Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson at Their Best, Today
Among others, baseball’s Hall of Fame will prepare to welcome Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson. For them, there was zero suspense: Hall of Famers don’t get more automatic, and as easy as it is to focus on the fact that neither player was unanimous, the percentage matters less than the ultimate outcome. The voting process is a little bit broken, but it would have to be in complete and utter shambles to deny Martinez or Johnson entry — and they’ll no longer have to appear on any ballot. Two of the very greatest ever have been successfully and swiftly voted into the place intended to recognize the very greatest ever.
Of course, neither pitcher was a borderline candidate. Every so often the game has players who are just exceptional, and when you go into the data, you stumble upon fun facts proving said exceptional-ness. For example, let’s consider starting pitcher strikeout rates from 1999. The top of the list, with a 100-inning minimum:
- Pedro Martinez, 37.5% strikeouts
- Randy Johnson, 33.7%
- Tim Hudson, 22.8%
That’s stupid. That leaderboard is stupid. It doesn’t make sense that pitchers could be so good. Not as starters, and not for as long as they were.
I don’t need to tell you that Pedro ranks in the top 20 all-time in starting-pitcher WAR, or that he ranks in the top-25 in RA9-WAR. I don’t need to tell you that Randy ranks in the top five all-time in starting-pitcher WAR, or that he ranks in the top 10 in RA9-WAR. I don’t need to tell you that Pedro has the lowest starter FIP- ever. And the second-lowest starter ERA- ever. Randy shows up just a little bit worse. Here’s something for you: Between the ages of 25 and 31, Pedro posted a 50 FIP- and a 47 ERA-. The second-best marks between those same ages: 64 and 58. Pedro’s peak was inconceivable for its extremity. Randy’s peak was differently extreme, in that it lasted longer. This is an unnecessary paragraph because nothing has to be argued. There’s no case to be made — literally everyone’s in agreement that Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson were extremely talented and effective major-league pitchers. Why summarize what we already remember?
It’s sexier to just look at moving images.
That’s better. That’s the stuff that allowed Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson to be Hall-of-Fame pitchers. Pedro was known for his location, and Randy was known for being overpowering; the dominance really shows up in the strikeouts. For his career, Pedro’s strikeout rate was 67% higher than the league average. Randy? Seventy-five percent higher.
That’s getting into something I want to explore. What we don’t need are more career summaries. But I want to try a little experiment. It’s easy enough to identify the seasons during which Pedro and Randy were at their best. Pedro, for example, owns the lowest single-season starter ERA- ever. He also owns the lowest single-season starter FIP- ever, and it was a different season than the first. Of the seven all-time-lowest single-season starter FIP- marks, three are owned by Pedro, and three are owned by Randy. You get the point. The thing about this is, eras have changed. Most specifically, strikeouts are way up, relative to where they used to be. So what might peak Pedro Martinez and peak Randy Johnson have done in 2014?
For your convenience, I’ll embed some graphs. Featured: K+ and BB+, which are simply pitcher K% or BB% over the league starter K% or BB% in the same year. I’ve included only starting data, for seasons in which the pitchers threw at least 100 innings as starters, and I’ve arranged the graphs in descending order of K+. Pedro first:
In his best strikeout year — 1999 — Pedro posted a K+ of 2.48. That is, his strikeout rate was 248% the American League starting-pitcher average. Since 1950, that stands as the No. 1 single-season K+. You’ll note, also, that Pedro hardly walked anybody. His success plan was simple: instead of giving up hits and walks, he would just not do that, and he would accomplish that goal by just striking a bunch of people out. In four different seasons — four consecutive seasons, between 1999 – 2002 — Pedro at least doubled the league strikeout rate. His second-lowest career K+ was 1.36.
As for Randy:
In his best strikeout year — 1995 — Randy posted a K+ of 2.33. Since 1950, that stands as the No. 2 single-season K+. Seven times, Randy at least doubled the league strikeout rate. His lowest career K+ was 1.29. In just four of 18 qualifying seasons did Randy finish with a K+ below 1.50, meaning he was almost always at least 50% higher than the mean.
For fun, let’s take some of this information and adjust it for the 2014 MLB environment. Take peak Pedro. In 1999, he finished with a 2.48 K+, and a 0.49 BB+. For the sake of comparison, remember Clayton Kershaw? Remember how good Clayton Kershaw just was? He finished with a 1.64 K+, and a 0.58 BB+. Kershaw struck out 32% of hitters, and he walked just 4.1%. Peak Pedro adjusts to a strikeout rate of 48%, with a walk rate of 3.5%. That yields an adjusted K-BB% of 44.5%. Last year’s league-best K-BB% belonged to Aroldis Chapman, at 40.6%. Adjusted Pedro beats that. He would’ve finished with baseball’s second-highest strikeout rate, but he also would’ve had Sean Doolittle’s walk rate.
In that insane 1999 season, Pedro wound up with a 28 FIP-. This is easier to consider, because it doesn’t require any era adjustments. Last season, Chapman had a 23 FIP-, and Wade Davis had a 32 FIP-. Pedro in 1999 was essentially a starting version of last year’s Aroldis Chapman or Wade Davis. We’re all wired to better remember recent history. Pedro hasn’t been at his peak for a while. This is what his peak was. He was the best reliever in baseball, except as a starting pitcher.
