Will the New “Year of the Pitcher” Crown a New ERA Champion?
Jacob deGrom‘s already microscopic ERA needs even a stronger microscope to spy it after his outing Monday, a six-inning shutout against the Arizona Diamondbacks that lowered his ERA to 0.71. We’re no longer in April, and we’re not even in May, so this new level of dominance can’t be easily ignored as the product of a small sample. Once performance of this magnitude reaches June intact — and 0.71 is deGrom’s second-highest seasonal ERA after the end of an outing — you have to seriously give at least a thought to the prospect of a pitcher making a run at Bob Gibson’s live-ball ERA record.
We had a chance at this happening last year, thanks to the asteriskesque 2020 season and its 60-game slate, shortened as a consequence of COVID-19. I talked about the possibility going into last season, with ZiPS projecting a one-in-four shot of someone catching Gibson’s 1.12. Nobody did it in the end, but Shane Bieber’s 1.63 was the one of the best ERAs for a qualifying pitcher since Gibson’s in 1968. Bieber and Trevor Bauer, the two pitchers who came closest, fell well short of Gibson but given the relatively high levels of league offense, their efforts were enough to get them the third and fourth spots on the all-time single-season ERA+ ranks.
Catching Gibson in a 60-game season would have been an accomplishment, but not really a full one. Records are naturally set in conditions that benefit players, and Gibson was no exception: 1968 was dubbed the Year of the Pitcher thanks to a league ERA of 2.98, nearly a half-run lower than any season since the spitball was banned. Gibson’s 258 ERA+, which takes into account league offense, still sits atop the leaderboard, but at least it doesn’t utterly wreck the recent field, which consists of Pedro Martinez (243, 1999), Roger Clemens (227, 1997), and Zack Greinke (227, 2015) among others.
But since 2021 is a full 162-game season, catching a 1.12 ERA would feel a lot less like sneaking in through a loophole. A significant drop-off in league offense (to a 4.02 ERA) could be credited for an assist, but it’s not a number that is unfair relative to baseball history. So, can he do it?
deGrom has missed a few starts so far in 2021, with no apparent ill results to his performance, and the Mets have been cautious with his pitch totals; he’s averaged fewer than 70 pitches in his last three starts. That’s beneficial to his chances, as no star pitcher has a long-term ability to keep their ERA that low, even Gibson; just clearing the one-inning-per-team-game requirement optimizes things. deGrom will likely end up with around 30 games started this season, so a good place to begin in gauging his odds is to see if anyone’s come close to 1.12 in a span of 30 games starts, crossing over seasons, since 1920. I’m only listing unique 30-game runs since there is naturally quite a bit of overlap in runs:
| Pitcher | Year(s) | W | L | ERA | IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bob Gibson | 1967-1968 | 20 | 6 | 0.94 | 267.0 |
| Jake Arrieta | 2015-2016 | 25 | 1 | 1.13 | 215.0 |
| Roger Clemens | 1990-1991 | 22 | 4 | 1.30 | 228.3 |
| Carl Hubbell | 1933-1934 | 17 | 8 | 1.30 | 215.3 |
| Clayton Kershaw | 2015-2016 | 19 | 3 | 1.32 | 225.3 |
| Dwight Gooden | 1985 | 22 | 1 | 1.33 | 243.3 |
| Pedro Martinez | 1999-2000 | 20 | 4 | 1.34 | 221.0 |
| Luis Tiant | 1967-1968 | 20 | 6 | 1.34 | 228.7 |
| Vida Blue | 1970-1971 | 21 | 3 | 1.36 | 244.7 |
| Jacob deGrom | 2018-2019 | 10 | 9 | 1.40 | 205.0 |
| Dean Chance | 1964 | 17 | 6 | 1.40 | 225.7 |
| John Tudor | 1985-1986 | 23 | 1 | 1.41 | 242.0 |
| J.R. Richard | 1979-1980 | 19 | 6 | 1.44 | 225.7 |
| Bobby Shantz | 1951-1952 | 26 | 4 | 1.44 | 262.3 |
| Max Lanier | 1943-1944 | 17 | 5 | 1.47 | 202.7 |
Gibson’s best 30-game span was even better than his 1.12 ERA, dipping under one. J.R. Richard’s presence on this list is especially cruel, as his 30-game span ended with the final game of his major league career. Before Richard’s next start, he suffered a stroke caused by a blood clot, and while he attempted a comeback a few years later in the minors, he was no longer the same pitcher.
