I don’t know how much of this is Joe’s writing, but Zack Greinke has never been on a team I root for but he is still one of my favorite players. he just really seems like a guy who does not take himself too seriously, but takes his craft very seriously. And you have to admire both.
I'm thinking back to the 70s Angels, before they moved the fences in (a little). 393 to the power alleys, 406 to center. Thick, night, ocean air. Their warning track was where long flyballs went to die. There were lots of soft tossers, and some that were just plain bad that had success there (to an extent). Clyde Wright, Rudy May, etc. Then came Nolan Ryan & Frank Tanana. But the point is, the ballpark is a factor & 70s ballparks, largely, were not hitter friendly parks. The ball is a factor (they hadn't yet decided HRs were important and juiced the ball... at least not to the scale that they would later). There were few, if any, players on steroids. Heck, there weren't that many players that even thought weight lifting was a smart thing to do. If you can keep the ball in play, then yes, you can be a soft tosser. If they're crushing them 420 feet to the opposite field, you have a problem.
You mentioned Nate Cornejo and his 9-17 record with the Tigers in 2003. Might have also mentioned the Tigers were 43-119 that year. Explains his record.
I believe Jeremy Bonderman actually lost 20 games that year, and the only thing really interesting about that Tigers team and just how profoundly BAD they were, was not only IF, but WHICH pitchers were going to lose 20 games.
Actually, Mike Maroth lost 20 games that season. He went 9-21. I’ve had Tigers season tickets since 1995, so I sat through many losses in that utterly miserable year. These six pitchers started most of the games that year. Pitiful group of pitchers.
It's hard to win games when you have no offense behind you. The Tigers were dfl in just about every offensive category that year. They scored 561 runs, 77% of the league average. They batted .241 as a team, worst in the league.
Cornejo had a better winning percentage (0.346) than the Tigers that year (0.265), so that's something (all caveats about the value of a pitcher win still apply, though).
Granted Cornejo was never as good as Roger Craig, but his record did remind me of an old Casey Stengel quote about Craig's 2 years with the Mets. In those 2 years, Craig lost 46 games -24 in '62 and 22 in '63, prompting Stengel's comment: "you've got to be good to lose that many."
This is very interesting. I'm rooting for him. I may even watch a game that he's pitching. I follow the Tigers so they will play KC many times this year.
This K/9IP stat always reminds me of the fact that the guy who has the lowest K/9IP in baseball history (min 1000 innings), Al Spalding at 0.44, also has the highest winning percentage of any pitcher ever (0.795).
A fabulous stat Mark, thanks for sharing. I had to look it up, and the numbers are truly impressive. In his best year of 1874 he went 52-16 and in 617 innings had 31K’s. So Zack has some work to do
You may want to re-read Bill James' article on Mark Fidrych in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. As I recall, in general he found that you cannot be an effective pitcher unless you are at least at the league average for strikeouts per nine innings. Though he wrote that article some 25 years ago, it appears you came to the same conclusion that he did.
I missed Lee when I looked this up yesterday because I had them sorted by total K's in B-R's Stathead search, and there were so many of them that when I sorted the top 100 or whatever Lee didn't even show up, what with only 44 of them.
A perusal of the list of qualified pitchers with K/9 rates of 2.25 and below reveals that guys who pitched to contact had much more interesting nicknames than power pitchers: Not just "Spaceman" but Spec, Stubby, Tiny, Lum, Gentry, Chubby, Spud, Fat Freddie, Watty, General, Sugar, Huck, Heinie, Big Boy, Socks, Eppa, Jute, Ownie, etc. Just reinforces the old adage that strikeouts are both fascist and boring, or at least that it takes a more interesting person to induce grounders, I guess.
Also a guy from 1935 named Jim Walkup who was presumably the first to have a song played on the PA system whenever he came to bat.
I assume Eppa is Eppa Rixey, so I feel compelled to note it actually his given name. B-R says his nickname was Jephtha which is interesting in its own right.