In three different years, all in a row, Pedro adjusts to a strikeout rate north of 40%. In those same years, he also adjusts to a K-BB% of at least 40%. I noted before that, over seven years in a row as a starter, Pedro posted a 50 FIP-. Last year Craig Kimbrel had a 50 FIP-. Pedro then, in a sense, was a starting version of Craig Kimbrel for seven years. That’s Peak Pedro Martinez, translated into the modern era.
I almost feel bad for covering Pedro first, because it’s hard for anyone to compare. Randy Johnson didn’t achieve Pedro’s highest of highs. But he did pitch more, and he was excellent for longer. Randy had those seven years where he at least doubled the league strikeout rate. Another three times, he almost doubled it. Let’s work with Randy’s 1995 season. We’re not even considering his playoffs. That year, he finished with a 2.33 K+, and a 0.82 BB+. Peak Randy adjusts to a strikeout rate of 45%, with a walk rate of 5.9%. That yields an adjusted K-BB% of 39.1%. That puts Randy, somewhat appropriately, in Chapman’s company. Aroldis Chapman, now, is our best approximation of Randy Johnson, then. Except that Chapman throws one inning at a time. Randy averaged more than seven innings a game.
In that 1995 season, Randy wound up with a 45 FIP-. Last season, that would’ve put him right in between Dellin Betances and Sean Doolittle. Clayton Kershaw registered as the best starter, at 51. Randy Johnson had three years that were better than that, and another two that weren’t much worse. Randy Johnson’s 10th-best FIP- as a starting pitcher was 70. His 10th-best ERA- was 74. Yu Darvish just finished at 71 and 76, respectively.
Just to round it out: again, last year Kershaw led big-league starters with a 1.64 K+. Randy Johnson had 12 starting seasons better than that, strictly in terms of strikeouts. That makes a dozen seasons that would’ve translated to a 2014 strikeout rate of at least 35%. Randy’s lowest translated strikeout rate is 24.9%, based on his 2006 with the Yankees. Last season, Jon Lester had a strikeout rate of exactly 24.9%. That was Randy Johnson at his least-whiffy.
But I intended here to write about peaks. Randy Johnson’s worst translated strikeout rate doesn’t represent his peak. At his peak, he was on the level of peak Clayton Kershaw, and sometimes a little bit better. His strikeouts were vaguely Chapman-esque, relatively speaking. As for Pedro Martinez? Randy topped out with a 45 FIP-. Pedro had two marks significantly lower than that, and another time he finished at 46. Translating Pedro’s 1999 to the season that just happened, he might’ve struck out almost half the batters he faced. Also, he hardly would’ve walked hardly anyone. In 2000 and 2001, Pedro was hardly any worse. In other surrounding years, he was hardly any worse.
The simplest way to understand this is, when they were at their best, Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson pitched like elite-level relievers, except for several innings at a time. Six, seven, eight, nine innings at a time. Think back to how it felt to watch the Royals bullpen go to work in the playoffs. Now imagine that bullpen pitching almost a whole game. That’s why, in 1999, when Pedro Martinez started, the Red Sox went 24-5. That’s why, in 1995, when Randy Johnson started, the Mariners went 27-3. Over Pedro’s best seven years, teams went 136-63 in his starts, winning 68% of the time. They won 52% of the time otherwise. As for Randy, in his starts, teams won 73% of the time between 1995 and 2002. They won 52% of the time otherwise.
You’ll notice none of those numbers are 100%. There’s no such thing as a guaranteed win, no matter who you have taking the mound. But a win has seldom been more likely than it was with peak Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson. Not only is that a good way to make the Hall of Fame — that’s a good way to make the Hall of Fame without any sort of argument.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
So what hat does Randy wear on the plaque? More career games with Sea than any other, but 4 of his top 5 years with AZ. Actually it’s not much of a debate is it? I guess I’m just a Mariners fan hoping against hope here…
Agree. There’s no debate. He’ll be wearing pinstripes. 🙂
The DBacks did have pinstripes on their unis during Randy’s time there.
Yankees it is, then.
Yah Bobby I am a M’s fan too and would love to see Randy in the Hall as a Mariner but he had his best years with Zona plus the World Series win….but hey next year Griffey goes in and we will officially be on the board!
It was only this season that Felix passed Randy as the all-time WAR leader for Mariners pitchers.
As for the D-Backs, he still is ahead of Webb and Schilling….combined.
Expos!
“Randy Johnson’s 10th-best FIP- as a starting pitcher was 70. His 10th-best ERA- was 74. Yu Darvish just finished at 71 and 76, respectively.”
This, to me, was the most amazing stat in the piece. But trying to pick one amazing stat from this piece is like trying to pick a Pedro/Randy season. Even the 10th-best is still amazing.
Here’s one to ponder:
What do you get if you combine Pedro up through 2000 with RJ for 2001 and after?
Answer: A 94 WAR pitcher who didn’t throw a single inning between ages 29 and 37.
His success plan was simple: instead of giving up hits and walks, he would just not do that
I wonder why more pitchers don’t adopt this plan.
If you give up fewer runs than your opponent, you tend to win the game.
