Comments on: Plotting all of Greg Maddux’s career Game Scores

By: M. Scott Eiland

M. Scott Eiland — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 03:55:25 +0000

If Maddux's career had been ten years shorter, the impact that the 1994-1995 strike had on his two greatest seasons might well have been considered the most significant negative career impact resulting from the strike (I remember that Bill James, in deciding in the updated Historical Baseball Abstract that Clemens beat out Maddux for peak & career value, ignored the impact of the strike when comparing innings numbers for their best seasons--since Clemens was hurt in 1994 and subpar in 1995, this hurt Maddux far more than Clemens), as it might have meant the difference between Maddux getting into the HOF and not doing so. As things went in reality, it was just a speed bump, and he will go in on the first ballot. Who said life isn't fair?

By: Sweet Uncle Lou’s Friday Roundup: The “You Left Work Already, Didn’t You?” Edition

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 22:29:07 +0000

[...] In case you were still unaware, Greg Maddux was awesome. [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 18:42:30 +0000

Redsauce:

I got the numbers here:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2009-starter-pitching.shtml

and I changed the year and picked off the relevant number on each page.

By: Redsauce

Redsauce — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 13:56:55 +0000

I love this! I'm looking at doing some grunt work on this for a couple of pitchers, but how did you find the average game score for all of the starts in a league for a particular year? Did you use the play index?

By: Johnny Twisto

Johnny Twisto — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 01:45:17 +0000

Without looking, it's not that bizarre because most pitchers who last as long as Maddux have had good careers at the very least. So anyone who hit as badly as Maddux in as many PA must be a pitcher who lasted a long time.

By: sfduke76

sfduke76 — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:06:31 +0000

Love the graph!
As a sidebar, looking at Maddux' similarity scores, 8 of the top 10 similar pitchers are in the HoF (and the other should be). No surprise there. But 5 of the top 10 simlir BATTERS are in the HoF, and another one (Glavine) may be. That seems a tad bizarre.

By: dodgerdave

dodgerdave — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:41:15 +0000

1994: 1.56 ERA, 202 IP
1995: 1.63 ERA, 209.2 IP
1998: (through August 18th start): 1.65 ERA, 206.2 IP

By: dodgerdave

dodgerdave — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 23:36:29 +0000

Maddux got screwed by the Cy Young voters in 1998. He had 206.2 innings and a 1.65 ERA through mid-August but cooled off a bit the final six weeks of the season (which if you notice is just as good as his performances during the strike shortened 1994 and 1995 seasons). But still, he was so dominant during the first 4 and a half months of the 1998 season, that a slump during late August and September didn't do a whole lot of damage to his statistics. He still finished with a 2.22 ERA, 187 ERA+, 251 IP, and 204 K's.

But the idiot voters chose Glavine because of the win totals and nothing else.

By: carl

carl — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:52:21 +0000

Err, by 8 times under 40 I mean 11, but my lack of counting skills doesn't really affect my point I think. That 10 game score in 1996 is also interesting, since it's a freak outlier for that period. That game was Atl vs Col, June 7, 1996, where he gave up 7 runs on 11 hits in 3.1 innings of work, without any HR allowed incidentally, he gave up 9 singles and 2 doubles.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/COL/COL199606070.shtml

By: carl

carl — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:46:51 +0000

What is interesting to me is looking at the worst games he pitched in any given year. At first in his career it was pretty normal, he'd get shelled (game scores of 30 and below) every now and then, 21 total game scores below 30 in his first 5 seasons. Then from '92 to '98, a period of seven seasons, he only had 8 times when his game score was even below 40! Plus now he's throwing more games in the 80+ range too. That's a crazy combination of consistency and brilliance. Also, this is awesome, I'd love to see it for more pitchers.