Darn. Thought I had weeded out all the odd given names (Wilcy Moore, Early Wynn, Clise Dudley, Flint Rhem, Ivy Andrews) though this gives me a chance to point out a couple of the better ones I missed the first time around: Peaches Davis (no relation to Big Boy) and Yellow Horse Morris, a Negro Leagues pitcher from the 1920s.
Yellow Horse fanned just 23 batters in 109+ IP for the 1929 Chicago American Giants, whose roster also boasted Frog Halsey, Jelly Gardner, Steel Arm Davis, Double Duty Radcliffe, Mule Suttles and Cool Papa Bell. Man, they really cornered the market on nicknames.
The only reason I know that is because Eppa Rixey III went to my college (well before my time) where he was a basketball star. For a long time I was confused about it and thought little Kenyon College could claim two Hall of Famers - this from a place whose baseball program was once described by the college's own AD as "possibly the least successful program in any sport at any level of the NCAA." Alas, only one. (And it isn't clear he should really count.)
Kenyon may not be much for baseball, but their famous alum list is pretty impressive, including Paul Newman, Bill Veeck, William Rehnquist, Bill Watterson, Jonathan Winters, Edwin Stanton, and Laura Hillenbrand, among others.
That's great. I love it when a college doesn't take itself too seriously.
When I was looking for schools ~30 years ago, Ursinus College had a flier that included a bunch of ways people mispronounce their name, the last of which was "Earth Science". I used the line on an Ursinus alumnus (who had played baseball for them) while we were coaching little league last summer, but he did not find it as funny as I did. Or like, at all. :-/
Anyway, speaking of terrible sports programs, my brother went to the University of Rochester in the late 1990s, and their football team was abysmal, having won like one game in the previous 3 seasons or something. Given that they were already in Division III, i.e. the bottom rung in NCAA, and probably the worst team in Div III, he figured that if you were the last guy on the bench for *that* team, an argument could be made that you were the Worst Football Player in the Nation.
Also: How the hell do you get a nickname like "Jeptha"???
My favorite example of an effective non-strikeout pitcher of the 21st century is Chien-Ming Wang in 2006: 33 GS, 218 IP, 76 K, #2 in AL Cy Young voting.
Feels like an era from a distant past—not one I lived through as an adult.
Wang was fun to watch, though he did it with that heavy sinker, and even then he struck out almost a batter more per inning than Greinke is doing.
For his part, Greink's sinker has gotten destroyed. Baseball Savant says he's only thrown it 4 times but it's gotten hit all four. Which presumably is why he hasn't thrown it five times.
Incidentally, per a graph in Ben Lindbergh's Ringer piece yesterday, the new dead ball isn't that dead: the HR/BIP rate for April was right between the average of the DH Era and the Wild Card Era and in line with the numbers between 2002 and 2015. The spike of the last 5 years was completely out of line with anything that had happened before.
Yep, I read that same article and recommend it. The ball isn't dead at all, it only seems that way because it's being compared to recent aberrant years like 2019. In historical terms, the ball is just as lively as it should be.
I wonder how hitting approach could factor in. As the intent of hitting a home run increases (increased launch angle, no 2-strike approach to put the ball in play, drafting and promoting players due to (potential) power), we maybe shouldn't expect home runs to get back to earlier times. We may need to wait for the season to advance to account for weather as indicated by the data on impact of the humidor with Oakland being the extreme case. There is data that suggests in most parks, a likely home run ball (based on exit velocity and launch angle) is not travelling as far this year. But yes, SSS must be considered.
Taylor and Lopez and Witt have played strong D. Merrifield isn't terrible through the middle of the field at 2b. Grienke is pitching to contact for sure. I WOULD say that ZG is losing a step, EXCEPT he still mixes speeds and locations like a master.
As you undoubtedly know, all pitchers lose a step at some point. Leave it to Zack to figure it out. Gotta love Zack. I'm not a Royals fan but I am a ZG fan and have followed and rooted for him wherever he went from his first go round with KC.