This is what I always think of the “pitched to the score” argument for pitcher wins. When someone says a pitcher “stepped up when his team needed him” and got the win, I always think, what, he just decided not to give up hits and walks when he didn’t get run support, but when he did, meh, let’s go easy on him.
No, when a guy can just decide not to allow baserunners, he just never allows them, and he’s Pedro Martinez.
Ted Williams always talked about hitting to the score and the count and that sort of thing, and how modern hitters chose not to. I tend to think that while maybe Ted Williams could make all sorts of constructive changes, other people can’t.
“I became a good pitcher when I stopped trying to make them miss the ball and started trying to make them hit it.” – Sandy Koufax
This reminds me of some goaltending advice I gave out after a very great year.
People asked how I did it and I told them “I just tried to stay between the ball and the net.”.
🙂
I have no clue why RJ should have gotten more votes than Pedro.
I don’t want to turn this into an anti Johnson thing bc he was extremely dominant at his peak, but an argument could be made that hanging around into his mid 40s enabled him to compile some pretty gaudy numbers and had he retired around 40/41 like most have done, the numbers would be somewhat less impressive. Heck, Mussina hangs around another 2 or 3 seasons to get past 300 and he goes from mid 20s% support to an automatic HOFer.
The process is just incredibly flawed… and that doesn’t even get to the PED issue. They should just wipe the entire slate clean – nuke the entire voting body – and start from scratch by selecting a voting body of qualified people who actually know something about the game.
Pedro got dinged for the Zimmer thing, etc.
That may have been part of it, but I think Pedro really got dinged for appearing to not be durable and having ‘only’ 219 career wins. Some of the dork-heads out there probably don’t see a ton of difference between Pedro and Smoltz…. unfortunately
I too think Pedro lost a bit from:
(1) the Zimmer incident; and
(2) lower counting stats like wins and innings pitched.
Not saying that makes sense to me or that I wouldn’t have voted for him because of this (I would have), but that is exactly what I think happened. I thought of both of these factors immediately after seeing his vote total.
I also wonder if there were any strategic votes. Why bother voting for Johnson/Martinez when they were clearly getting in, but other worthy candidates were in danger of falling off the ballot?
If I were a voter, there’s a good chance that’s what I would have done.
Are people really that salty over the Zimmer thing? What was Pedro supposed to do exactly? Zimmer was charging him.
What he was NOT supposed to do was to grab a 72-year-old man with a metal plate in his head by that head and then throw him to the ground hard.
If you are an elite athlete who is being attacked by a 72-year-old man, the correct response is to gently disengage and walk away. Not do something that might have killed the guy and that did result in him being carried off to a hospital on a stretcher.
Clearly, he should have grabbed the ball and beaned Zimmer instead. What’s the point of having a ranged attack if you can’t use it when you need it?
Deliberately bean an old man with a metal plate in his head during a fight? That’s just a manslaughter charge waiting to happen.
Why would you penalize a guy for putting up 3.7 fWAR in his age 45 season?
Exactly. In his decline years (his age 41-45 seasons), Johnson pitched 767.3 innings and put up a 13.5 fWAR, 12.3 bWAR. That’s certainly not elite, but it’s very impressive for a guy to be an above-average starter until age 45. I say that should contribute to his HoF qualifications.
Now what doesn’t impress me is someone like Pete Rose, who was a useless player for his last 7 seasons (1.2 fWAR, -1.4 bWAR in 3,694 PA’s). That was just his egotism. It helped his gaudy counting stats, but didn’t contribute to his team winning. I don’t think a player should get credit for that kind of thing.
My last 7 seasons were pretty crappy, too.
Yeah, isn’t Nolan Ryan unanimously praised for pitching in his 40s?
It seems very wrong to describe 41-45 as “decline years”. Who begins their decline at 41?
Wasn’t Rose also a manager of the teams he was on those last few years? I seem to recall he platooned himself. I could be wrong.
Speaking of Rose, go to the all-time leaderboards and sort by at-bats. It’s pretty striking:
1. Pete Rose
(big yawning chasm)
#2 guy
Then sort by corrupt behavior.
#1 Pete Rose
{yawning chasm}
#2 Some other guy
Lemme think… Randy Johnson?
RE the above and not voting for Pedro because of Zimmer and similar incidents, see this article:
http://nesn.com/2015/01/voter-contemplated-not-voting-for-pedro-martinez-because-he-was-a-punk/
We’re picking nits here, but Randy sustained excellence for considerably longer here. As a practical matter, they’re both in by a landslide, so I don’t think it matters much. Agreed on your last point – the current crop of voters is doing a lot more harm than good.
Pedro’s career FIP and OPS against were both better than RJ, fwiw.
Wasn’t saying that Unit didn’t deserve the votes or anything like that… only that he doesn’t deserve more votes than Pedro.
Ya, but those numbers would have been substantially worse if he pitched until he was 45, and i think that’s the point.
But not being able to hang on longer doesn’t diminish the extent of the brilliance of Pedro’s 11 or 12 peak seasons.
It doesn’t diminish the brilliance of Pedro, but the fact that Johnson was able to be elite for as long as he was does help him.
