This little report is about two quirks in pitchers’ records, which are sort of related and which I can study at the same time and save myself a little work. The first of these was suggested by Felix Hernandez’ stopping the Mariners’ losing streak at 17 games. Back when I was a kid, before the term "#1 starter" had entered the language, one name for your best starting pitcher was "Stopper". Your best starting pitcher was called The Stopper and sometimes still is, occasionally, because he was the guy who would stop your losing streak.
I got to wondering, then, about pitchers who stopped losing streaks. Suppose that we give Felix Hernandez 17 points for stopping a 17-game losing streak, 16 points for a 16-game losing streak, etc. Who, then, would be the "Stopper of the Year" for each season?
There are issues as to what’s the best way to do the math, so let me spend a minute with those. Jay Hook with the 1962 Mets finished 8-19 with a 4.84 ERA. He was not a Cy Young candidate; however, six of Hook’s eight wins came after losses, and he stopped streaks of 9, 17, 5 and 4 losses; altogether, with the two one-game "streaks" he stopped losing streaks totaling 37 games. This was the highest number for any pitcher of the 1960s. Although several pitchers stopped 15 or 16 losing streaks in a season, including one-game streaks, in no other case did the streaks total up to 37 games.
I credited a pitcher with stopping a losing streak, by the way, only if he was the starting and winning pitcher in the game in which the streak was ended. When a 1960s announcer said the word "stopper", in any case, he wasn’t really thinking of Jay Hook. He was thinking of Whitey Ford, Sandy Koufax, Camilo Pascual or Juan Marichal. He was thinking of somebody who could be counted on to stop a losing streak before it got to 17 games.
To get the kind of pitcher that the 1960s writer/commentator meant when he said "Stopper", you would have to give the pitcher credit for stopping a large number of losing streaks quickly, rather than stopping an occasional losing streak just as the manager is ready to commit hari-kari. We could, then, use a formula something like
Stopper Score = 2N + CGL
where "N" stands for the number of wins following a loss, and "CGL" stands for "Consecutive Games Lost". Jay Hook’s 1962 stopper score, then, would be 49 (2 * 6 + 37), and the stop topper of 1962 would be Philadelphia’s Art Mahaffey. Mahaffey, a 19-game winner in 1962, stopped streaks totaling 36 games in 1962—just one less than Hook—but he stopped 12 streaks, as opposed to six for Hook. That’s 60 points by the formula.
OK, starting at 1960. ..the Stopper of the Year in 1960 was Bud Daley of the Kansas City A’s, who stopped 14 losing streaks totaling 35 games. Daley’s total of 63 points was the highest for any pitcher in the 1960s. Daley won 16 games, 14 of them coming after a Kansas City loss. Well. . .one of them was after a tie, but there were two losses before the tie, so the losing streak was still intact, unless a tie ends a losing streak, which I don’t think it does except in hockey and hand grenades.
Glen Hobbie in 1960 won 16 games and lost 20, leading the National League in losses but single-handedly preventing the Cubs from finishing in last place. Hobbie would be the National League Stopper of the Year; we’re not giving the award in both leagues, but we will just this once. Daley and Hobbie actually are parallel pitchers. Both pitchers finished 16-13 in 1959 which, in both cases, was their first season in the rotation. Both followed it up with 16-win seasons again in 1960—16-20 for Hobbie, 16-16 for Daley—in both cases pitching for horrible teams. In the thirteen years that the Athletics were in Kansas City, no pitcher won more than fourteen games in a season for them—except Daley in 1959 and 1960. Both Hobbie and Daley were badly overworked in these seasons, making many relief appearances as well as starts, and both degenerated quickly after 1960, Hobbie finishing with a career record of 62-81, Daley a career record of 60-64. Of the two games that Daley won that did not stop a losing streak, one was in a four-inning relief outing, two days after he had pitched seven innings in a start. It was a common practice at the time, but then, so was beating your children.
The Other Prong of This Fork
The other thing I was working on was the quality of opposition pitchers faced. I had a question in "Hey, Bill" about the effects of a #1 starting pitcher, facing other #1 starting pitchers. . .how much of an advantage does Cole Hamels have in that he’s not matched up against the other team’s #1 starters, etc.?
