 Bill Krueger
+ 82 108 +0.76 Rob Bell
+ 89 118 +0.76 Jeff Ballard
+ 81 110 +0.73 Mike Minor
+170 254 +0.67 Bryn Smith
+106 161 +0.66 Jake Arrieta
+238 364 +0.65 Vern Law
These look fairly random to me.
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Here's what happens if we go down to a minimum of 10 starts:
Runs GS R/GS
---------------------------------
- 29 12 -2.40 Angel Moreno
- 30 13 -2.29 Jim Converse
- 23 11 -2.25 Mike Walker
- 20 11 -1.86 Tony Mounce
- 25 14 -1.81 John Gabler
Runs GS R/GS
---------------------------------
+ 32 11 +2.91 J.D. Durbin
+ 43 17 +2.56 John Strohmayer
+ 58 25 +2.30 Colin Rea
+ 61 28 +2.16 Bob Wickman
+ 23 11 +2.33 John Rauch
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It seems weird that, for instance, Bob Wickman would get such good run support in as many as 28 starts, his team scoring more than two extra runs a game for him. But, with 2,169 pitchers in the list, you're going to get these kinds of things happening just randomly.
The SD of team runs in a game is around 3. Over 36 starts, the SD of average support is 3 divided by the square root of 36, which works out to 0.5. Over Wickman's 28 starts, it's 0.57. So, Wickman was about 3.8 SDs from zero.
But that's not quite right ... the support his teammates got is a random variable, too. Accounting for that, I get that Wickman was 3.7 SDs from zero. Not that big a deal, but still worth correcting for.
I'll call that "3.7" figure the "Z-score." Here are the top and bottom career Z-scores, minimum 72 starts:
Z GS R/GS
--------------------------------
-3.06 72 -1.16 Kevin Gausman
-2.94 203 -0.66 Ron Kline
-2.89 249 -0.62 Denny Lemaster
-2.57 134 -0.70 Shawn Chacon
-2.57 740 -0.32 Greg Maddux
Z GS R/GS
--------------------------------
+3.79 364 +0.65 Vern Law
+3.24 254 +0.67 Bryn Smith
+3.16 164 +0.77 Bill Krueger
+3.12 93 +1.02 Roy Smith
+2.73 247 +0.56 Tony Cloninger
The SD of the overall Z-scores is 1.045, pretty close to the 1.000 we'd expect if everything were just random. But, that still leaves enough room that something else could be going on.
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I chose a cutoff 72 starts to include Kevin Gausman, who is still active. Last year, the Orioles starter went 9-12 despite an ERA of only 3.61.
Not only is Gausman the highest Z-score of pitchers with 72 starts, he's also the highest Z-score of pitchers with as few as 10 starts!
Of the forty-two starters more extreme than Gausman's support shortfall of 1.16 runs per game, none of them have more than 41 starts.
Gausman is a historical outlier, in terms of poor run support -- the hardluckest starting pitcher ever.
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I've posted the full spreadsheet at my website, here.
UPDATE, 3/31: New spreadsheet (Excel format), updated to account for innings of run support, to correct any the bottom-of-the-ninth issues (as per GuyM's suggestion). Actually, both methods are in separate tabs.
Labels: baseball, run support
posted by Phil Birnbaum @ 3/24/2017 04:51:00 PM
14 comments
14 Comments:
A bad hitting pitcher is worth around -.05 runs per PA relative to other pitchers, and a good hitting one is +.05 runs per PA. Give them 3 PA, and that's a range of +/- .15 runs per game. You should check into that.
Good point, thanks. GuyM also emailed me that good pitchers stay in the game longer, which means more pitcher PA and therefore fewer runs.
More significantly, Guy pointed out that good pitchers lead to more wins, which means they lead to more home wins, which means less bottom-of-the-ninths in those games. That's a big one.