If you want to go by peak 11-12 seasons, though, it’s no longer entirely clear that Martinez was better than Johnson. Martinez’s peak was unbelievable, but Johnson maintained performance similar to his peak for much longer and was arguably better over that longer window.
Regardless, taking that approach, you should ignore all of Johnson’s performance after those 11-12 peak seasons. If we’re not going to penalize Pedro for replacing his peak performance with literally zero performance in those later years, then we should not penalize RJ for instead replacing his peak performance with simply good or very good performance in his later years.
not penalizing RJ for his endurance, but in response to the point that Pedro has a better career FIP and OPS against, someone did suggest that had Pedro stayed in the game another year or 2 or 3 then those numbers would have dropped. Why should anyone assume what may have happened and factor that into the evaluation? Sounds like some are penalizing Pedro bc he didn’t or couldn’t pitch as long as RJ did. That’s nuts.
Point is that Pedro didn’t hang on to compile any counting stats (assuming he was able to do so). Again, Mike Mussina clearly could have pitched another couple of seasons and gotten the magic 300 but chose to walk away when he did.
Not so much “penalizing Pedro” as attempting to compare apples to apples. If Pitcher A and Pitcher B put up 15 exactly identical seasons with a FIP of 1.50, but then Pitcher A retires and Pitcher B pitches 5 more seasons to a FIP of 2.00, Pitcher B will have slightly worse rate stats over his career. However, that no longer seems like an accurate way to compare the two since they both had the exact same sustained excellence followed by one guy simply putting up slightly less excellent stats for even longer. There is no perfect way to compare those different players directly.
That’s the issue I take. You are suggesting that Pedro deserved to get more votes than Randy on the theory that Pedro’s peak was superior, but as has already been discussed, it depends on how long of a “peak” you include. You suggested Pedro’s brilliance over 11-12 years, but due to Johnson sustaining his peak form much longer, that window doesn’t necessarily prove that Pedro was clearly better. I can’t say Randy definitely was deserving of more votes, but just the same, I find it absurd to state he definitely was not.
I don’t know that I can accept the argument that Johnson’s peak was longer. Both guys had 10 seasons with 5 war or more.
As far as other good seasons, RJ had 7 other seasons with 2 war or more, Pedro just 3. That kind of boils down the difference we’re discussing. And let’s not forget that RJ was a wild mess those first 4 seasons. Pedro was pretty much brilliant from the start and just struggled the last 2 yrs bc his arm broke down.
Sorry, the point there is that Pedro’s absolute max peak (using standard WAR, he was at 11.9 in 1999) was higher than Randy’s (10.4 in 2001), but Randy pitched far closer to that max level longer. Sure, they both had 10 seasons over 5 WAR, but that’s definitely cherry picking a point at which they were equal and doesn’t even look at what they did above 5 WAR in those years. In those 10 seasons, Johnson accumulated a total of 83.6 WAR to Pedro’s 74.8 WAR. He did this by posting a 7+ WAR in nine of those ten seasons, whereas Pedro did so “only” five times.
Below is a more long-winded way to depict this:
Seasons of 3+ WAR:
Johnson: 14
Martinez: 12
Seasons of 4+ WAR:
Johnson: 11
Martinez: 10
Seasons of 5+ WAR:
Johnson: 10
Martinez: 10
Seasons of 6+ WAR:
Johnson: 9
Martinez: 6
Seasons of 7+ WAR:
Johnson: 9
Martinez: 5
Seasons of 8+ WAR
Johnson: 6
Martinez: 3
Seasons of 9+ WAR:
Johnson: 5
Martinez: 2
Seasons of 10+ WAR:
Johnson: 1
Martinez: 1
Seasons of 11+ WAR:
Johnson: 0
Martinez: 1
Here’s an easy way to think of Pedro vs. Unit:
Let’s say that Mike Trout’s 2014 was a baseline. Let’s say he puts up another four years of 7 WAR play, and another three years of 5 WAR play, and then his body starts breaking down, he misses sixty or seventy games a year, never has another great season, and retires in his mid ’30’s. At the same time, teammate Albert Pujols manages to keep on top of himself, puts up two 4 WAR seasons, four 3 WAR seasons, and then doesn’t embarass himself in his farewell season, playing replacement-level ball.
This isn’t an impossible scenario. In this scenario, Trout would have had roughly the same career as Pedro, and Pujols would have had roughly the same career as Unit. I don’t think anybody would have any qualms saying that Pujols was the better player, even though Trout might have been better at peak.
Sustained Excellence, longevity compared to Pedro Martinez, that is why. Although to be honest, Randy Johnson’s career, didn’t really catch fire till age 29, took him quite awhile to get that arm under control. There are 24 300 game winners, 12 before 1945 and 12 after 1960 (about a 20 year period of nothing). The 12 before 1945 ended their career at an average age of 37.5, the 12 after 1960, 43.75. If you nix out Cy Young, since he was such an outlier, those before 1945 got to pitch in 629 games (693 with Cy), but got decisions in 89% of those games pitched on balance. The 12 after 1960 had to pitch in 734 games on average and only had a 76% decision rate. Average career for a 300 game winner before 1945? 16 years, average for those after 1960? 22 years. Sorry but the game has changed, it simply takes longer. A long time ago, if you started the game, that meant you finished it too. The typical pitcher is lucky if they get a 60-66% decision rate. By the way, only two were power pitchers, averaging at least a strikeout an inning, Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan. Ask John Kruk if he liked facing RJ in the all star game…
Nice bit of information there, thanks.
