Curious Pitch

Dave Paisley

One of the most critical aspects of any team that has a hope of making the playoffs is the pitching staff. It's true today just as it was a century ago and all the time in between. I got curious wondering about just which pitching staffs are the best and which are the worst. It isn't always easy to see with the naked eye, as there are some pretty drastic park effects that come into play. For instance, many people tout the Mariners pitching staff as the reason for the team's success last year. The fact is, though, that the Seattle staff was pretty average on the road and spectacular in Safeco Field. Similarly, the Rockies staff suffers perpetually from inflated ERAs in Coors Field, and consequently never gets any credit even when they've been pretty good.

So with all that in mind, I set out to find out the good the bad and the ugly about pitching staffs around the majors from last season. I took each player's ERA, subtracted it from the league average, adjusted it for year 2000 earned run park factor and then multiplied by the number of innings pitched then divided by 9. This results in a rough estimate of how many runs a pitcher was different from an average pitcher in an average park for that number of innings. I then summed the totals for each team. Just for kicks I also calculated the numbers without the park factor correction.

Here's the National League results (Staff Value is the uncorrected summed value, Park Factor is the earned run park factor for the 2000 season and Value Corrected is the Staff Value corrected for park effect.)

Team	Staff Value	Park Factor	Value Corrected
COL	-105.0	1.689	110.5
CIN	48.0	1.172	103.5
ATL	91.2	.976	83.3
AZ	42.8	1.039	56.2
STL	36.6	.994	34.5
LA	84.5	.856	33.3
NYM	74.9	.883	33.1
SF	67.3	.877	23.1
PHI	-25.7	1.046	-8.5
FLA	4.6	.866	-47.9
HOU	-125.5	1.174	-56.2
MIL	-3.8	.865	-58.7
SD	17.4	.810	-59.7
PIT	-49.1	.928	-78.8
MON	-81.5	.984	-88.1
CHN	-101.9	.802	-195.5

The first thing you might notice is that Colorado moves from second worst to first. Colorado first in pitching? Is your head swimming? Am I crazy?

Not really. I think everyone realized last year that the Rockies were doing a pretty good job of keeping down the runs at Coors. The interesting thing to note if you delve deeper is that the Rockies pitching staff pitched almost as well in Coors as on the road - well closer than their opponents. The Rockies staff had an ERA of 6.06 in Coors and 4.39 on the road, while their opponents had a whopping 7.34 in Coors and only 3.55 on the road. So the opponents' numbers help inflate the Coors Field park effect, which if used across the board makes the Rockies staff look like the best in the league. That's a big flaw with the one size fits all park factor, but there you go. It only makes a huge difference in these oddball parks.

It is interesting to speculate on just how real that performance will be when the Rockies add Mike Hampton and Denny Neagle to the mix this season.

Park effects account for the rise of the Reds to the second spot on the leader board - a conclusion I doubt many people would believe either. After that, though, Atlanta, Arizona, the Cardinals, Dodgers and Mets look reasonable. Interesting to se park effects drag Houston off the bottom of the table. Accounting for the park makes them appear to merely suck rather than suck royally.

And speaking of sucking royally, just how bad were the Cubs? With a weird park factor of .802 (a fairly extreme pitcher's park) the Cubs uncorrected numbers were awful. Corrected, they're twice as bad. That -195 runs over average was worth about -20 wins. Ouch!

To be honest, I'd probably prefer to rerun the numbers with the team's own park factor correction (i.e. excluding opponent's numbers from the park factor calculation.) but that might be the subject of another study.

And just to not leave anyone out, here are the numbers for the American League:

Team	Staff Value	Park Factor	Value Corrected
BOS	108.7	.992	106.0
CHA	39.2	1.138	87.8
NYY	23.8	1.080	52.8
OAK	55.2	.908	20.1
DET	30.8	.971	19.7
MIN	-38.8	1.149	18.1
CLE	12.4	1.014	17.8
TB	7.3	.998	6.5
ANA	-16.9	1.035	-3.0
TOR	-42.7	1.070	-14.6
SEA	57.7	.801	-22.8
KC	-90.3	1.114	-43.1
TEX	-98.1	1.071	-68.0
BAL	-74.8	.912	-114.2

No surprise that Boston is right there at the top, park factor or not. The White Sox look surprisingly good after correcting for the fact that they played in a relative hitter's paradise (wait a minute - did the two Chicago clubs switch stadia last year?)

Not much in the way of surprises on the list, but note how the aforementioned Mariners slip from second best raw total all the way to 11th after correcting for park factor. If anything, the staff was even more Jekyll and Hyde than those numbers suggest - a 3.84 ERA at home and 5.20 on the road, while opponents were 4.86 in Safeco and 5.60 on the road.

Even so, Texas, Kansas City and Baltimore still managed to hold on solidly to the bottom three spots.

OK, so much for the pitching. Anyone ready for Spring Training yet?

about the author

If you've been trying to reach Dave Paisley at drdjp@strikethree.com, maybe that's not a good idea. Why not try drdjp@yahoo.com instead?