Nobody catches 1.12 on this list, but many come close enough that the result is at least plausible. Jake Arrieta was only a run from accomplishing the feat. deGrom himself appears on this list, his 30-game span running from April 21, 2018, through April 3, 2019. His 1.40 ERA over 30 starts comes out to an ERA+ of 266 in a higher run environment (by about a tenth of a run) than 2021 so far. A tenth of a run isn’t a lot, but to break a record like this, every advantage helps. Yes, Mets fans, I see that 10-9 record for deGrom over that stretch.
To get an idea of deGrom’s probability of finishing with an ERA of 1.12 or better, I worked with a technique I’ve used in the past, which “simulates” a season using Monte Carlo algorithms and a smoothed model of a pitcher’s starts based on their projections and historical usage. At 189.2 innings (what he has in the bag, plus the 22 starts of 6.3 innings per start in his depth chart projections), he needs to allow 23 or fewer runs or a 1.23 ERA for the rest of the season. At 162 total innings, he’d have to maintain a 1.30 ERA the rest of the way.
deGrom’s no slam-dunk to catch Gibson, but he’s got a fighting chance, with my model estimating a 3.1% chance to beat a 1.12 ERA, or more precisely, Gibson’s 1.122538 (no cheating with rounding here!). That’s about 31-to-1, a little better than getting the exact number in roulette and roughly the probability of a 20-homer hitter getting a round-tripper in any given at-bat. In other words, it’s more likely than not that he falls short of the feat, but it’s definitely possible and firmly in the realm of plausibility.
Jacob deGrom is having the best run of his career and quickly developing a Hall of Fame case based on Koufax-levels of peak performance. Catching Bob Gibson would be a fantastic sentence on a plaque in Cooperstown. Hopefully, the Mets’ offense has the decency to give him more than 10 wins if it should come to pass!
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
The new deadball era isn’t really a joke and it isn’t really funny at all, but for some reason I keep laughing harder and harder.
As Dan alluded to in the piece, the run environment isn’t really *that* different from historical norms. Hell, you only need to go back to 2015 to find a lower run environment than 2021 so far! It’s more the composition of the runs that rub people (including myself) the wrong way, but I think it would in no way lessen the achievement if DeGrom were indeed to run an ERA lower than Gibson’s mark. In fact, comparatively speaking, it would be more impressive today than in 1968!
No, I don’t think it would lessen the achievement. It’s not entirely a coincidence either. There are six qualified pitchers with ERAs less than 2 right now. Last year it was 3 (in about the same number of games). You don’t have to shift the composition of the run scoring very much for some pitchers to do way, way better than before.
That said, upon reflection, the reason why deGrom is suddenly unlocking this achievement now is probably much simpler: Francisco Lindor is playing shortstop and the Mets have had so many injuries they probably haven’t played players who can’t run well enough to adequately play the position they’ve been assigned.
The Mets infield defense – especially Lindor and Villar – has been a huge part of their early success. Look at Marcus Stroman and Taijuan Walker’s numbers for further validation. Somehow this team is scoring enough runs to win games… but for those of us who’ve watched Mets pitching done in by bad defense for far too long, it’s an appropriate turnabout.
Tom Verducci wrote an article about the Mets improved defense in Sports Illustrated a few days ago. The Mets are using twice as many shifts as they did last year. They have traveling data analysts who help analyze and convey how and why to shift against certain players, and the pitchers are also part of that conversation as to whether to shift against players.
The Mets have upgraded to a modern analytical shifting defense, and have done so by getting buy-ins from management and players through engagement and results.
@D-Wiz,
While an ERA under 1.12 would be an amazing accomplishment, I wouldn’t consider it more impressive than Gibson in ’68 considering his 304-2/3 IP. deGrom won’t throw anywhere close to that total, and while I understand why, quantity is a big factor in this comparison.
Some dead ball! Every day and night there are 450+ moonshots being hit.