Ross Grimsley ... Can't pass up a chance to mention the glorious nickname "Scuz." Folks in the 1970s were either blow dried pinups or looked to have just finished a series of oil changes. Grimsley was not part of the former group.
Scuz was an effective pitcher for a while without striking anyone out. But much of his result was from having Belanger, Grich and Blair up the middle together with an assist from Brooksie at third. How much of Greinke 2022 is defense?
I would guess with the shifts these days that everybody's defense is nearly as effective as Grich, Blair, and Belanger (in their non-shifted positions). Not sure how to test that theory. Maybe opposing team BABIP?
We had this discussion on a recent Joe post. DER (percentage of balls in play turned into outs) isn't significantly different now than it was in the heyday of Weaver's fine fielding fowl. That is, the average isn't better, so I'd suggest that no, the average shifted team of today isn't as valuable defensively as the excellent fielding of then.
Separately, beyond DER, the value can't be as high simply because there are magnitudes fewer balls in play -- many more strikeouts -- so a defender with range as good as Blade's was in the 1970s, through no fault of his own, creates many fewer outs for his team.
I don’t know how much of this is Joe’s writing, but Zack Greinke has never been on a team I root for but he is still one of my favorite players. he just really seems like a guy who does not take himself too seriously, but takes his craft very seriously. And you have to admire both.
Giving me big Richard Bleier vibes
I'm thinking back to the 70s Angels, before they moved the fences in (a little). 393 to the power alleys, 406 to center. Thick, night, ocean air. Their warning track was where long flyballs went to die. There were lots of soft tossers, and some that were just plain bad that had success there (to an extent). Clyde Wright, Rudy May, etc. Then came Nolan Ryan & Frank Tanana. But the point is, the ballpark is a factor & 70s ballparks, largely, were not hitter friendly parks. The ball is a factor (they hadn't yet decided HRs were important and juiced the ball... at least not to the scale that they would later). There were few, if any, players on steroids. Heck, there weren't that many players that even thought weight lifting was a smart thing to do. If you can keep the ball in play, then yes, you can be a soft tosser. If they're crushing them 420 feet to the opposite field, you have a problem.
Nate Cornejo, the pride of Wellington, Kansas. I believe his father was pitched in the league.
Strikeouts are boring, besides that they're fascist.
Ground balls are more Democratic!!
You mentioned Nate Cornejo and his 9-17 record with the Tigers in 2003. Might have also mentioned the Tigers were 43-119 that year. Explains his record.
I believe Jeremy Bonderman actually lost 20 games that year, and the only thing really interesting about that Tigers team and just how profoundly BAD they were, was not only IF, but WHICH pitchers were going to lose 20 games.
Actually, Mike Maroth lost 20 games that season. He went 9-21. I’ve had Tigers season tickets since 1995, so I sat through many losses in that utterly miserable year. These six pitchers started most of the games that year. Pitiful group of pitchers.
Mike Maroth- 9-21
Jeremy Bonderman- 6-19
Nate Cornejo- 6-17
Adam Bernero- 1-12
Gary Knotts- 3-8
Matt Roney- 1-9
It's hard to win games when you have no offense behind you. The Tigers were dfl in just about every offensive category that year. They scored 561 runs, 77% of the league average. They batted .241 as a team, worst in the league.
Tiger pitchers ERA was 5.30. They allowed 928 runs. No offense is going to overcome that.
Cornejo had a better winning percentage (0.346) than the Tigers that year (0.265), so that's something (all caveats about the value of a pitcher win still apply, though).
If MLB really wanted to cut down on three true outcome baseball, Greinke would not only get a medal, but a $10M bonus.
So reading between the lines what Zack is trying to do is a good thing for the Royals?
