WAR, One Pitcher, and Winning it All

Walter Johnson

They tell me that the guys with the best WAR are the best players. They also tell me that a great pitcher will win for you. OK, I’ll give them both of those (sorta). But one thing I’ve noticed is that they’re certainly no predictor of a championship. It’s the nature of the game that this would be true. You simply can’t let your ace pitcher (the one with the best WAR) pitch every inning and you can’t let your best hitter (again the one with the best WAR) come up for every at bat. It’s particularly true that you can’t take the guys with the best ever pitching WAR and find a lot of World Series championships.

I’ve been particularly critical of pitching WAR (but not as much critical of offensive WAR) ever since I saw the numbers and read the ever-changing formulae. But let’s accept that it’s a good measure of pitching excellence. It still isn’t much of a predictor of how a team will do. I Went down the BBREF list of yearly WAR (which uses BBREF’s version of WAR) looking only for pitchers. I excluded all pitchers who showed up before the advent of the 20th Century. In other words I ignored the pre-American League championship games  (1884-1891). I did this because there is great disagreement about how seriously they were taken by the teams and players and how much they were treated as mere exhibitions. I also ignored the Temple Cup Series. Then I looked to find the top 10 WAR seasons for a pitcher in the American League era (1901-present). Of course I ran into Walter Johnson who had three of the top five and four of the top 12. So I changed the way I went at it. I began looking for a new name until I found 10 different pitchers. That took me all the way to 52nd on the list. Of course many of the 52 (and ties) were pre-1901 pitchers (including the first seven) and some were hitters (Ruth four times, Barry Bonds twice, and Gehrig, Yastrzemski and Hornsby once each). Here’s the list I ended up with: Walter Johnson in 1913 (16.0 WAR), Johnson in 1912 (14.6), Dwight Gooden in 1985 (13.2), Johnson in 1914 (13.0), Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1920 (12.8), Cy Young in 1901 (12.6), Steve Carlton in 1972 (12.5), Roger Clemens in 1997 (12.2), Johnson in 1915 (12.1), Fergie Jenkins in 1971 (12.0), Hal Newhouser in 1945 (12.0), Bob Gibson in 1968 (11.9), Alexander in 1916, Pedro Martinez in 2000, and Smokey Joe Wood in 1912 (all at 11.7). So the individual pitchers are Johnson, Gooden, Alexander, Young, Carlton, Clemens, Jenkins, Newhouser, Gibson, Martinez, and Wood (a total of 11).

Let’s notice a couple of things about this list. First, Walter Johnson’s 1912-1915 is, by WAR, the greatest pitching performance by a single pitcher over a  period of years in the last 115 years (and people still debate how good he was). Second, there are a couple of one shot wonders in the list, specifically Gooden and Wood. The remainder are quality pitchers having their peak year.

But for my purpose, the most interesting thing is that only two of the pitchers were with teams that won the World Series: Newhouser and Wood. Gibson got to the Series but the Cardinals lost in seven games (Gibson himself taking the loss in game seven). In 1901 there was no Series, but Young’s Boston team finished second.

This isn’t a knock on pitching WAR, but merely an acknowledgement that it can’t predict pennants. And one great pitcher isn’t a predictor either. It does help if the number two pitcher on your team has a pretty good year also.

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The 49 Greatest Mets

ESPN has come up with another “greatest” list. This time it’s the Mets and it only goes 49 deep (not the usual 50). I suppose that’s because the Mets are only just over 50 years old. But when you consider the bottom of the list, you’d think they could put on someone like Ron Swoboda just to get it to 50.  You can find the list by going to ESPN and finding their New York page. Here’s some quick thoughts on it:

1. The top 10 are (in order) Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Mike Piazza, David Wright, Jerry Koosman, Keith Hernandez, Jose Reyes, Cary Carter, and Carlos Beltran.

2. To make a team (four pitchers, one of which is left-handed) you get: Hernandez at 1st, Edgardo Alfonso at 2nd (he’s 11th on the list and the first player to spend significant time at second base–although he played at third as well), Reyes at short, and Wright at third. The outfield is Strawberry, Beltran, and Mookie Wilson (who is 15th on the list). Your starters are Seaver, Gooden, Koosman, and Al Leiter (who is 12th on the list). John Franco is the reliever (coming in at 14th), and the highest listed catcher is Piazza with Gary Carter being the highest rated player whose position is already taken. That makes him the DH.