I would guess that part of Maddux's low run support is that he hated pitching to Javy Lopez. Lopez only caught 421 of Maddux's career innings, compared to 1,652 of Glavine's. Lopez was a vastly better hitter than whoever the Braves' backup was in any given year, so that must have cut into Maddux's run support. (And the reverse would be true for Glavine and other ATL starters in these years, to a lesser extent.)
I don't know how common it is for a starter to have a catcher pairing pattern so different from that of the other pitchers on his team, but when it happens the impact could be substantial. Lopez was a 112 OPS+ hitter, while the average backup catcher is probably about 35 points lower. So that could explain maybe .17 runs for each extra game that Maddux did not throw to Lopez.
GuyM, that's a good one. Who are the other well-known "personal catchers", and do the support numbers also tend to go the expected direction?
Doing a quick search, personal catchers seem to be fairly common for knuckleballers, which makes sense.
Bob Uecker and Chris Bando for Phil Niekro.
Doug Mirabelli for Tim Wakefield.
Josh Thole for R.A. Dickey.
B-Ref also mentions that from 1976 to 1979, Tim McCarver started 128 of Steve Carlton's 140 starts.
It probably only accounts for a small amount of your variance, but made a difference for a few outliers.
4 of the top 6 are in the HOF?? Neither Clemens or Burnett are in.
Actually, 3 of the top 6....
Oops! Thanks, will fix.
"relative to teammates" is a little questionable. I mean Nolan Ryan didn't have run support with the Angels or the Astros at all and they weren't great hitting teams for any of their pitchers.
I suspect if you did runs score by their team in their own games started, you'd see a pretty good trend as it's pretty hard to get a win if your team doesn't score.
I just found this analysis. Great work, Phil! I did a little research recently into the Maddux and his run support, and how that probably cost him the 1998 Cy Young. What I determined is that while Maddux tended to prefer other, less offensively potent, catchers to Javy Lopez while with Atlanta, that isn't a clear explanation for the lack of run support.
Javy Lopez was Maddux's primary catcher in 1994 and 1996, and Maddux received .7 and .85 fewer runs per game, respectively, than the team averaged.
In 1999, the only year during Maddux's tenure that he received better than average support, Eddie Perez was his catcher.
Further, for 1998, Lopez averaged about .27 runs produced (RBI+runs-HR) per plate appearance, while Perez averaged .26. So their contribution while in the lineup was very similar.
I thought Nolan Ryan had a personal catcher whilst with the Rangers. Name eludes me though.
Phil, did you do run support as in total runs scored by the team in the games that the starter started OR actual runs scored per 9 IP while the starter was in the game?
On another note, in response to the staff writer, who said.:
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"relative to teammates" is a little questionable. I mean Nolan Ryan didn't have run support with the Angels or the Astros at all and they weren't great hitting teams for any of their pitchers.
I suspect if you did runs score by their team in their own games started, you'd see a pretty good trend as it's pretty hard to get a win if your team doesn't score.
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Yeah, he very often still wasn't even clearly the best starter on his own team.:
1974-79 Angels
Tanana: 89-64, 2.92 ERA
Ryan: 98-89, 3.25 ERA
1980-85 Astros
J. Niekro: 86-71, 3.18 ERA
Ryan: 74-59, 3.09 ERA
... not to mention Niekro clearly outpitched Ryan during the 1980-81 playoffs.
Ryan: 11 earned runs in 28 innings
Niekro: 0 earned runs in 18 innings.
Any other excuses for Nolan?
It's been a while since I did this, but I'm pretty sure it was runs scored in the entire game for all pitchers, not pro-rated for just the innings the starter lasted.
I've also loaded game logs and play-by-plays from Retrosheet into a relational database. Part of what makes it nasty is we also have to count runs scored in the top of an inning following the last inning that the visiting pitcher completed. They're his runs too. Also, to make it easier, I loaded the line scores from Retrosheet (1 big character field) into separate 1-inning buckets. Now we can do actual RS attributed to a pitcher, per IP.
