Lucky Dogs II—This Time It's National!

Dave Paisley

Following up last week's look at the American League lucky pitchers, here's a glance at the National League. If you scan back to last week's article, you'll notice that I categorized luck as the difference between actual ERA and ERA determined from OPS Against, plus the difference between actual run support and league average run support for qualifying starters. Just as a starting point, it's interesting to note that there are 53 starters who have enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, their average ERA is 4.13 and their average run support is 4.89.

The fact that their ERA is lower than their run support is easily explained by the fact that, in general, these are the best pitchers in the league. Only an average of 3 per team qualify and that means the other 2 starters are pitching less because they aren't as good.

Here's the chart of ERA vs. OPS Against for the NL so far:

If you remember the AL chart, the NL group is actually a bit tighter—not so many outliers. The most obvious one is Glendon Rusch, way up there at the top right in red. Sure he's not pitching well, but his ERA should be more like 6.3 instead of 7.8. Given that he's also getting 1.2 runs of support less than league average from the not-so-vaunted Brewers offense, he's a big -2.5 in the luck column. Not as bad as a Tigers starter, but worse than everyone else in the majors. This doesn't mean he's a good pitcher, but sadly for him, bad luck tends to feed on itself.

Contrast Rusch with Tomo Ohka of the Expos. They have almost identical OPS numbers (.933 Rusch, .928 Ohka) but Ohka has given up 16 homers to Rusch's 8 and a SLG of .565 vs. Rusch's .521. On the other hand, Rusch hurts himself with walks and more hits—he has allowed opponents a .412 OBP vs. Ohka's .363. At first glance, it appears that giving up all the offense in home runs (most of which are solo shots) is much better than giving up a ton of walks and singles. That would also help to explain the Ryan Franklin phenomenon in Seattle—he has also given up an ungodly number of homers so far, but is doing very well, thank you, as he has given up precious little else.

Other notables on the low side are Paul Wilson of the Reds, Jae Weong Seo of the Mets and Miguel Batista of the Expos. On the high side we have the Rockies' Aaron Cook, the Astros Wade Miller and Brian Lawrence of the Padres.

Just as a side note, I highlighted Kevin Brown down at the bottom. Just in case you hadn't noticed—he's back. Now if he can just avoid pulling a groin muscle getting out of the company jet. I've also shown Bret Tomko of the Cardinals, who is one of the worst pitchers in the league, almost defining the top end of the curve,

Of those notables, Miller and Seo have an almost identical OPS against, so let's see if there are any conclusions we can draw from their relative numbers. Miller has allowed an OPS of .701 to Seo's .701. And his AVG/OBP/SLG breakdown is .254/.331/.370, while Seo's is .269/.307/.401. Both are excellent, but Miller has given up 46 runs (ERA 4.70) to Seo's 33 (2.88 ERA) in only a couple of innings more. The biggest gap is that Miller has walked 34 while Seo has given out a mere 17 free passes.

Once again, it appears that walks hurt you more than slugging. Home runs aren't a factor as Miller has allowed only 6 to Seo's 5. Miller has -.9 runs of ERA luck based on his OPS, while Seo has +.9 runs of luck—or is it all luck? Interestingly, both are getting half a run less run support than average, making Miller very unlucky, hence the 4-7 record, while Seo is marginally lucky, but has only a 4-2 record to show for it in 12 starts.

It looks to me like there are some factors here that are some systemic factors here that show for a pitcher that OBP is the much stronger driver of bar looking into more and I may well dot hat with data from the last couple of years.

About the author

Dave Paisley is currently under investigation for carrying a concealed weapon into the ballpark. Sympathize that lots of folks have no idea what a slide rule is for to drdjp@strikethree.com.