I’m having a lot of trouble resetting my mental image of what good offense looks like. By just about any measure, the White Sox have one of the bets offenses in baseball and yet, they don’t hit a lot of HR, it seems like they get shut out once a week, and they field several bad, veteran, hitters in the lineup on a daily basis like Billy Hamilton and Leurys Garcia. It is hard to see a lineup with three or maybe four guys hitting .220 or worse and think of it as a good lineup. It’s also hard to think of some of those guys as productive offensive players. They have 5 guys hitting under .220 getting regular playing time, and all of those guys have wRC+ of 86 or better and Grandal still has a bizarre line: .131/.385/.333, wRC+ of 119! That’s got to be the best offensive performance by a .131 hitter in history.
Maybe runs are the same as 2015, but offense is really weird this year.
Look at the Jays, they led the world in almost every offensive category last month.
CHW’s got the best team OBP in baseball, a product of the 3rd-best BB% and highest BABIP in the league. Not sure if that’s an active strategy from their hitting coach or not, but their offensive production isn’t too much of a mystery– year in and year out, live ball or dead ball, a great team OBP means you score a lot of runs. Moneyball wasn’t wrong there!
There’s also been some outright bizarre offensive performances. Grandal’s unorthodox path so far to near exactly his career wRC+ is well-known, but there’s others. Moncada and Anderson are back to their astronomical BABIP hijinks but with power outages, while Jake Lamb is crushing the ball and BILLY HAMILTON suddenly hitting for power! He’s got the third-best ISO on the squad at .203! Easily the best average EV and hard-hit rates of his career. 7 of his last 12 hits have been XBH, including two of his *24* career dingers. Very strange stuff!
Interesting article, Dan. JR Richard was an amazing pitcher who had a sad conclusion to his career. Hopefully he’s still doing well these days.
If you look at K-rates after the second deadball era you’ll see that K rates were not very high, at all. Here is the total list of pitchers who averaged 9 or more K’s per 9 innings from 1973-1982:
Nolan Ryan (6 times)
JR Richard (2 times, was on his way to a third before his career ended)
Mario Soto (1 time)
Dennis Eckersley (1 time)
Frank Tanana (1 time)
JR Richard is going to be overshadowed by Nolan Ryan when the definitive story of the strikeout is written because he had more on a rate basis than virtually of his peers, pitched longer than virtually all of his peers, and essentially replaced JR Richard in Houston’s rotation (they overlapped for half a season). But JR Richard was on his way to establishing himself as a strikeout pitcher in his own right. An absolute monster for his era.
And of course, as many of you know, the reason his career ended was because when he complained of a dead arm, he got ridiculed for not being able to handle the pressure and didn’t get treatment when there was zero circulation to his arm. Man had a stroke, got absolutely robbed of a career, lost all his money, and became homeless and lived under a bridge.
He became homeless in the 90s but rebounded to become a minister and working with at-risk young people. He’s probably in his 70s but I gather he is fine. Actually Kevin Goldstein might have reliable information on JR.
I’d love to see a JR Richard ZiPS Time Warp piece
I’d love that! Dude was filthy
I would still have to put an asterisk over deGrom’s ERA record if he breaks it, because he’s likely about to pitch a lot less innings than Gibson did. I doubt deGrom breaks 200 this season, which is sort of the bare minimum for these things to count.
any other arbitrary rules you’d like to place on this potential record?
Does Pete Rose’s hit record not count because he also has the most PA of all time? You can play this kind of arbitrary game with any record you choose
The “bare minimum for these things to count” is already well-established: to qualify for seasonal rate stat leaderboards in a full season, you need 502 PA as a hitter or 162 IP as a pitcher (with a minor exception on the hitting side for someone who’s just short of the requirement but has a big enough lead to hedge against the worst that could happen by the time they got there).
It’s worth noting that while 300 IP was relatively feasible back when teams were using 4-man rotations where they could get 40+ starts, Gibson got there in just 34 games, four outs shy of a 9 IP/GS average. Now that teams are devoting so much roster space to their bullpen, and obviously expecting to use those guys, you won’t see anyone *allowed* to put up averages like that again; even if you relax it slightly and say that a workhorse pitcher should average 8 innings in each of their starts, you’d end up with the implication that no pitcher since Greg Maddux in 1994 has qualified for anything under that exacting standard, and then nobody else going back 10 more years before that.
