Add new comment

This is exactly what I'm talking about.  If you start with the "obvious" -- runs scored and runs allowed are each 50% of the baseball equation -- then if you split pitching/defense straight down the middle - defense would be 25% of the game.  Yet Doc uses a pretty standard (and generally accepted in some quarters) standard that defense is only 15-17% of the game, meaning pitching is 33-35% of the equation. 
My point is that this number is drawn from a bunch of different approaches which all, (in some way or another) DISCARD a bunch of defensive events, while counting every pitching event.
It is completely indisputable that fielding gets 20 outs and pitchers get 7.  That's not speculation.  That's fact.  And ALL of these individual defensive metric methods start off by thinking of every way they can to ignore some portion of those 20 outs the fielders accumulate each game.
Each year in the AL, the 1st to worst spread in hits allowed is about 300.  The runs allowed differential is eerily similar (roughly 300).  Pirato ran a correlation and found that the hits to runs slope inside the standard pitching paradigm of the AL is effectively 0.8.  Each hit prevented prevents 8/10 of a run.  The thing is - it's actually not linear - it's hyperbolic, so from end to end, it skews toward 1 hit saves 1 run.  But, most of the defensive metrics use much smaller run-per-out factors. 
During the 20th century, run prevention was assumed to be nearly all pitching, yes.  And the only defensive stat for most of that century was fielding % ... errors.  The difference between your SS making 20 errors and 10 errors was largely what they had to go on. 
Clearly, the baseball world remains in the stone-age in regards to defense.  Felix finishes 2nd in the CY voting because his ERA dropped to 2.49 (from 3.45 in 2008).  But, his personal stats were largely that same as his 2006 season, (K and BB rates).  Washburn had an ERA with Seattle of 2.64.  But, the club can't buy a GG outside of Ichiro. 
The Braves won 15 straight division titles -- and they were top 3 in DER in something like 12 of those seasons.  They ALSO had top 3 pitching in most of those seasons.  And they also had middle-of-the-pack offense in most of those seasons.