Granted Cornejo was never as good as Roger Craig, but his record did remind me of an old Casey Stengel quote about Craig's 2 years with the Mets. In those 2 years, Craig lost 46 games -24 in '62 and 22 in '63, prompting Stengel's comment: "you've got to be good to lose that many."
This is very interesting. I'm rooting for him. I may even watch a game that he's pitching. I follow the Tigers so they will play KC many times this year.
This K/9IP stat always reminds me of the fact that the guy who has the lowest K/9IP in baseball history (min 1000 innings), Al Spalding at 0.44, also has the highest winning percentage of any pitcher ever (0.795).
A fabulous stat Mark, thanks for sharing. I had to look it up, and the numbers are truly impressive. In his best year of 1874 he went 52-16 and in 617 innings had 31K’s. So Zack has some work to do
You may want to re-read Bill James' article on Mark Fidrych in the New Historical Baseball Abstract. As I recall, in general he found that you cannot be an effective pitcher unless you are at least at the league average for strikeouts per nine innings. Though he wrote that article some 25 years ago, it appears you came to the same conclusion that he did.
Good one -- I was going to post about that Fidrych article. A pitcher just can't get around the Voros McCracken DIPS principle in the long term.
Thanks for the hat-tip, Joe. ;-)
I missed Lee when I looked this up yesterday because I had them sorted by total K's in B-R's Stathead search, and there were so many of them that when I sorted the top 100 or whatever Lee didn't even show up, what with only 44 of them.
A perusal of the list of qualified pitchers with K/9 rates of 2.25 and below reveals that guys who pitched to contact had much more interesting nicknames than power pitchers: Not just "Spaceman" but Spec, Stubby, Tiny, Lum, Gentry, Chubby, Spud, Fat Freddie, Watty, General, Sugar, Huck, Heinie, Big Boy, Socks, Eppa, Jute, Ownie, etc. Just reinforces the old adage that strikeouts are both fascist and boring, or at least that it takes a more interesting person to induce grounders, I guess.
Also a guy from 1935 named Jim Walkup who was presumably the first to have a song played on the PA system whenever he came to bat.
I assume Eppa is Eppa Rixey, so I feel compelled to note it actually his given name. B-R says his nickname was Jephtha which is interesting in its own right.
Darn. Thought I had weeded out all the odd given names (Wilcy Moore, Early Wynn, Clise Dudley, Flint Rhem, Ivy Andrews) though this gives me a chance to point out a couple of the better ones I missed the first time around: Peaches Davis (no relation to Big Boy) and Yellow Horse Morris, a Negro Leagues pitcher from the 1920s.
Yellow Horse fanned just 23 batters in 109+ IP for the 1929 Chicago American Giants, whose roster also boasted Frog Halsey, Jelly Gardner, Steel Arm Davis, Double Duty Radcliffe, Mule Suttles and Cool Papa Bell. Man, they really cornered the market on nicknames.
The only reason I know that is because Eppa Rixey III went to my college (well before my time) where he was a basketball star. For a long time I was confused about it and thought little Kenyon College could claim two Hall of Famers - this from a place whose baseball program was once described by the college's own AD as "possibly the least successful program in any sport at any level of the NCAA." Alas, only one. (And it isn't clear he should really count.)
Kenyon may not be much for baseball, but their famous alum list is pretty impressive, including Paul Newman, Bill Veeck, William Rehnquist, Bill Watterson, Jonathan Winters, Edwin Stanton, and Laura Hillenbrand, among others.
That's great. I love it when a college doesn't take itself too seriously.
When I was looking for schools ~30 years ago, Ursinus College had a flier that included a bunch of ways people mispronounce their name, the last of which was "Earth Science". I used the line on an Ursinus alumnus (who had played baseball for them) while we were coaching little league last summer, but he did not find it as funny as I did. Or like, at all. :-/
Anyway, speaking of terrible sports programs, my brother went to the University of Rochester in the late 1990s, and their football team was abysmal, having won like one game in the previous 3 seasons or something. Given that they were already in Division III, i.e. the bottom rung in NCAA, and probably the worst team in Div III, he figured that if you were the last guy on the bench for *that* team, an argument could be made that you were the Worst Football Player in the Nation.