That’s a negligible effect. It’s something that announcers like to talk about, and you can isolate some very small effect of #1 pitchers matching up against other #1 pitchers if you work at it hard enough and look at it exactly the right way, but the "advantage" that a #4 starter gains from that is something less than five runs per season on average. I’m being generous; I defy anybody to find a five-run advantage in that.
The largest effect in that area, actually, is the advantage of being on a good pitching staff. If you’re on a team with two or three of the best pitchers in the league, what that means is that you never have to face those pitchers. That’s a meaningful advantage. We’ll talk more about scale in a minute.
I have studied this issue before, but I had never studied it before in the language of the exact question that I was asked, which had to do with #1, #2, #3 starters, etc. I started by sorting the pitchers in each league into #1, #2, #3 and #4 starters, based on season scores, in such a manner that there were an equal number of starts by each group, as nearly as it was possible to do that. The average in each league, weighted by starts, is 2.50. If a pitcher faces a lot of #1s and #2s—a lot of tough opponents—he has a lower average; if he faces a lot of threes and fours, he has a higher average.
There was no requirement that each team have a #1, and #2, a #3, etc.; that’s not the way the world really works. I ranked the pitchers by (2.5 minus AQOS) * GS, where AQOS is "Average Quality of Opposing Starter", and GS is Game Started. That measures the "gross discrepancy" between the pitcher and the league average. I used this formula to dodge the issue of eligibility for the league lead. If you consider pitchers eligible at 15 starts, you tend to get league leaders who have 15-17 starts; if you consider pitchers eligible at 20 starts, you tend to get league leaders who make 20-22 starts.
In the 1960 season, the pitcher facing the toughest opposition starting pitchers was: Glen Hobbie. This is a coincidence, but it is not entirely a coincidence. Both lists that we are compiling here will tend to be lists of the best pitchers on bad teams—not always, not universally, and not always the same good pitchers on the same bad teams. But there is some overlap between the categories.
Actually, it’s really easy to predict which pitcher faced the toughest opposition starting pitchers: just look at who led the league in losses. As we will see, it tends to be the same pitcher.
The pitcher facing the easiest opposition starting pitchers in 1960—that is, facing the most third and fourth starters—was Hal Brown of Baltimore. Brown made 20 starts, faced 17 third and fourth starters, and finished the season 12-5 with a 3.06 ERA. Brown in 1960, actually, was the most fortunate pitcher of the decade in terms of drawing easy opponents.
1961
The pitcher facing the most difficult opposition starting pitchers in 1961 was Pedro Ramos of Minnesota. Like Hobbie, he was a pretty-good pitcher on a not-too-good team, and, like Hobbie, he lost 20 games, which led the majors—both Hobbie and Ramos. He was 11-20 with a 3.95 ERA.
The pitcher blessed with the easiest opposition starters in 1961 was Don Drysdale. Drysdale made 37 starts, facing 24 third and fourth starters.
John Buzhardt finished the 1961 season 6-18. Five of his six wins, however, came after Philadelphia losses, and one of them ended an historic 23-game losing streak. On July 28, 1961, Buzhardt pitched a complete-game five-hitter against the San Francisco Giants, beating Billy Loes 4-3. That stopped a five-game losing streak—but the Phillies didn’t win again until late August. On August 20 Buzhardt pitched a complete-game 7-4 victory over the Braves, ending the long streak. Buzhardt’s six wins stopped losing streaks totaling 32 games.
When Buzhardt was traded to the White Sox in 1963 he decided to straighten out the pronunciation of his name. The announcers had always called him "Buzz Heart", but the family pronunciation was "Buzzert", which was hard to say because it sounded like "Buzzard". Mostly everybody continued to call him Buzz Heart.
By the formula, in any case, the 1961 Stopper of the Year was Pedro Ramos’ running mate, Camilo Pascual. The Washington Senators in the mid-1950s signed a bunch of Cuban players, most of whom you never heard of. The two best of the Cubans were Ramos and Pascual, both pitchers. Ramos—who was actually a good pitcher—posted won-lost records of 12-16, 14-18, 13-19, 11-18 and 11-20. I believe he may be the only modern pitcher to lose 18 games four years in a row, but those records are good compared to Pascual; Pascual went 2-12, 6-18 and 8-17 before he gained command of his curve.
Once Camilo figured it out, however, he was not merely a good pitcher; he was a great one. In 1961, still paired with Ramos although now in Minnesota, he led the American League in strikeouts, and went 15-16 with a 90-loss team. He stopped 11 losing streaks totaling 24 losses—a Stopper Score of 46.
