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The Front End of the Analysis or the Back End?

At Bill James Online, the latest article is "Tough Games, and Not So Tough."  Bill scored every start of a pitcher's career on a 1-5 scale:

• 5 = On the road against playoff-caliber teams
• 4 = Good teams on the road, and playoff* teams at home
• 3 = .500 teams at home, bad teams on the road
• 2 = Bad teams at home, terrible teams on the road
• 1 = Terrible team at home

It doesn't matter that the scale is less-than-precise.  It sorts historical SP's into gaps so wide that the conclusion is inevitable.  This is related to James' quasi-"fuzzy logic" approach -- he takes an Artificial Intelligence-style, PECOTA-style points system and takes a first cut.  After the first cut, he refines the points system further and further.  Chess programmers did this, "triangulating" the right formulas for evaluating positions.

Most sabermetricians would be so averse to the imprecision of this type of sliding scale, that they wouldn't go any further.  Therein lies their inability to attack problems that require a spiral inward.

But when you find that Juan Marichal was 29-9, 2.24 in "5" games, and Bert Blyleven was 15-34, 4.63 in "5" games ... all of a sudden the imprecision of the scale ceases to matter.  So does the imprecision of W-L records and ERA.  Sabermetricians get too snooty about using the "right" statistics at the front end of the analysis.  You can find truth using almost any tool, if your logic and acuity is intact.

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Tap Out, Dept.

Modern pitchers who show up as "tough guys" -- among others -- include Clayton Kershaw, Bartolo Colon, David Wells, and ... Felix Hernandez.  King Felix is 12-and-7 lifetime in "category 5" starts, and that is despite pitching for the Seattle Mariners.  

(1) I saw a stat on ROOT TV last week:  Felix has thrown 96 games allowing 0 or 1 runs.  He has won 64 of them -- exactly two-thirds.  Think about it.  If Felix throws a SHUTOUT next game, there's about 2 chances he'll actually win, and about 1 chance he won't.  This occurred last game -- he took a shutout into the 9th, and then two bloops fell in, and he didn't win.

(2) This James stat clarifies for me something that had been lurking on the edges of my awareness.  King Felix is a GAMER, a gamer with a capital G.  You put this dude in Game 7 of the ALCS, on the road against the Yankees, and he's going to lock them down.

We all watched Felix' amazing string of 1-0 victories last year... weren't three of them against the Yankees, Red Sox, and Rangers?  This is a man who needs to get onto the Big Stage.

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Bullies

James, once he found this macro pattern, then used it to find a macro-macro pattern.  :- ) 

The "bullies" in MLB history had great records in "easy" games, and then folded in "tough" games.  Pitchers guilty of this are listed below.  The normal winning percentage in "soft" games was 120 points higher than in "tough" games.  Here are some guys who feasted on wimpy teams:

• Nolan Ryan
• Tom Seaver (195 points better vs soft)
• Justin Verlander
• Don Drysdale
• Roger Clemens (174 points better vs soft)
• Jack Morris (165)
• Bob Gibson
• J.R. Richard

All of them big, mean-looking righties, most of them with gruff social veneers.  Personally I have always thought of Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens as classic bullies - guys who love to fight when they have the edge, and who show you their backs, and the bottoms of their shoes, when they're they underdogs.  Roger Clemens used to lose to Dave Stewart and the A's every single game; finally they faced in the playoffs, and Clemens got himself tossed out of the game in the 1st or 2nd inning.  (With a "macho" cursing of the umpire.)

On the other hand, many of the game's greatest "tough guy" pitchers ... Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, now Clayton Kershaw ... were lefties who lacked "macho" social veneers.  Maybe lefties have to deal with adversity differently, or something... at one point, 5 of the last 7 U.S. Presidents had been lefthanded.  Maybe one more argument for Gordon's Cliff Lee Maneuver?

Anyway, the last year or two I've been undecided whether Justin Verlander or Felix Hernandez was the greatest ace in the game.  This breaks the tie for me.