3. I saw no major players left off, but I was surprised that Ron Darling (17 was higher than David Cone (18), but maybe that works for Cone’s Mets career.

4. Tug McGraw (19) finished higher than either Jesse Orosco (22) or Roger McDowell (41), which I liked.

5. I thought Tommy Agee was low at 25 and Ed Kranepool high at 26, although Kranepool had a lot of Mets records for a while. All were longevity numbers.

6. Jerry Grote, John Stearns, and Todd Hundley all made the list. I’d forgotten that Mets catching was reasonably deep.

7. And everybody’s favorite 1962 Mets player, Marv Throneberry was 49th. Ain’t that Amazin”?

Go take a look for yourself. If you disagree, take it up with ESPN.

A Look Back Twenty-Five Years

First Baseman Keith Hernandez

Last year I did a post about this time of the season commemorating the 1985 Kansas City Royals. It was the 25th anniversary of their single World’s Championship. Seems like a good idea to do again, so this time let’s look at the 1986 Mets, who won their second (and so far final ) World Series 25 years ago.

The ’86 Mets were a heck of a team They were built to win not just a championship, but multiple championships. They hit well, the ran well, the pitched well, they even fielded pretty well. What’s not to like? Gary Carter was an All-Star catcher and future Hall of Famer. The infield consisted of Keith Hernandez, generally considered the finest fielding first baseman of the era, a pretty fair hitter (with or without Clyde Frazier and hair tinting), the league leader in walks (the only category a Mets hitter led the NL in), and a former MVP (1979). At second New York had Wally Backman. He hit .300 for the season, had no power, stole a handful of bases, and was something of a sparkplug. Rafael Santana played short, had a good glove, and batted low in the order for a reason. Ray Knight, only a couple of years removed from Houston was the third baseman. At the time he was best known as a good fielding third baseman and the husband of golfer Nancy Lopez. The outfield had 24 year-old Darryl Strawberry  in right field. He led the team in home runs and was second in RBIs (to Carter). Len Dykstra in center was even younger at 23. If there was a man considered the spark, it was  Dykstra. He played center well, led the team in stolen bases (and tobacco spitting), and had more walks than strikeouts. Veteran Mookie Wilson was in left. He’d been there a while, had decent speed, and tended to pull the ball to right field a lot, as Bill Buckner was about to find out.

The pitching was good and was pretty typical for the era in that there were a lot of good pitchers and no real standout “ace.”  Lefty Bob Ojeda led in wins (18), former Cy Young winner Dwight Gooden was only 21 and tied with flame-thrower Sid Fernandez for the team lead in strikeouts (200). A number of  people thought Ron Darling had the best stuff and Rick Aguilera, not yet the Minnesota Twins great reliever was the fifth starter. Jesse Orosco had 21 saves from the left side and Roger McDowell had 22 from the right. It was one of the last teams to use both a right and left-handed reliever tandem. The manager was Davey Johnson, the old Orioles and Braves second baseman and the bench featured Kevin Mitchell and Howard Johnson (who didn’t run a  hotel).

The team won their division by 21.5 games over Philadelphia then played a great LCS against Houston, climaxing with the game six I detailed in the last post. In the World Series they took on Boston and won in seven games. After dropping the first two games, they won four of the next five, including the extra innings game six that featured Wilson’s roller through Buckner’s legs.

It was a team built for a long haul. They were expected to win multiple championships and dominate the NL for five or six years. They didn’t. They managed one more division title (in 1988) and that was all. No one seems to have told the St. Louis Cardinals (in 1985 and 1987) or the Los Angeles Dodgers (in 1988) that the Mets were invincible. Part of the problem was the team itself.  Carter got old, so did Hernandez and Wilson. Ojeda had a few good years but was never an ace and Backman was no Joe Morgan. Darling never panned out. Both Gooden and Strawberry ended up with drug problems and never became the transcendent players some thought they would become. Then there were the trades. Aguilera became a star reliever, but for Minnesota. Bench player Mitchell won an MVP but did it at San Francisco.  And Orosco did win another championship, he just did it two years later with the Dodgers when they beat his former Mets teammates.

This was a team that reminds me a lot of the 1984 Detroit team. Good hitting, good pitching, a powerful bullpen, and one championship. I always thought they’d do better, but was wrong. Still, it’s nice to celebrate them for their one magnificent run.