Once Randy Johnson caught fire, look out.
Within a spitball of Cy Young for most WAR from age 29+, all-time:
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=y&type=8&season=2014&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=29,58&filter=&players=0
Both Johnson and Pedro had 10 seasons with wars of 5 or more. IOW, both had peaks of similar length. And don’t you really honor someone for their brilliance, as opposed to longevity? As you said, Johnson got started later than Pedro and he ended up throwing over 1000 more innings, but we can’t say that his peak was better than Pedro’s. That’s the sticking point for me.
The short answer: many people disagree with you when you say “don’t you really honor someone for their brilliance, as opposed to longevity”. It’s both. Or at least it is according to the voters.
well, my interpretation of it is that it’s a Hall of brilliance not a Hall of endurance.
I accept Johnson’s brilliance w/o issue. To me, it’s a museum honoring those who were the best in the game. Not being able to hang on longer to compile some stats shouldn’t diminish the brilliance once it became long enough to matter.
Where do you draw the line though? Obviously Pedro was brilliant for long enough to merit an easy induction. So was Johnson. That a few more voters also weighed Johnson’s longer sustained brilliance shouldn’t really be a surprise. Pedro had insanely high peaks and ok longevity. Johnson had insanely high peaks, and after a slow start to his career, pitched brilliantly into his mid-40’s. It shouldn’t be a surprise that guys that weigh one heavier than other would both vote for Johnson, while a few might not vote for Pedro for longevity.
Does Johnson have a single ding on his resume other than for having a mullet and killing a pidgeon?
Well, if it’s a hall of brilliance, there must be a spot for Herb Score.
Honor somebody for their brilliance rather than their longevity? Let’s compare two players, starred for the same team at different times.
Player B had the better “best” season, 7.4 WAR to 7.3. But Player A had three 7 WAR seasons, to just the one by Player B. Player A had a career .428 wOBA; Player B’s back at .360. Both had success with their teams, but Player A won more World Series rings.
And yet, Yankees fans celebrate Derek Jeter more than King Kong Keller. Funny, that.
CrazyPants – Should every pitcher to ever throw a perfect game be in the Hall? What’s more brilliant than that? 27 up, 27 down! Or what about every pitcher to ever strike out a batter? At their peak they had a 100% K%! Can’t do any better than that!
Obviously longevity comes into it somewhere. There are plenty of ways to reconcile peak dominance with long-term goodness. And if your method spits out Pedro ahead of RJ, that’s fine with me. But on bref Johnson ranks ahead of Pedro on both WAR and WAA. My preferred method is to give bigger and bigger bonuses for extra WAR above average, and that gives Johnson the edge as well due to his six 8-WAR seasons. Pedro has the edge if your method focuses very heavily on just the top one or two seasons, or if your method gives a big bonus for consecutive great seasons (since RJ’s career has a few blips right in the middle of his dominance).
Pedro also gets dinged for playing on a team and in an era of steroid users. I don’t care if Pedro was a smaller guy, I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t on some type of PED’s. He certainly had the surly, unpredictable behavior often associated with steroid use.
There’s that and the fact Randy Johnson pitched 1300 more innings. Pedro Martinez’ career high for IP was 241. He pitched 234 innings the following year. Randy Johnson topped Pedro’s career-high IP total seven times in his career. Johnson had eight seasons with 225+ IP. Pedro had two such seasons. Johnson had twelve seasons with 210+IP. Pedro had seven such seasons.
Randy Johnson had 100 CG’s and 37 shutouts. Pedro Martinez had 46 CG’s and 17 shutouts.
Pedro was more dominant at his peak when he was out there, but Randy Johnson was out there a lot more often. I also think a whole lot of pitchers could be a little more effective if they never had to go more than seven innings or take more than 29 or 30 starts. Pedro Martinez’ production nosedived past 100 pitches. He was unhittable the first 100 pitches, but around pitch 105, batters hit .500 off him.
So, had Pedro been forced to throw those extra pitches in late innings, all his numbers would be a little less sparkly.
There’s always a difference in “what might have been” and what actually was. Ken Griffey, Jr. was probably a better talent than Hank Aaron. But Hank Aaron stayed healthy and played a full career, and Griffey didn’t.
“Pedro also gets dinged for playing on a team and in an era of steroid users. I don’t care if Pedro was a smaller guy, I’m not entirely sure he wasn’t on some type of PED’s. He certainly had the surly, unpredictable behavior often associated with steroid use.”
Randy Johnson was much surlier than Pedro, had bad skin, and peaked during the steroid peak despite being old. The inverse of your argument is stronger than your argument.
Randy didn’t start throwing harder or anything like that, though. He just got control.
Agreed. What people forget is that Pedro and Randy both likely used steroids
Neither Pedro or RJ should be dinged for playing in the steroid era. It should make their candidacies even more of a lock, since they were playing in the most offensive heavy period in baseball.
Let’s say there was another pitcher who was a contemporary of Johnson who had his same career, except he only had Johnson’s 5+ WAR seasons. Every other season he just didn’t pitch, so he had a 10-year career, and probably like 75 WAR.
