Judge That Scrub: Pitchers

Derek Zumsteg

You may wonder why your team sucks. Here's an easy way to figure it out. Team slugging far below .432 (AL) or .405 (NL): your team doesn't hit for power, meaning fewer runners scoring and fewer home runs (see Toronto and Montreal). Team on-base percentage far below .345 (AL) or .333 (NL): your team doesn't get on base, making it difficult for runners to score (see Kansas City and Arizona). This almost always means your team can't take a walk. Team ERA far above 4.74 (AL) or 4.40 (NL): Your pitching sucks.

Now that you know what's wrong, it's time to diagnose what exactly is wrong with your pitching staff. Here's an easy way to figure it out: Does your staff include Scott Sanders or Norm Charlton?

Actually, pick up Baseball Weekly (is Griffey on the cover? Of course he is). Look up your team in the back. I'll use two teams picked at random - the Boston Red Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals - to illustrate how to look at pitching stats. What a coincidence! They have just about the best and worst pitching staffs in MLB! Huh.

The Best: Boston

Jeezus Christ, Pedro Martinez is good. He and Bret Saberhagen make this otherwise not-so-good staff look awesome. Unlike batting, pitching offers a single, pretty good measure of pitcher performance in Earned Run Average. ERA, if you don't know, is the number of runs scored that a pitcher is responsible for (errors don't count against him), averaged over nine innings. This is affected a little by team defense and the quality of relief - if a pitcher leaves with the bases loaded and a reliever gets him out of the jam, he gets off without those runs, but if Jeff Nelson relieves him, gives up a base-clearing double and then gets out of the inning, those runs are charged to the first pitcher. But back to the Red Sox. Immediately we can see that Pedro Martinez, with an ERA of 1.88 as of Friday, is incredibly better than the league 4.75. Bret Saberhagen is better with a 3.09, and Derek Lowe should be starting with his 2.79.

Now you can also look at what are often called "secondary" statistics. Two popular ones are WHIP (BB+H/IP), and the K:BB ratio. Both are good, but I prefer just eyeballing the stats, because I'm lazy. Look at that, Pedro has allowed 40 hits, 3 HR, walked 17, and struck out 72. There's a man who controls the game, huh? Damn, that's good. Bret gave up 24 hits, 2 HR, walked 11, and struck out 22. Now, those totals look better, but the difference in K totals tells us that he's not nearly as dominating, and relies on getting his outs the easy way - by letting the team's defense do the work. Derek Lowe, who along with Jason Varitek was stolen from Seattle moments before Heathcliff Slocumb was run out of Boston by angry townsfolk, has given up 23 hits, 1 dinger, walked only 9, and struck out 21. That his starting place in the rotation is even considered shaky is stupid.

Terrible: St. Louis Cardinals

Here's an easy method of losing games: walk batters, give up hits. Give up home runs. Repeat. Cliff Politte, a rookie, has in his 35 innings of action gone 2-2 with a 5.40 ERA, but his secondary stats tell a different story: he allowed 40 hits, six home runs, and walked 15, while striking out 20. Over a batter an inning, and a homer a game, which will catch up to you real quick. Ow. And Kent Mercker sucks, too: his 6.69 ERA, caused in large part by giving up 42 hits and walking 16 while only striking out 15. Giving up more than a hit an inning is baaaaaad. It means runners score a lot. Here's the difference strikeouts can make: Todd Stottlemyre has the same statistics as Cliff Politte: 40 hits, 19 walks, five homers, but he struck out three times as many batters. The result: his ERA is nearly half of Politte's.

Looking at a pitcher's ERA is a good ballpark figure, but always glance at their walks, their hits, homers, and strikeouts, and you'll see the parts that combine to determine a pitcher's worth, and your team's success.

Derek Zumsteg is currently writing a sequel to the popular movie, "Angels in the Outfield". Set in Yankee Stadium, it's tentatively titled "Evil Winged Monkeys in the Outfield". Offer to read a treatment at dmz@strikethree.com.