The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual Fan (7 page)

• Bobby Thomson's playoff-winning home
run for the Giants against the Dodgers
(1951)

• Willie Mays' legendary over-the-shoulder catch on the titanic flyball hit by Vic
Wertz in the World Series (1954)

• The only Brooklyn World Series victory
(1955)

• The only perfect game in World Series
history (1956)

• The only Milwaukee World Series victory (1957)

Although some of the greatest black
and Latin superstars-Jackie Robinson,
Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Ernie Banks, Lary Doby, Roberto Clemente and others-established themselves in this period, the Golden Era was not nearly as integrated as it could have been. The Detroit Tigers did not integrate
until 1958 (Ozzie Virgil) and the Boston Red Sox were the last to integrate
in 1959 (Pumpsie Green), both with part-time players. Because of its shallow
reluctance to integrate, the American League missed out on much of the top talent. The AL's dismal All-Star Game record from 1951 to 1982 drives home the
point: The AL lost 29 of 36 All-Star Games, reversing its previous dominance.

The types of pitches batters have had to face in different eras has caused further inconsistencies in pitching and hitting statistics.

The spitball confounded hitters before WWII. At least five pitchers who
relied on the spitball are in the Hall of Fame (Jack Chesbro, Ed Walsh, Stan
Coveleski, Red Faber and Burleigh Grimes). Chesbro has the twentieth century record for wins in a season, 41, and Walsh once won 40. But the sloppy
spitball was both unsanitary and dangerous because the tobacco-juiced lubricant darkened the ball in the time before lighted fields.

Ray Chapman didn't see one of those darkened baseballs in time. In the
heat of a pennant race, the talented and popular Cleveland shortstop was hit
in the head with a pitch from Carl Mays on August 17, 1920, and became the
only player killed during a major league game. The Washington Star carried
this remarkable account:

So terrific was the blow that the report of impact caused spectators to think the ball had struck his bat. Mays... acting under
this impression, fielded the ball which rebounded halfway to
the pitcher's box, and threw it to first base to retire Chapman.

A spitball figured in the most famous passed ball in history-the one that
got away from Dodger catcher Mickey Owen in Game 4 of the 1941
World Series. The low pitch that struck out the Yankees' Tommy Henrich,
with two outs in the ninth inning and Brooklyn leading, would have tied
the Series at two games each. Instead, Henrich reached first after the ball
eluded Owen and the Yankees went on to score four runs that inning, win
the game and take a commanding 3-1 Series lead.

That was the only passed ball Owen committed all season. He has been
remembered ever since for it. Almost forgotten was the pitcher, Hugh
Casey. Years later, he admitted the pitch had been a spitball.

By most accounts, Mays was as nasty in disposition as his pitches. Although the pitch that killed Chapman was not believed to be a spitball (the
submarine-style throwing Mays said it was a rising fastball), Chapman's
death and the spitball's contribution to darkened baseballs accelerated the
campaign to ban it. In 1921, only seventeen pitchers, whose livelihood depended on the pitch, were allowed to continue throwing it. Other pitchers
have since been accused of throwing spitballs, and pitchers have continued
to find other ways of doctoring baseballs to make sharper and less familiar movement. Officially, the last legal spitball was thrown in 1934, Burleigh
Grimes' final season.

Chapman's death had another consequence: In 1921, umpires were instructed to replace balls more often. Having whiter, less lopsided balls to hit
contributed to bigger offense in the Lively Ball era, too.

In the 1980s, pitchers like Bruce Sutter, Jack Morris and Mike Scott
perfected the split-finger fastball, which imitated the spitball's sudden sinking
action. That pitch got Sutter into the Hall of Fame, allowed Morris to become
the winningest pitcher of the 1980s, and transformed Scott from a pedestrian
pitcher to one of the most effective in the game.

In his first six seasons, Scott had a 29-44 win-loss record, gave up more
hits than innings pitched, struck out fewer than four-and-a-half batters per
nine innings, and had an ERA well above 4.00. In his next five seasons, Scott
was 86-47, was one of baseball's least hittable pitchers, struck out about eight
batters per nine innings, and had an ERA below 3.00. In 1986, Scott led the
NL with a 2.22 ERA and 306 strikeouts.

