Top 10 Norm Quotes - RIP George Wendt

OK, let’s play eye doctor for a moment. I’m going to give you three lists of the top five pitching seasons since the Deadball Era. They will all be impressive.

You decide which list you like best:

List No. 1:

1. Pedro Martinez, 1999. He went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and had a bananas 313-37 strikeout to walk.

2. Steve Carlton, 1972. That famous season when Carlton won 27 games and the Phillies won just 59.

3. Bert Blyleven, 1973. Wut. Yep, this one comes a bit out of nowhere, but Be Home Byleven pitched 325 innings with nine shutouts, a 258-67 strikeout-to-walk and a 2.52 ERA.

4. Roger Clemens, 1997. The Rocket’s revenge tour began with this awe-inspiring season — 21-7, 2.05 ERA, led the league in basically everything.

5. Randy Johnson, 2001. Big Unit at his best. He went 21-6 with 372 (!) strikeouts, a 2.32 ERA, he led the Diamondbacks to the World Series and was named co-Sports Illustrated Sports Person of the year with Curt Schilling.

OK, pretty fair list, wouldn’t you say? Now, let’s turn the dial on that optometrist thingy and show you the next option:

List No. 2:

1. Dwight Gooden, 1985. Doc’s masterpiece. Every Mets fan of a certain age can recite the numbers off the top of their head — 24-4, 1.53 ERA, winner of the pitcher triple crown.

2. Steve Carlton, 1972. Yep, lefty is No. 2 on this list too.

3. Roger Clemens, 1997. Rocket won the Cy Young Award, but not unanimously. Randy Johnson got two votes, and I’ll give you 10 guesses who got the other. If you guessed Randy Myers (even as your 10th guess), you, uh, know an awful lot about baseball.

4. Wilbur Wood, 1971. Wut. Well, Wilbah threw 334 innings with a 1.91 ERA, so, yeah, that’s pretty good.

5. Pedro Martinez, 2000. Pedro is on both of our lists … but in different years. In 2000, Martinez had more conventionally great stats — 1.74 ERA, MLB record 291 ERA+, etc.

Again, a wonderful list. Now, let me turn the dial one more time and give you a final choice:

List No. 3

1. Bob Gibson, 1968. Gibby’s famous 1.12 ERA season — he threw 13 shutouts in 34 starts.

2. Pedro Martinez, 2000. This list goes with Pedro’s more conventionally great season.

3. Luis Tiant, 1968. One of the most underrated seasons in baseball history; Yes, it was the year of the pitcher, but Tiant went 21-9 and his 1.60 ERA is the lowest in the American League since the end of Deadball.

4. Sandy Koufax, 1965. It’s nearly impossible to choose between Koufax’s three titanic seasons — 1963, 1965 and 1966 — but this was the year Koufax’s struck out 382 batters. He also went 26-8 with a 2.04 ERA.

5.  Tom Seaver, 1971. Tom Terrific struck out 289 and had a 1.71 ERA. He did not win the Cy Young Award, however. That went to Fergie Jenkins whose ERA was more than a full run higher, but he won 24 games (and completed 30!).

OK, now you have your choice. All three lists are fantastic, there are no wrong answers here. But the question for you is: Which of these lists speaks most to you when thinking about the greatest seasons in the last 100-plus years?

OK, now I can tell you about each list — you might have figured all of this out already — and why I’m asking:

List 1 is the top five seasons by Fangraphs WAR. Pedro’s 1999 season is the near-perfect Fangraphs season; as you know, fWAR is only concerned with a pitcher’s strikeouts, walks, and home runs allowed. In 1999, Pedro Martinez struck out 313, walked 37, and allowed just nine home runs. It would be an otherworldly season in any year … but to do that in 1999, when sluggers ruled, it’s a season all its own.

List 2 is the top five seasons by Baseball Reference WAR. Dwight Gooden’s 1985 season is the standard here. Why Gooden and not Gibson, who had an even lower ERA? Well, two things: First, Baseball Reference concerns itself with runs allowed, not earned runs. Total runs. Gibson in 1968 allowed 11 unearned runs; Doc only gave up four. Second, Baseball Reference strongly considers the context of the time. Nobody scored runs in 1968. Gibson is still high on this list (eighth), but it’s Gooden on top.

And finally, List 3? That’s built on average Game Score. You will know that we’ve been playing around with the idea of using Average Game Score as our go-to, simple pitching stat. Bill James came up with Game Score many decades ago; a deceptively simple formula where:

You start with 50 points:

Here’s what you add:

• 1 point for every out recorded. Simple.

• 1 point for every strikeout. Self-explanatory.

• 2 points for every inning finished after the fourth. The idea is to reward longer starts. A nine-inning complete game will net you 10 bonus points.

And here’s what you subtract:

• -1 points for every walk. Walks Will Haunt!

• -2 points for every hit allowed.

• -2 points for every unearned run allowed. Pitchers don’t get off scot-free in this system for giving up unearned runs.

• -4 points for every earned run allowed.

That’s it. That’s Bill’s whole system. Now, I should say that Tom Tango has made some refinements with his own Game Score Version 2.0, which you can find (sort of) on Fangraphs. We can talk about the different systems in the days ahead (Tango starts with 40 points, but gives more points for each out, treats earned runs and runs as the same, and takes away six points for every home run allowed) … but for now, let’s keep things simple and stick with Bill’s version.*

It’s remarkable to me how well Game Score holds up, particularly for such a simple system. Any of us can pick a game, say, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s fantastic start on Tuesday, and do the Game Score math in about 20 seconds.

We start with 50 points.

He pitched 7 innings: That’s 21 outs (21 points) plus 3 bonus innings (6 points).

That gives him 77 points. He struck out nine, so add that nine to the total: That’s 86.

He didn’t give up any runs, so zero subtracted there.

He did walk two (-2 points). He also gave up one hit (-2 points).

So his Game Score is 82. Isn’t that satisfying? I’ve been thinking about how much fun I had as a kid calculating batting average or figuring out ERA. You can’t do that with almost any baseball stat these days — they’re so complicated and have so many components. It’s cool to let someone else do the math, but I miss a little DYI baseball.

And with Game Scored, you can do the math with ease.

Oh, and by the way, 82 is also a FANTASTIC Game Score. One way to think of Game Score that Tango has offered (though I don’t know if this is Bill-approved) is that it works as an approximate win percentage predictor. Like an 82 Game Score should lead to the team winning about 82% of the time.

Let’s see if it works!

Since 2001 — so that last five seasons — there have been 71 games where the starter had exactly an 82 Game Score.

Their teams went 63-8 in those 71 games.

That’s actually an 89% win percentage. So pretty darned close!*

Anyway, as we think about fun and easy ways to think about pitching in this new era — with wins and ERA and WAR and K/BB and WHIP and other pitching stats creating a confusing mess of traditional and new — I really think that playing with Game Scores is a nice blend of past and present.

I’m working on making this into something — more to come!

.Kathleen’s Corner

A curated guide of social media silliness and highlights from your favorite chronically online editor:

• Great news for Eagles fans, the tush push survived a vote at Wednesday’s league meeting and remains legal!

• Happy Birthday to Bobby Cox who set the likely unbreakable manager ejection record with 162 ejections in his 29-year career. Here’s an MLB feature on his feat.

• John Oliver had a great segment on Minor League Baseball this week, where they decided to help the Erie SeaWolves with a very special rebrand.

• The D-Backs set themselves up for a devastating loss on Tuesday, walking Freddie Freeman, hitting Will Smith and then allowing a walk-off sac-fly to center field. Oops.