Here's your 'top' 40 (bottom 40, really). Minimum 300 starts. Run support as starter only, relative to the other starters on his teams, sorted by percentage rather than runs.
ID 1912-2023 IP (as starter) RF weighted sum (% * IP each year) Starts ExpctRuns % of others on team Diff.
roges001 Steve Rogers 2827.67 1195 2506 393 1348 88.6% 153
cainm001 Matt Cain 2070.00 910 1843 331 1022 89.0% 112
frenl101 Larry French 2830.67 1396 2567 385 1540 90.7% 144
matlj101 Jon Matlack 2260.67 920 2073 318 1003 91.7% 83
morgm001 Mike Morgan 2482.67 1198 2285 411 1302 92.0% 104
hoytw101 Waite Hoyt 3153.00 1728 2904 425 1876 92.1% 148
coves101 Stan Coveleski 2996.33 1558 2761 385 1691 92.2% 133
luqud101 Dolf Luque 2821.67 1327 2606 366 1437 92.4% 110
ecked001 Dennis Eckersley2478.33 1201 2297 361 1296 92.7% 95
candt001 Tom Candiotti 2656.33 1264 2465 410 1362 92.8% 98
browk001 Kevin Brown 3237.67 1665 3006 476 1793 92.8% 128
schic002 Curt Schilling 3079.33 1662 2859 436 1790 92.9% 128
hubbc101 Carl Hubbell 3361.33 1725 3122 433 1857 92.9% 132
walbr101 Rube Walberg 2100.00 1247 1954 306 1340 93.1% 93
newsb101 Bobo Newsom 3658.33 1792 3408 483 1924 93.2% 132
burna001 A.J. Burnett 2725.33 1406 2544 430 1506 93.3% 100
carpc002 Chris Carpenter 2171.00 1199 2026 332 1285 93.3% 86
hamec001 Cole Hamels 2691.00 1391 2514 421 1489 93.4% 98
clemr001 Roger Clemens 4913.67 2686 4594 707 2873 93.5% 187
lackj001 John Lackey 2838.33 1569 2655 446 1677 93.6% 108
ID 1912-2023 IP (as starter) RF weighted sum (% * IP each year) Starts ExpctRuns % of others on team Diff.
gomel102 Lefty Gomez 2424.33 1575 2268 319 1683 93.6% 108
moorm001 Mike Moore 2820.00 1443 2641 440 1541 93.7% 98
maddg002 Greg Maddux 5001.00 2559 4684 740 2732 93.7% 173
blylb001 Bert Blyleven 4957.33 2343 4647 685 2500 93.7% 157
perrg101 Gaylord Perry 5156.67 2247 4834 690 2397 93.7% 150
darlr001 Ron Darling 2323.00 1158 2180 364 1234 93.9% 76
hardm101 Mel Harder 3170.00 1669 2985 432 1772 94.2% 103
waket001 Tim Wakefield 2912.67 1765 2744 463 1873 94.2% 108
rushb101 Bob Rush 2289.67 985 2157 321 1045 94.2% 60
martp001 Pedro Martinez 2720.00 1567 2570 409 1658 94.5% 91
mulht001 Terry Mulholland2100.33 1072 1987 332 1133 94.6% 61
mccom103 Mike McCormick 2135.33 986 2020 333 1042 94.6% 56
bushj102 Bullet Joe Bush 2796.67 1331 2650 370 1405 94.7% 74
arrob001 Bronson Arroyo 2367.00 1262 2245 383 1331 94.8% 69
pierb101 Billy Pierce 3102.67 1506 2943 432 1588 94.8% 82
quinj001 Jose Quintana 1762.33 867 1672 304 914 94.9% 47
vancd101 Dazzy Vance 2765.00 1372 2626 349 1445 95.0% 73
shorc102 Chris Short 2014.33 844 1913 308 889 95.0% 45
ryann001 Nolan Ryan 5326.00 2324 5060 773 2446 95.0% 122
greiz001 Zack Greinke 3310.00 1724 3152 540 1810 95.2% 86
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