Shortly after the spitball disappeared, along came the slider, another devastating and deceptive pitch that looks like a fastball but acts like a sharp curve,
breaking late just as it crosses the plate. In The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers,
the authors date the slider roughly to 1936, but in their list of the "best sliders
of all-time," all of the top ten pitchers began their careers after World War II.
Among them are three Hall of Fame pitchers-Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson and
Bob Lemon and a fourth, Randy Johnson, who will surely be inducted.

Hank Aaron, who knew something about hitting, predicted in the late
1960s that, because of the slider, there would never be another .400 hitter.
He's been right for going on 40 years.

As helpful as it is to know who threw the pitches and what pitches they threw,
far more influential is where they were allowed to throw them. Nothing is
a better predictor of swollen or shrunken hitting statistics than the strike
zone's size and height. Periodic rule-tweaking has helped define baseball's
different eras.

When the National League began play in 1876, the batter could demand
high pitches (shoulders to waist), low pitches (waist to one foot above the
ground) or "fair" ones (anywhere in between). But pitchers had all the other
advantages: Walks counted as a time at-bat, but back then it took nine balls to
earn one and the pitcher was only fifty feet away. Batters didn't get first base
when hit by a pitch.

Batters could no longer dictate the strike zone beginning in 1887, and
the strike zone definition-from the shoulders to the knees-was remarkably
stable from 1887 through 1949. Changes in 1950, 1963 and 1969 influenced
statistics dramatically.

When many of the game's brightest stars began going to war in 1941,
offense started to decline. By 1945, more than 100 big-leaguers were in military service. The level of baseball talent was in disrepair, and so was the quality of the baseballs they hit. From 1942 to 1945, Spud Chandler (1.64), Hal
Newhouser (1.81), Mort Cooper (1.77) and Howie Pollet (1.75) all won ERA
titles with marks below 2.00-the norm in the Dead Ball era, but achieved
only two other times since 1920. Even Joe DiMaggio, who had hit .381, .352
and .357 from 1939 to 1941, plummeted to a .305 average in 1942, at which
point he began three years in the military. In 1986, DiMaggio told Philadelphia Inquirer sportswriter Frank Dolson that he enlisted, in part, because of what the poorly manufactured balls were doing to his batting average.

After the war, the arrival of outfielder Ralph Kiner in Pittsburgh and the
development of New York Giants slugging first baseman Johnny Mize fueled
a National League power surge, but otherwise offense was stagnant-until
rule-makers shrank the strike zone in 1950. The new zone dropped from the
shoulders to the armpits and from "the knees" to the top of the knees. The
most difficult pitches to hit were now balls.

Batting averages immediately returned to pre-war levels and home runs
shot up more than 17% in 1950. Home runs continued their ascent over the
next decade, but otherwise pitchers reasserted their control-players swinging for the fences struck out more, batting averages settled into a .255-.265
norm, and run production was not dramatically different.

Until, that is, expansion arrived in 1961 and 1962. Roger Maris hit
his 61 home runs and Warren Spahn's 3.01 ERA was good enough to top
all NL pitchers in '61. Offense was even bigger in 1962, and Maury Wills
broke Ty Cobb's enduring record by stealing 104 bases. In these two seasons,
legitimate stars like Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron and Mickey
Mantle had huge seasons, but so did previously nondescript hitters like Norm
Cash and Jim Gentile.

Two years of that was enough for the rule-makers, who in 1963 made
the strike zone bigger than ever: "between the top of the batter's shoulders
and his knees" (no longer top of the knees). That ushered in the best pitching
era since Dead Ball times.

When most nostalgic fans talk about the period from 1963 to 1968, they
remember superstar hitters like Mays, Aaron, Robinson, Roberto Clemente
and Al Kaline. They recall promising rookies like Tony Oliva, Richie Allen and Tony Conigliaro. But the pitchers, not the hitters, were earning Hall of
Fame credentials then.

