by PJ Axelsson » Tue Feb 14, 2006 5:03 pm
The suspense is killing me. Some food for thought. Nobody seemed interested in this on the ATG page:
[quote:fe9d1bb989]Now I'll preface this by stating that I'm not a stat man. As telling and fun as they are, and as much as they are the heart and soul of this game, I still refuse to think that baseball can be fully explained with numbers. That being said, I'll pull this stuff from the book, "Mind Game" by the Baseball Prospectus:
They have this nifty stat called Runs Allowed Plus (RA+). Basically, it compares how many runs a pitcher allows (earned and unearned) per nine innings to how many a league average pitcher would allow in the same ballpark. An RA+ of 100 is league average, a 120 is 20% better than league average, 200 is twice as good as league average...
Here are the single season best RA+ scores for a pitcher with 150 innings or more since 1890:
Year-pitcher-RA+
2000-Pedro-293
1995-Maddux-278
1913-Johnson-273
1914-Leonard-271
1986-Eichhorn-254
1985-Gooden-245
1994-Maddux-237
1968-Gibson-236
1999-Pedro-225
1997-Clemens-225
1964-Dean Chance-225
1915-Joe Wood-218
1978-Guidry-212
1912-Johnson-208
1997-Maddux-207
1955-Billy Pierce-205
1964-Koufax-204
1971-Seaver-204
1901-Cy Young-204
1996-Kevin Brown-203
Here are the career leaders (listed by rank) for RA+ (1500ip min - not including 2005):
Name-RA+
Pedro-163
Ed Walsh-146
Walter Johnson-145
Lefty Grove-142
Whitey Ford-138
Hoyt Wilhelm-138
Roger Clemens-137
Addie Joss-137
Randy Johnson-137
Sandy Koufax-135
Christy Mathewson-134
Mordecai Brown-134
Carl Hubbell-134
Lefty Gomez-133
Cy Young-133
Pete Alexander-133
Harry Brecheen-133
Greg Maddux-133
Curt Schilling-132
Jim Palmer-132
Another way that they measure a pitcher's effectiveness is to calculate how many more runs a pitcher prevented than the league average pitcher would have in the same ballpark. This is the Runs Prevented stat (RP), calculated by subtracting the pitcher's runs allowed from the park adjusted league runs allowed, multiplyed by innings pitched, and divided by 9.
Single Season leaders:
year-name-RP
1901-Cy Young-116.1
1913-Walter Johnson-96.6
1912-Johnson-65.9
2000-Pedro-84.7
1923-Dolf Luque-84.3
1931-Lefty Grove-82.3
1921-Red Faber-81.8
1997-Clemens-81.1
1904-McGinnity-79.2
1936-Hubbell-79.1
1902-Young-77.8
1940-Feller-77.7
1937-Gomez-77.2
1934-Gomez-76.9
1930-Grove-76.6
1914-George Hendrix-76.4
1903-McGinnity-74.2
1985-Gooden-74.1
1966-Koufax-73
1936-Grove-72.4
Here are the top 29 career RPs post 1890:
Cy Young-1053.2
Walter Johnson-860.6
Kid Nichols-753.6
Lefty Grove-673.2
Roger Clemens-651.5
Pete Alexander-615.7
Warren Spahn-558.5
Christy Mathewson-544.8
Amos Rusie-524.8
Greg Maddux-520.5
Tom Seaver-516.6
Pedro Martinez-484.6
Randy Johnson-477.2
Carl Hubbell-472.5
Bob Feller-462
Jim Palmer-439.5
Eddie Plank-438.4
Whitey Ford-420.9
Ed Walsh-400
Mike Mussina-372.9
Just some food for thought... [/quote:fe9d1bb989]