This player is obviously still a hall of famer despite his short career. (In fact this player is no dissimilar from Sandy Koufax). However, would you say this player was as great as Johnson? Johnson had many other seasons that were above average, which don’t themselves get someone into the hall of fame, but which definitely helped his team at the time.
I agree that a great peak is more important than accumulated numbers, but there is some balance there. Sustained durability is its own kind of greatness. If more pitchers could be 3 WAR players into their late 30’s and early 40’s, most would would, but they can’t.
Pedro Martinez’s top 10 years by WAR has him at 74.2 WAR. Top 7 years, 59 WAR.
Randy Johnson’s top 10 years by WAR has him at 81.3 WAR. Top 7 years, 63.3 WAR.
Your opening sentence could easily have been “I have no clue.”
Just don’t take it seriously. You know who you think are the best players are. It is not important what some body of old idiotic writers think.
I have often thought that ERA- is potentially biased by the fact that the ERA scale is truncated at zero. No matter how dominant a pitcher is, they can never give up fewer than zero runs. Thus, the amount it is possible to be less than the league average is a function of the league average. If you pitch in a year with a higher league average ERA, you have greater potential to have a lower ERA-. In 1999 we saw one of the highest league average ERA in the AL.
As an exercise, I calculated the ERA a pitcher would have to have in order to equal Pedro’s ERA- of 42 in each league since 1995 (hopefully this table comes out in readable form):
year AL era NL era
1 1995 4.72 1.9824 4.18 1.7556
2 1996 5.00 2.1000 4.22 1.7724
3 1997 4.57 1.9194 4.21 1.7682
4 1998 4.66 1.9572 4.24 1.7808
5 1999 4.87 2.0454 4.57 1.9194
6 2000 4.92 2.0664 4.64 1.9488
7 2001 4.48 1.8816 4.36 1.8312
8 2002 4.47 1.8774 4.11 1.7262
9 2003 4.53 1.9026 4.29 1.8018
10 2004 4.64 1.9488 4.31 1.8102
11 2005 4.36 1.8312 4.23 1.7766
12 2006 4.56 1.9152 4.49 1.8858
13 2007 4.52 1.8984 4.44 1.8648
14 2008 4.36 1.8312 4.30 1.8060
15 2009 4.46 1.8732 4.20 1.7640
16 2010 4.14 1.7388 4.03 1.6926
17 2011 4.08 1.7136 3.82 1.6044
18 2012 4.09 1.7178 3.95 1.6590
19 2013 3.99 1.6758 3.74 1.5708
20 2014 3.82 1.6044 3.66 1.5372
…well, that came out ugly. If it isn’t clear, the columns are (year, AL ERA, ERA-=42 ERA, NL ERA, ERA-=42 ERA)
The truncation at zero really shouldn’t be too much of a problem because no one ever comes all that close to it. However, one could do more than mean subtracted type normalization and could do a mean and variance transformation, but you’d probably just get the same thing anyway.
I was actually surprised to find that ERA- is calculated without respect to the variance when I was looking up the formula to plug into R.
Yep, I was thinking of running the last 30 years or so through scale in R, the hardest part would really just be gathering all the data.
It wouldn’t be so bad to calculate z-scores for all ERA qualifiers each year if you can export all qualifiers with columns for year, league, and ERA.
Someone needs to do this.
And of course make it a heatmap
Also, I agree that the truncation at zero shouldn’t be much of a problem in general, but it might start to become a problem in the extreme outlier cases like Pedro ’99, etc.
That only really becomes an issue as you approach 0, which has never come up for a full season of a starting pitcher. Even in the lowest offense modern seasons, there’s plenty of room to be better than the best seasons of all time. A 1.53 NL ERA, the lowest on that chart, corresponds to 34 runs allowed in a 200 inning season, which is definitely conceivable. Kershaw was only 5 runs higher, easily within the range of BABIP and sequencing luck. Pitching results are not subject to a hard physical limit like, say, fastball velocity. They’re dependent on the quality of opposition and only limited by 0, which no one is approaching.
The only way ERA- is unfair to lower offense era players is if the lower offense is due to higher average quality pitching. That’s possible (what data we have suggests velocity is trending upwards, which suggests better average stuff), but is a different question
Perhaps part of the reason no pitcher has ever been able to approach zero is because they don’t get credit for -1, or -2 runs, etc. on the days that they are absurdly dominant.
That’s a fair point. I wonder how you could account for that. FIP- should do a pretty good job, as FIP can be negative.
Yes, I think FIP does a better job here than ERA. …though I’m in the minority on Fangraphs who really dislike FIP.
Also, I agree with you that it was possible for Kershaw to have equalled Pedro last year. That’s actually why I did the excercise. I expected to recover an absurdly low necessary ERA before running the numbers.
good article, no love for Smoltz?
Now that you mention it, I have no idea why Smoltz was considered a 1st ballot guy. The most repeated reason seems to be the 3 yrs as a dominant closer. I don’t follow this line of reasoning at all. Are they saying they don’t think Mussina or Schilling (or a handful of other very good SPs) could have been a lights out closer for a few year stretch?
