Saving The Pen
Posted by Steve Lombardi on December 19, 2007
Here's an interesting little report that you can run with Baseball-Reference.com's Play Index Pitching Game Finder - the number of games, in this case, during 2007, where a team had their starting pitcher go six innings or more:
Tm Year Games Link to Individual Games +---+----+-----+-------------------------+ CLE 2007 123 Ind. Games CHW 2007 123 Ind. Games BOS 2007 108 Ind. Games LAA 2007 105 Ind. Games TOR 2007 104 Ind. Games ARI 2007 103 Ind. Games OAK 2007 102 Ind. Games MIN 2007 102 Ind. Games HOU 2007 102 Ind. Games SFG 2007 101 Ind. Games SDP 2007 100 Ind. Games PIT 2007 100 Ind. Games MIL 2007 100 Ind. Games TBD 2007 99 Ind. Games PHI 2007 98 Ind. Games COL 2007 98 Ind. Games CIN 2007 98 Ind. Games CHC 2007 98 Ind. Games SEA 2007 96 Ind. Games NYM 2007 96 Ind. Games NYY 2007 93 Ind. Games ATL 2007 91 Ind. Games DET 2007 90 Ind. Games LAD 2007 89 Ind. Games BAL 2007 89 Ind. Games STL 2007 87 Ind. Games KCR 2007 80 Ind. Games FLA 2007 73 Ind. Games WSN 2007 72 Ind. Games TEX 2007 69 Ind. Games
Games found: 2,889.
Note: This does not reflect the "quality" of those six-plus innings in a start. But, it does tell you which team's starters ensured that their bullpen was not over-worked last season.
December 19th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
It would be interesting to correlate this column with the team's won-loss record. I know New York Mets fans were beside themselves because their team was trying for the playoffs while ranking 20th. If you have a really deep and strong bullpen (LAD?) maybe you can overcome this handicap, but of course that wasn't the 2007 Mets.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Correlation is .257 which is pretty low. 1.0 would mean there is a perfect positive correlation while -1.0 would mean there is a perfect negative correlation. .26 means there is a positive relationship but not very strong. Things like bullpen strength, runs created and your point about this measuring long starts not necessarily quality starts are explantions. Look at the White Sox at 123- they only won 72 games. The Yankees, Nationals and Rangers were the only teams that won more games than they had games that their starter made it to the sixth.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:47 pm
Team records in 2007 in games when their starter went 6 or more innings.
TEAM W L %
NYM 69 - 27 0.719
PHI 68 - 30 0.694
LAD 61 - 28 0.685
NYY 63 - 30 0.677
BOS 73 - 35 0.676
TOR 70 - 34 0.673
CLE 82 - 41 0.667
LAA 70 - 35 0.667
SEA 64 - 32 0.667
CHC 65 - 33 0.663
SDP 65 - 35 0.650
ATL 59 - 32 0.648
STL 55 - 32 0.632
ARI 64 - 39 0.621
DET 55 - 35 0.611
COL 58 - 40 0.592
MIL 59 - 41 0.590
FLA 43 - 30 0.589
MIN 60 - 42 0.588
PIT 58 - 42 0.580
KCR 46 - 34 0.575
OAK 58 - 44 0.569
BAL 48 - 41 0.539
HOU 55 - 47 0.539
TEX 37 - 32 0.536
TBD 53 - 46 0.535
WSN 38 - 34 0.528
SFG 53 - 48 0.525
CIN 51 - 47 0.520
CHW 62 - 61 0.504
December 19th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Wow, interesting about CHW tying for the most 6+ inning starts, but having the worst record in those games. It almost makes you think they'd have been better off pulling some of their starters, except of course their record in the other 39 games was much worse.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Speaking of 6 inning starting pitching, I remember how Sid Fernandez used to have the most amazing first 4 or 5 innings only to louse it up before the 6th or 7th. I remember thinking he'd be Cy Young if games were only 5 innings long.
December 20th, 2007 at 9:46 am
I found some stats on that for Sid Fernandez, and you are most certainly right about that. I'll make a post on it.