1962
1962 was the season in which Jay Hook of the Mets stopped 17- and 9-game losing streaks, giving him a total of 49 points in the stopper contest, while Art Mahaffey stopped 12 losing streaks for the Phillies, totaling 36 games to make a score of 60.
The major league leader in losses in 1962 was Roger Craig, with 24, and the pitcher who faced the most difficult opposition starting pitchers was: Roger Craig. In 33 starts Craig faced off with a #1 starter thirteen times—Bob Friend twice, Warren Spahn twice, Drysdale twice, Jack Sanford twice, Sandy Koufax, Joey Jay three times, and Art Mahaffey. Hum, Baby.
Facing the easiest opposition starting pitching was New York Yankee rookie Jim Bouton. Bouton made only 16 starts, but faced only one #1 starter (Boston’s Bill Monboquette), whereas he got to tangle with 12 third or fourth starters. 75% of his starts.
1963
In 1960, 1961 and 1962, the major league leader in losses was also the pitcher who faced the most difficult opposition starting pitching. In 1963 Larry Jackson—an outstanding pitcher, a #1 starter himself—finished just 14-18 despite a career-best ERA of 2.55. Jackson faced the best opposing starters in the major leagues.
The continuation of that list, however, is really interesting. Third on the list of pitchers facing the toughest opposition was Whitey Ford, and fourth was Juan Marichal. Ford went 24-7, Marichal 25-8—despite facing off repeatedly with the best starters in the league. Ford matched up with 12 #1 starters and 11 #2 starters, whereas he faced only 4 #4 starters. Yeah, he was 24-7—but he was really better than that if you adjust for the pitchers he faced. Marichal matched up with Don Drysdale four times (in 1963), Koufax twice, Spahn twice, Bob Gibson once, and other #1 starters another seven times. On the other end of the scale (easiest opposition pitchers) was Jack Kralick of Cleveland.
I suspect, although I do not know, that Whitey Ford over the course of his career may have faced the most difficult opposing starting pitchers of any pitcher in history. I know that Stengel often held Ford back off-rotation to match him up against tough teams and tough pitchers, and I know that Ford was near the league lead in facing strong opponents not only in 1963, but also in 1965.
The Stopper of the Year was, depending on your choice of method, Don Nottebart or Jim Maloney, but we’ll say Maloney. Nottebart won 11 games for the expansion Astros, oops, Colt .45s. Ten of his 11 wins followed losses, and he stopped streaks totaling 29 games. That’s 51 points, but Jim Maloney of the Reds (23-7) stopped 16 losing streaks totaling 27 losses. That’s 59 points.
1964
The Kansas City A’s in 1964 lost 105 games; I remember, because I listened to every one on the radio. OK, I probably didn’t—nasty school teachers and stuff—but I tried. Orlando Pena was 12-14 for the A’s, stopping 9 losing streaks that totaled 30 games. Larry Jackson was 24-11 for the Cubs, who still managed to finish well under .500. Jackson stopped 16 losing streaks which added up to 29 losses, thus 61 points.
Facing the toughest opposition starting pitching in 1964 was Jack Fisher of the Mets. He went 10-17. Facing the easiest was Jim Kaat of the Twins, who went 17-11.
1965
Facing the toughest opposition starting pitching in 1965 was Bob Bruce of the Astros. Facing the easiest was Bob Purkey of St. Louis. Purkey went 10-9 despite a 5.81 ERA. Bruce went 9-18 despite a 3.72 ERA. Bruce in 1965 actually faced the second most-difficult list of opposing starters of any pitcher of the 1960s.
The Stopper of the Year was Mel Stottlemyre of the Yankees. The Yankees, American League champions every year through 1964, finished under .500 in 1965—a disintegration that was memorably catalogued by Jim Bouton in Ball Four. Stottlemyre finished 20-9, and stopped 14 losing streaks totaling 26 losses—a Stopper Score of 54.
1966
In 1966 Sandy Koufax went 27-9 with a 1.73 ERA, then retired after the season. Although the Dodgers won 95 games in 1966, somewhat remarkably, 16 of Koufax’ 27 wins followed Dodger losses, with the losing streaks totaling 30 games. Stopper of the year:
1960—Bud Daley
1961—Camilo Pascual
1962—Art Mahaffey
1963—Jim Maloney
1964—Larry Jackson
1965—Mel Stottlemyre
1966—Sandy Koufax
I like the list because those are very good pitchers, but they’re generally not the Cy Young pitchers; they’re the "other" good pitchers, who were mostly pitching for not-very-good teams.