Also: How the hell do you get a nickname like "Jeptha"???
His SABR bio says it was given by a sportswriter, and he didn't like it. Jeptha is an Old Testament name from the Book of Judges.
Definitely wondering the same thing about "Jeptha"
My favorite example of an effective non-strikeout pitcher of the 21st century is Chien-Ming Wang in 2006: 33 GS, 218 IP, 76 K, #2 in AL Cy Young voting.
Feels like an era from a distant past—not one I lived through as an adult.
Wang was fun to watch, though he did it with that heavy sinker, and even then he struck out almost a batter more per inning than Greinke is doing.
For his part, Greink's sinker has gotten destroyed. Baseball Savant says he's only thrown it 4 times but it's gotten hit all four. Which presumably is why he hasn't thrown it five times.
Incidentally, per a graph in Ben Lindbergh's Ringer piece yesterday, the new dead ball isn't that dead: the HR/BIP rate for April was right between the average of the DH Era and the Wild Card Era and in line with the numbers between 2002 and 2015. The spike of the last 5 years was completely out of line with anything that had happened before.
Yep, I read that same article and recommend it. The ball isn't dead at all, it only seems that way because it's being compared to recent aberrant years like 2019. In historical terms, the ball is just as lively as it should be.
I wonder how hitting approach could factor in. As the intent of hitting a home run increases (increased launch angle, no 2-strike approach to put the ball in play, drafting and promoting players due to (potential) power), we maybe shouldn't expect home runs to get back to earlier times. We may need to wait for the season to advance to account for weather as indicated by the data on impact of the humidor with Oakland being the extreme case. There is data that suggests in most parks, a likely home run ball (based on exit velocity and launch angle) is not travelling as far this year. But yes, SSS must be considered.
Taylor and Lopez and Witt have played strong D. Merrifield isn't terrible through the middle of the field at 2b. Grienke is pitching to contact for sure. I WOULD say that ZG is losing a step, EXCEPT he still mixes speeds and locations like a master.
It's a real FIP Rubik's cube.
As you undoubtedly know, all pitchers lose a step at some point. Leave it to Zack to figure it out. Gotta love Zack. I'm not a Royals fan but I am a ZG fan and have followed and rooted for him wherever he went from his first go round with KC.
For sure - he has less velocity but he has counteracted it with even less than less velocity and seems to be hitting his spots more often than not.
It's weird, ZG is weird, baseball is weird—and I am here for all of it. Regression to the mean comes for us all.
FIP of 4.04, per Fangraphs. Will love to see if he can keep this up.
Really, even having an FIP around 4 with as few K's as that (K's make up a pretty big part of FIP) is kind of amazing in itself.
Ross Grimsley ... Can't pass up a chance to mention the glorious nickname "Scuz." Folks in the 1970s were either blow dried pinups or looked to have just finished a series of oil changes. Grimsley was not part of the former group.
Scuz was an effective pitcher for a while without striking anyone out. But much of his result was from having Belanger, Grich and Blair up the middle together with an assist from Brooksie at third. How much of Greinke 2022 is defense?
I would guess with the shifts these days that everybody's defense is nearly as effective as Grich, Blair, and Belanger (in their non-shifted positions). Not sure how to test that theory. Maybe opposing team BABIP?
We had this discussion on a recent Joe post. DER (percentage of balls in play turned into outs) isn't significantly different now than it was in the heyday of Weaver's fine fielding fowl. That is, the average isn't better, so I'd suggest that no, the average shifted team of today isn't as valuable defensively as the excellent fielding of then.
Separately, beyond DER, the value can't be as high simply because there are magnitudes fewer balls in play -- many more strikeouts -- so a defender with range as good as Blade's was in the 1970s, through no fault of his own, creates many fewer outs for his team.
Really good info, thanks!