I realize these guys weren’t throwing upper 90’s consistently, but holy shit, it never fails to amaze me that they could throw 300+ innings consistently. I just can’t wrap my brain around it. My arm still hurts from my last start 5 years ago
Go back to the 1800s… you have guys like Pud Galvin and Bobby Matthews and Tim Keefe and John Clarkson and Charlie Radbourn and Tommy Bond, etc repeatedly throwing 400+ innings.
IMO, many of these sorts of things are simply artifacts of various aspects of the game at the time more than some special ability of the players.
Pitchers in the 60’s and 70’s could coast through multiple innings given how poor the hitters were at the bottom of the lineup. Teams were content to run out no-hit, good glove middle infielders – most of the worst hitting players since WWII have been either catchers (from any era -catchers have always been bad hitters) or middle infielders from that era. By my count, of the 10 worst hitters since WWII (min 1,000 PA): 3 are catchers, 6 are middle infielders from the 60’s and 70’s and then Rafael Belliard who doesn’t miss the 60’s/70’s by much with his 1st season in 1982. Extend it to the top 20 and it’s another 5 60’s/70’s middle infielders and another 4 catchers with the final guy being a middle infielder from the 80’s. Basically most rosters in baseball were 5 actual hitters and 4 easy outs. That all changed with Ripken – there had obviously been great hitting SS before but he really broke the mold. Teams finally realized that the SS and 2B didn’t have to be 5’9″, 150 lb weaklings.
Seasons themselves are arbitrary endpoints. 162.0 innings and he breaks it, whether you feel like it or not. Regardless, his ERA+ may top Gibson’s 1968 number of 258 (9th all-time.) He’s more than twice that currently. His WHIP is 0.56
I mean…
The year George Brett hit .390 he only had 515 PAs, just barely passing the 502 PA minimum for BA title. Lucky for him he didn’t hit .400, since then *you* would have to be putting an asterisk on it, and I’m sure that would break his heart.
Interesting article!
I’d love to see DeGrom’s odds of breaking Gibson’s wRC+ of 258. Obviously, a lot of moving factors with that one, but, it would be fun to see with the same inning assumptions, if you also assumed offense remained at the same rate.
Good idea, that would have been useful to put in the piece, too. 20.6%
Thanks!
Also, isn’t he running an ERA+ in the 400s right now?
548 to be precise.
He obviously has a shot though Gibson’s accompliment is obviously much more impressive (34 starts, 304.2 IP, 8.96 innings per start).
Anyway, so far deGrom has yet to face any of the top 6 offenses in the NL in runs/scored per game. (though he did face the Red Sox, the #3 offense in the AL). But things are about to get more difficult. His next two starts are against the Padres (#4 NL). Then he’ll likely face the Cubs (#6) followed by the Braves (#3).
I find it hard to penalize deGrom for quality of competition, because he’s shown to be thoroughly dominant against all shapes and sizes.
The same argument was used to discredit Bauer’s season last year, and he’s more or less repeated a similar performance in a much more difficult division
DIdn’t say he should be penalized. Simply pointing out the facts. And that the increased competition level over the next several months will give us a clearer picture of whether or not this is something he has a shot at.
BTW, this isn’t even deGrom’s best 8 game stretch in terms of ERA. Unless I missed something, that’s betweem April 21st and June 2nd of 2018 when he had a 0.57 ERA (47.1 IP). Interestingly, he did it with a .320 BABIP against. But I guess when you strike out so many batters and 30 of the 33 hits are singles, BABIP isn’t that important.
If BABIP ~= SLG, then yeah, BABIP isn’t that important.
What are his chances of pitching as well in the postseason?
Based of the current Mets playoff odds, 82.4%
The simulation where he ended up above 5.00 is almost more amazing than the simulations where he beat Gibson!
That table really shows why wins are a flawed, if not meaningless, statistic.
The fact that DeGrom is more likely to finish with an ERA under 1 than an ERA above 3.5 is insane. Beast
The still (but slightly less) juiced ball is going to make it tough. In 1968, there were a total of 6 players, 3 in each league, that ended the season with an SLG over .500. This season, at the 1/3rd mark there are 33, 20 in the AL and 13 in the NL. Of the 4 earned runs that he has given up, 3 have come on HR’s. If the game still used 1968 balls and he threw from a 15″ mound he would have chance
In other news, deGrom is still getting on base at a .450 clip.