Sandy Koufax, who began pitching well in 1961, was transcendent beginning in 1963 and each season until his premature retirement at his peak
following the 1966 season. Juan Marichal and Bob Gibson were not far behind. Ferguson Jenkins, Gaylord Perry and Phil Niekro all had the good fortune to arrive during these years. So did such outstanding pitchers as Luis
Tiant, Sam McDowell, Mickey Lolich and Mel Stottlemyre, though they fell
short of Hall-of-Fame credentials.

The results of this change could not have been more dramatic. From
1962 to 1963, run scoring plummeted 11.6%, home runs dropped 10%, and
batting averages declined sixteen points in the NL (to .245) and eight in the
AL (to .247).

Then the hitting got really bad.

Some wonderful baseball history masked the numbers. Both leagues
had legendary pennant races in 1964. Four AL teams were neck-and-neck in
the last week of 1967. The Yankees' decline after two generations of dominance allowed the firstAL pennants ever to fly over Minnesota and Baltimore.
The 1964, 1965, 1967 and 1968 World Series all went the dramatic maximum
seven games. Frank Robinson, freshly traded from Cincinnati to Baltimore,
won the AL Triple Crown in 1966. Boston's Carl Yastrzemski duplicated the
feat the next season. And there was the incomparable Koufax.

But these numbers don't lie: The already-depressed offensive numbers
of 1966 took another huge plunge in 1967-the majors scored 700 fewer runs
and hit 450 fewer homers, while the NL hit just .249 and the AL an embarrassing .236. Offense was now off 15.6% in runs and 23% in home runs since 1962. Already at bottom, offense took an incomprehensible new descent in
1968. The majors lost another 1,100 runs and more than 300 homers.

The 1968 season is now remembered as the Year of the Pitcher-the
antithesis of 1930. Denny McLain won 31 games, baseball's first 30-game
winner since Dizzy Dean in 1934. Don Drysdale pitched a record 582/-1 consecutive scoreless innings. Sub-2.00 ERAs, more typical of the war years
and Dead Ball, had already won six of the ten ERA titles from 1963-67. In
1968, Cleveland's Luis Tiant registered a 1.60 ERA-a forty-nine-year low
for the AL. And in the NL, Bob Gibson achieved his legendary 1.12 ERA, a
sixty-year low bettered only twice in modern baseball. Eight starting pitchers, and as many prominent relievers, had ERAs below 2.00. The American
League imploded with an all-time low .230 league-wide batting average. It
had exactly one .300 hitter-Yastrzemski's .301 average is the lowest ever
for a champion.

Enough. For 1969, rule-makers returned the strike zone to the 19501962 standard: armpits to the top of the knees. They also lowered the mound
by a third, bringing pitchers five inches closer to Earth (though interviews
with pitchers of the time indicate that the strike zone was the more significant
change).

Offense gradually returned to respectability. AL expansion in 1977
added an offensive spike in the late 1970s. Throughout the 1970s and early
1980s, baseball had perhaps its best balance between offense and pitching
ever. There was ample power, but the stolen base had returned, too (Lou
Brock set the record with 118 steals in 1974, then Rickey Henderson topped
that with 130 in 1982). Superstar starting pitchers were in rich supply and
bullpens were deeper and better than ever. From 1969 to 1987, sixteen fran chises played in the World Series-uncommon balance. In short, the baseball
was good enough to overcome double-knit uniforms, mutton-chop sideburns,
and an abundance ofAstroTurf in cavernous multi-use stadiums.

But instead of leveling off, offense kept rising. Umpires were calling an
even smaller strike zone than the rule book required. Strike zones had always
varied by umpire, but by the mid-1980s, most strike zones were no higher
than the batter's belt. The results were predictable. In 1987 a record number
of home runs were hit. Mark McGwire led the AL with a rookie-record 49
homers. Don Mattingly hit homers in a record eight straight games and belted
out a record six grand slams. In the NL, home runs were up 19% and batting
average reached its high for the decade.