Eck was the template for a SPer switching to closer, but we know he wasn’t a special SPer and got in bc of his RP dominance. However, Smoltz just took a relatively brief detour into the pen when the thinking was that his arm might not be able to hold up for 200 innings.
Exactly, Smoltz (and Eck, who I disagree was a damned good starter in his own right) pretty much just proved that very good starters make crazy dominate relief pitchers.
I think Smoltz is getting a little aura effect from Maddux and Glavin. Because there really is zero way to argue Smoltz is a definitively better pitcher than Mussina or Shilling. Yet Smoltz gets in with ease on his first try and Mussina can’t crack 25% on his second, a spot from which he may never improve enough to get over 75% in 10 years? WTF!
Shilling, from 40%, at least has a good shot to make it over 75% by year 10.
I guess the path to the HOF will now be for a SPer like Greinke to request a few seasons as closer. I guess that would make him an automatic HOFer too.
Mussina and Schilling are more deserving of the hall than Smoltz. Hopefully they get in soon
‘Mussina and Schilling are more deserving of the hall than Smoltz.’
and more deserving that Glavine for that matter. Of the four, Glavine is the least deserving, IMO.
Because by no measure his Smoltz in the class of Johnson or Pedro. Considering this article was an appreciation of how ridiculous they were, it would be weird to include Smoltz. There would be a paragraph of “well i couldn’t really figure out how to make a ridiculous stat involving Smoltz”.
Honestly, I’m more surprised to see Tim Hudson having the 3rd-highest strikeout rate that year.
This just in… Tim Hudson was pretty awesome too.
Not as a strikeout pitcher, though, which is what he was reacting to.
It was his rookie year. Career high in both strikeout rate and walk rate.
I’m surprised to see so little around the longevity of these guys, and their skill to stay on the field. Pedro had five straight 200+ inning seasons, and averaged over 198.2 IP during a 12 season stretch from 1995-2006. Randy, meanwhile, eclipsed 250 innings 3 times, as well as coming close (more than 244 innings) another four times. In the SIXTEEN full-length seasons between 1990 and 2006, Johnson AVERAGED 215 IP per season, and threw fewer than 200 innings only twice. If staying healthy is a skill, it was likely Johnson’s strongest.
Also, Randy once shot a bird with a fastball for getting in the way of his line of sight to his catcher. That was pretty awesome, too.
I still go watch that clip of Johnson hitting the bird on YouTube every once in a while. The thing just explodes, its f-ing nuts.
Less awesome for the bird, unfortunately.
You about made me spit my coffee on the keyboard with that.
Don’t worry about me too much. I was just flying along, minding my own business and it was real sudden like BOOM! and I’m still flying along just hearing that damn harp instead of all these people making noise. It was so fast that I barely even noticed. We have YouTube up here as well and my pal Marty showed it to me and I was like Oh crap! Was that me?!
Seagull in Heaven is now my most favorite screen name.
Mourning dove, not a seagull. 🙁
I am sure that on this site I will get ripped on for this, but here goes anyway, since you mentioned LONGEVITY. What if I told you there was a pitcher out there, who in his 18 years pitched (4 less than Randy Johnson), 16 of them were full seasons, where he AVERAGED 242 IP per year, pitching 235 – 293 IP 11 times, and two more seasons with 197 and 198 IP. He won 4 World Series, had 75 more Complete Games in his career than Randy Johnson and managed to be the winning-est pitcher of an entire decade and never sniffed a Cy Young. He averaged 16 wins a year to RJ’s 17, wound up with 254 wins versus Randy’s 303, which is comparable due to the 4 less years he pitched. By no means am I saying this pitcher is better than Randy Johnson, or even that he deserved a Cy Young, -he is not, and he doesn’t. But to your point on LONGEVITY, I’d say he not only qualifies, but matches up extremely well. Now what if I told you that pitcher’s name was Jack Morris…
I don’t think anyone argues that Jack Morris was a durable innings-eater. None of the stats you cited are an indication of how *good* he was.
Jack Morris was a great pitcher, but I suppose I am biased since I grew up in Michigan, went to the 5th game of the 1984 World Series, watched him pitch for both the Twins and Blue Jays, followed his whole career.
Eric you watch way to many 30 for 30 documentaries
I also had an awesome mustache.
So did Tom Selleck.
Tom Selleck should get in before Morris ever does. What a dog.
Unfortunately, while staying healthy may have been Johnson’s best skill, it was certainly not his only one. Morris, meanwhile had the added skill of being drafted by, and signing contracts to play for, very good teams. Of those 18 seasons, he played two on teams that were below .500. Since we’re talking pitcher wins here, I’ll share this tidbit: in those two seasons (1989 and 1990), Morris lost 14 and then 18 (!) games; these were two of the three years in which he lost more games than he won.
His other numbers (some might call them, actually-relevant numbers) during those two seasons were meanwhile pretty consistent for his career. His BABIP was a little high in 89, and his strand rate was a little low both seasons, but basically his numbers aren’t WAY out of whack.
Nevertheless, I’m going to say something nice about Jack Morris to end this comment. Jack Morris pitched a lot for a long time. And he had a great mustache, in any era.
