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Mo' Dawg gets a same day response from the Founding Father. Thass' what I'm TALKIN' about.
It's a whopping $3 per month for your own Personal Sabermetrics Trainer. Who can afford three bucks, anyway.
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Last year you published a very interesting article, pointing out that pitchers with outstanding 2- and 3-game debuts, had better-than-average careers as a group. Would you figure that James Paxton's start has put him at like the 90th percentile for 5-start debuts, or 98th percentile, or what? In his first 5 starts, all against contending teams, he's 4-0, 1.16, 30 strikeouts and 9 walks in 31 innings, 17 hits. Using Bill James Abstract type terminology, that might put him at what, a 20% chance at 150 wins or how might we characterize this start? Thanks, Jeff
Asked by: jemanji
Answered: 4/3/2014
He's at the 99th percentile. . .well, actually, very high in the 98th percentile. Among 2,445 pitchers in my data, 27 were better than Paxton in their first 5 starts.
The number one guy in his first five starts was Fernando, 1981, (5-0, 0.20 ERA), followed by Bruce Howard, 1964, Steve Rogers, 1973, Burt Hooton, 1971, Luis Tiant, 1964, Mark Fidrych, 1976, Bucky Brandon, 1966, Chuck Cary, 1989, Dave Morehead, 1963, and Felix Hernandez, 2005.
Let me see if I can copy the chart into this space; I don't suppose this will work:
Year - Name - W L K BB - ERA
1981 Fernando Valenzuela 5 0 43 11 0.20
1964 Bruce Howard 3 1 33 9 0.72
1973 Steve Rogers 3 1 18 14 1.05
1971 Burt Hooton 3 1 38 20 1.69
1964 Luis Tiant 4 1 35 18 1.93
1976 Mark Fidrych 4 1 26 8 1.88
1966 Bucky Brandon 3 1 26 13 1.55
1989 Chuck Cary 2 0 23 9 1.40
1963 Dave Morehead 3 1 31 28 1.34
2005 Felix Hernandez 2 1 38 5 1.75
1967 Dick Hughes 2 1 34 9 1.96
1957 Danny McDevitt 3 1 33 24 1.13
1983 Jose DeLeon 2 2 43 16 2.31
1985 Terry Leach 4 0 19 11 0.76
1972 Steve Busby 3 1 31 8 1.58
1970 Wayne Simpson 4 1 26 14 1.43
1967 Cisco Carlos 2 0 21 7 0.81
1984 Orel Hershiser 3 1 38 6 1.88
2006 Jered Weaver 5 0 31 5 1.35
1978 Jim Wright 3 1 22 4 1.48
1961 Don Schwall 5 0 26 16 1.31
2013 Shelby Miller 3 1 33 9 1.16
1978 John Henry Johnson 3 1 18 14 1.19
1978 Kip Young 4 1 21 11 1.47
1967 John Hiller 3 1 25 2 1.66
A little ragged, but maybe you can figure out most of it. Amazing number of bad Red Sox pitchers on the list. Morehead, Schwall and Brandon all started getting the crap beat out of them, beginning with their sixth start (although Schwall had another nice series of starts about a month later.)
Anyway....don't make TOO much out of it, but there is SOME tendency for this to be meaningful data. Fernando, Steve Rogers, Felix, Orel Hershiser, Juan Marichal, Don Sutton, Dennis Eckersley and Phil Niekro are all in the top two percent.
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Gordon did a rough cut, using the criteria of K's, CTL, undefeated, ERA, over the last 4 decades ... he got 8 other pitchers, of whom 5 were HOF types.
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Bill doesn't actually say what his criteria are - maybe his Game Score metric. Anyway, 27 pitchers in baseball history have had as good or better a debut, with Paxton #28. You can review those 27 pitchers above.
I count 1/3 of them -- based on 5 starts, now! -- who went on to become major stars whose names I recognize at a glance. A lot of the 2/3 who didn't, they got hurt - Fidrych, Simpson, etc.
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The list based on 5 starts' worth of box scores alone. It doesn't consider
- "Left hand 97 MPH fastball,"
- Age 25 upon debut (and past the injury years),
- "Carrying the debut over the winter,"
- Pitched against 5 contenders,
and so forth. If you wanted to jury-rig the table to produce 80% stars, you wouldn't have much problem doing so.
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Felix is a bit of a cautionary tale -- he started red-hot, but the league adjusted, and he spent two years as an "excellent" pitcher who underachieved, before realizing his greatness. So let's hope Paxton doesn't turn out to be Felix...
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On the list, I don't notice a single LH flamethrower who started like this, do you? Well, probably one of those oldtimers was a lefty with a real hot fastball.
Randy Johnson, Sandy Koufax, Steve Carlton types are erratic by their nature. So Paxton's fans could probably claim "there's never been another Blow 'Em Away Lefty who started so well."
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Anyway. Thanks to Bill for providing the list of 27 pitchers who started hotter than Paxton has.
Cheers,
Jeff