In other news, he’s scored as many runs (4) as he’s given up. That’s somehow even more insane than Gibson’s record Of course Ohtani is on track to do better on that mark, but unless DeGrom wants to DH as well…
If it’s not a huge lift, I’d love to see regular updates on his odds. Stuff like this is fun.
In 1968, all of Gibson’s 34 starts were 7 innings or more, with 26 being 9 innings or more. Through 7 innings, his ERA was 0.93; though 6 innings it was just 0.54.
deGrom has made 8 stars so far this year and only 2 have been over 7 innings. Take out those 2 starts and he is averaging 5.5 innings per game.
Gibson also made 5 starts on only 3 days rest, throwing 44 innings and putting up a 0.41 ERA.
If we want to cherry pick, let’s take out his 2 shortest starts instead. Or perhaps only look at his complete game, so he is now averaging 9 innings per start
Just to throw it out there– from June 30th 1967 to June 30th 1969, Gibson had a 1.47 ERA!
Are the simulated Monte Carlo seasons projected start-by-start, or as a total for all starts? If the model is start-by-start, I wonder what % of scenarios have deGrom reaching 162 IP with an ERA below 1.12, but then have his ERA rise over his final few starts back over 1.12.
Maybe too fine a point, but if the Mets head into September with a commanding lead in the NL East, I think they’d be more likely to shut him down for the playoffs if he’s beaten Gibson’s mark, and more likely to let him pitch a bit more if he’s just off Gibson’s pace. That may bias his odds upward a bit.
Maybe fewer innings per start or extra rest between starts, but a total shutdown seems unlikely to me.
Preparing DeGrom for heavy lifting in the postseason would be more likely to limit his innings (or recovery from injury).
At first glance it seems to me that the most impressive 30 game run belongs to Carl Hubbell. A 1.30 ERA in 1933-34? That was a time of very gaudy offensive numbers.
I checked and the national-league-wide ERA in 1933 was 3.34, to the AL’s 4.28.
So, very good but not as extraordinary as it initially seems!
Wow. That’s a huge run differential between leagues! Was the AL running an early experiment with the DH back then?
The premise of this article is interesting, but I have to say I find myself very disappointed at flat out factual inaccuracies in some of the statements. Shane Bieber does NOT have the 2nd best ERA since Dwight Gooden’s 1.53. Greg Maddux also had a 1.63 ERA in 1995 and, even better, 1.56 in 1994. Even though those are strike shortened seasons, I’m pretty certain he was an ERA qualifier since he led the league in innings pitched!
Also, his ERA+ in those two years: 271 and 260, easily better than Bob Gibson’s 258 that ‘still sits atop the leaderboard’. I’d tend to think you just cut Maddux out of your search (I do find those 2 season get criminally underrated when talking about greatest pitching season/stretches ever), except for the fact that you totally neglect Pedro Martinez’s best ERA+ season: 291 in 2000.
I do appreciate the work at projecting DeGrom, but I think these are some seriously glaring errors and make it a little tough to take the data presented in other tables seriously.
The first one was a brainfart which I have fixed.
The second is not an error, it was just an example of some of the high ERA+ seasons in the recent generation and I noted there were others.
The confusion stems from the fact that the sentence about Gibson’s ERA+ is ambiguous. What you mean, I take it, is that his ERA+ of 258 sits atop the 1968 “year of the pitcher” leaderboard, but as written the sentence can be read to mean that his is the best mark of all time. This ambiguity was exacerbated by the fact that the other examples of great ERA+ seasons you chose to cite are all worse than Gibson’s mark, even though better seasons have happened. Thus the question of why it wasn’t noted that Gibson only (heh) boasts the 9th best mark all time, having been bested five times in recent memory and three times since 2000. I can see how one would read this as an error–it’s at least a double imprecision.
I love that in looking at the lowest ERA 30-game spans, you see gaudy win-loss records like 25-1, 22-4, 22-1, 19-3, 23-1…and then there’s deGrom barely above .500 at 10-9. How he didn’t cuss his weak-hitting teammates is beyond me. SCORE THE MAN SOME RUNS ALREADY!