He did generate .845 World Championship Probability Added in a single day:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIN/MIN199110270.shtml
The problem is this…If he gives up one run in that game almost 80% of the argument for Morris vanishes.
If 1 run could change our perception that wildly…we’re probably not paying enough attention to all the data in front of us. And Jack Morris isn’t a HOFer.
I’m with you KDL, just having fun.
Still, I’d love to know how many HOF votes Edgar Renteria would get based upon his clutch WS hitting. He might have an outside chance of breaking the 5% threshold to stay on the ballot.
In 2014, six qualifying batters posted a wOBA of .400 or better.
In 1999, thirty qualifying batters posted a wOBA of .400 or better. And yet, Pedro Martinez had a 1.39 FIP in that environment.
My brain is numb just trying to contemplate that.
I’ve often thought of Randy Johnson’s resume as basically tailor-made for the Hall of Fame.
World Series title, largely on his back
Perfect game, plus a no-hitter
300K seasons
300 wins
4000K
Cy Young hardware
Memorable haircut / facial hair combo
Killed a bird
Pedro”s peak was higher, but Johnson was at least very good for almost his whole career, and his long peak was plenty good enough.
I believe that “Killed a bird?” is the 8th question on Bill James’ Keltner list for Hall of Fame worthiness.
Dave Winfield is looking forward to having another “8th question” member join him in Cooperstown.
While it is cool to look at adjusted K and BB rates, I question how meaningful the results are.
If all we’re doing is putting the numbers in perspective, to appreciate how far these guys were ahead of their times, that’s fine. However, if the implication is ‘1999 Pedro would have struck out 48% of batters in 2014’, then that statement relies on many assumptions that may or may not be valid.
To me, it seems like the thing most responsible for the increased strikeouts lately is the pitchers. If pitchers have just gotten better, then we would expect Randy and Pedro to have similar raw numbers today as they did when they pitched, which would actually make some of their adjusted stats less impressive. I generally hold the belief that baseball players have gotten progressively better throughout history (mainly due to talent pool) so that seems more likely to me than that these two would have been striking out around 40% of batters today.
“I generally hold the belief that baseball players have gotten progressively better throughout history (mainly due to talent pool)….”
Now waiting for the BBWAA to officially blacklist Bip.
I would be honored
I’m with you on a lot of that. I think in baseball (and all sports), the worldwide talent pool gets bigger and athletes become bigger/stronger/faster over the years. I think if the greats from 80+ years ago were magically teleported to today, they probably wouldn’t be particularly good.
But I’m still interested in comparing these guys across time. Pedro Martninez’s or Hank Aaron’s numbers are way more impressive considering the era and the context. It is useful and interesting to think that Pedro’s K rate was 2.5x the league average, which would be like a pitcher striking out 50% of batters today. It’s not that we think that Pedro would actually do that.
But the difference between the league in Pedro’s time and today is minimal compared with difference between the league today and Hank Aaron’s day (pre-Latino players). I also disagree with you that the best players wouldn’t have been particularly good. They definitely would not be as good, but Ted Williams could probably still manage at least a 125 wrc+ in today’s game, were he in his 20s again.
Except there are real reasons for why strikeouts are up as a whole, and it’s not simply that pitchers are better now. Besides, if it’s just about pitchers getting better, why are the hitters getting worse?
It has to do with a much larger called strike zone and better scouting information, which has so far brought more benefit to the pitcher side of the match-up. Hitters are also a little less worried about striking out. Who knows, they may even have changed the ball without telling us (again).
Because better pitching causes worse hitting?
Has it really improved that dramatically since the early 2000’s though?
League velocity is trending up, so that is at least one objective measure that supports the idea that pitchers are getting better.
There are a lot more pitchers throwing serious heat these days than there ever were. Combine that with a massive reduction in steroid cheating and you get a downturn in hitting,
Why on earth would steroids benefit hitters but not pitchers?
Obviously it does not benefit them nearly as much. Is the “Steroid Era” called that because of all the pitching dominance and sub-2.00 ERA and FIP seasons? Of course not, it was called that because of the offensive dominance. Logic and data tell you that batters benefitted the most, and by far.
Sunday, May 28th 2000
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA200005280.shtml
Best game I have seen live and it was electric at Yankee Stadium. Never seen 2 starting pitchers absolutely mow down the opposing lineups in CG efforts like this with Clemens only making a mistake on fastball that was up and out over the plate when it was supposed to be out of the plate.
So what would full stats for a season look like for peak Pedro and Randy? If they each pitched 220 innings, what kind of ERA and strikeout numbers would we expect to see?
Baseball Reference actually has a tool that makes this calculation. Here’s a screenshot I took.
http://imgur.com/KrVKk89
I find the arguments here kind of odd. Both Martinez and Johnson are two of the greatest pitchers to ever play the game. There is no question that both of them belong in the Hall of Fame. If you want to argue which one was better, that’s fine, but personally I’m celebrating the fact that two pitchers who both totally deserved to get into the Hall got into the Hall on the first ballot.
Now I’m not so sure about those other two guys, but I don’t think that anyone can question that Martinez and Johnson belong in the Hall of Fame. I watched them pitch and admired them both (well, except for Johnson’s stupid mullet), and my hat is off them.
Randy.
Randy.
Randy.