Did the 2001 Pitching Stars CAUSE the Great DER?
Intuitively, is it possible that the 2001 Mariners had a "below average" rotation, one that offset their sensational relieving to cause a net "average" effect? When you just look at these guys like a kid looking at baseball cards... , were they Felix plus four lousy pitchers? Were they AAA pitchers filling in for injured stars (as many ML staffs are every year)? Were they four mediocre pitchers and a guy with 82 walks, 69 strikeouts, and a 1.7 flyball ratio in the #5 slot?
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1 Jamie Moyer is becoming a fringe candidate for the Hall of Fame. In 2001, he was in his prime.
2 Freddy Garcia, when young, was one of the best pitchers in the league, with one of the best K/BB/HR lines. In 2001, Garcia had the very best K/BB/HR outcome of his career. 2001 was Garcia's #1 season.
Garcia was a young star and he was at his absolute peak in 2001.
3 4 5 Aaron Sele, John Halama, and Joel Pineiro were demonstrably at least average pitchers (with very solid K/BB/HR lines). For example, Sele had just finished good seasons with Texas, and Pineiro was about to become one of the league's most promising young pitchers.
In fact, nobody could call the 2001 Joel Pineiro average. He was breaking into the league, he was throwing great, and the next year (2002) he went 14-7, 3.24 with a 136/54 control ratio. Joel was probably even better than Freddy and Moyer in 2001-02.
Paul Abbott was either average, or below average, in terms of pure pitching (Abby in 2001 had a 93 fastball and a plus-plus change, but control problem). .... assuming for a moment that he was below average, THIS ...
When a team has average pitchers in the BACK of its rotation, that's not below average and it's not average. It's better than average.
1 Star
2 Star
3 Solid
4 Mediocre-below average
5 Young star
6 Solid
... is not a "below average" rotation. It is a rotation the $100M Mariners have been trying to reproduce for eight years, without a whiff of success.
A "below average" rotation has one fairly good pitcher, one average pitcher, and three problems. Or it has a bunch of guys injured and is filling in with its AAA guys. You might have noticed this lately. :- )
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The 2001 Mariners' pitching staff had two aces, a solid back-of-the-rotation, and a sensational bullpen. They didn't score their 118 ERA+ by putting 14 Jarrod Washburns in front of three center fielders. They scored it by having a pitching staff we haven't seen since.
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How good would Moyer, Drop Dead Freddy, Jo-El, Sele, and the 10K bullpen have been with a solid defense rather than a great one? I dunno, 112 ERA+ instead of 118 maybe.
But I doubt it.
Frankly, I'm kind of surprised that such an outstanding 10-man pitching staff, with that defense, only scored a 118 ERA+ (Oakland was at 121). I'm pretty sure that part of the DER was caused by the excellent pitching. I think a whale of a lot of guys hit weak batted balls off Rhodes and Nelson.
I mean, in 2002, the Mariners had the same guys playing defense, including Cammy in CF and Ichiro in RF. They even swapped out their one weak link, Al Martin in LF, for Mark McLemore. What happened to their "eerie" DER then (which was good, but not as good)? Maybe subbing in James Baldwin and Ismael Valdes, and Jeff Nelson's injuries, hurt their DER?
Why should it be an absolute that, of the two components of run prevention (fielding and pitching), that fielding only is the cause of DER?
Something weird happened in 2001 to cause that convergence in DER, and at least part of it was outstanding pitching (including those jaw-dropping 7th, 8th, and 9th innings). I'm not sure what it was, but it underlines ... in my mind ... how little we understand defense.
It's not like the Mariners were able to reproduce that 2001 DER. And so I'm not very confident that anybody else is going to be able to predictably reproduce it, either. :- )
Cheers,
Dr D