In 1965 Mudcat Grant was 21-7 with a 3.30 ERA. In 1966 he actually cut his ERA to 3.25—but his record dropped to 13-13. He faced the most difficult opposing starting pitchers in the major leagues. Facing the easiest was Claude Osteen of the Dodgers.
1967
Jack Fisher was never what we might consider a lucky pitcher. Pitching for the Mets from 1964 to 1967, Fisher posted won-lost logs of 10-17, 8-24, 11-14 and 9-18—and he wasn’t that bad.
The story about Ted Williams’ last game has been told many times, but let me tell it one more time, from the standpoint of Jack Fisher. Fisher was in the majors for eleven years, and 1960 was the only year that he had a winning record, 12-11. It should have been 13-10 or at least 12-10, but for the game with Teddy’s last shot. Fisher didn’t start that game for the Orioles; Steve Barber did. Barber got the first batter out, then issued a walk, another walk, hit a batter with a pitch, threw a wild pitch to bring in a run, and walked the next batter to re-load the bases. He exited the game with one out in the first, bringing in Fisher.
Fisher was magnificent. He got out of the first inning on two fly balls, one scoring a run to make it 2-0, Boston. He set the Red Sox down 1-2-3 in the second and third, gave up a harmless two-out single in the fourth, went 1-2-3 in the fifth, gave up a meaningless single in the sixth, and faced only three batters in the seventh.
The Orioles, meanwhile, chipped away for four runs, taking a 4-2 lead into the bottom of the 8th. Ted Williams hit his mythical last home run, making it 4-3, and the Red Sox loaded the bases with one out in the 9th. It was the first time Fisher had been challenged in the game. He got a ground ball to third, a double play ball that should have ended the game—but the second baseman, a former Red Sox player named Billy Klaus, threw the ball away, allowing the runners from second and third to score.
So, in a game in which he could scarcely have pitched any better, Jack Fisher was charged with a loss due to two runs from a starting pitcher who got only one out and two runs from a second baseman’s error—and was written into baseball history as the donor of Ted Williams’ most famous home run. Klaus, by the way, never took the field in an Orioles’ uniform after that play.
In 1967 he was not a very good pitcher, but in 1967 Jack Fisher faced the most difficult opposing starting pitching of any pitcher in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. Making 30 starts, Fisher never matched up with a fourth starter, and had only 3 starts matched up against a third starter. In 30 starts the worst pitcher he faced was Tommie Sisk of Pittsburgh, who was 13-13 with a 3.33 ERA in 200+ innings. His first ten starts of the year were against Chris Short, Jim Bunning, Ferguson Jenkins, Gaylord Perry, Gary Nolan, Bob Gibson, Bob Gibson, Claude Osteen, Bill Singer and Juan Marichal. That’s six Hall of Famers for those of you who are counting, and the other guys—Chris Short, Gary Nolan, Claude Osteen, Bill Singer—were all very outstanding pitchers.
Then he drew one "easy" opponent—Sisk—and it was back to the Hall of Famers. In his next ten starts (starts 12 to 21 on the season) he faced five more Hall of Famers: Ferguson Jenkins, Jim Bunning, Jim Bunning, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry. The non-Hall of Famers were Pat Jarvis (15-10), Ken Johnson (13-9), Gary Nolan (14-8), Mike Cuellar (12-10, 2.22 ERA) and Don Wilson; Wilson was just 10-9, but he pitched a no-hitter and struck out 28 batters in two consecutive starts.
For start #22 Fisher matched up with Mike McCormick of San Francisco, the Cy Young Award winner, and then Sisk again. That left seven starts. He faced Larry Jackson, Bob Veale, Larry Jackson, Steve Carlton, Ferguson Jenkins, Nelson Briles and Denny Lemaster.
In thirty starts he faced 13 Hall of Fame opponents, 14 #1 starters, 13 #2 starters, and 30 out of 30 rotation anchors; he never once got a shot at some kid out of A ball. It was quite a ride.
Facing the easiest starting pitching of 1967 was a rookie who was Fisher’s teammate, a fellow named Tom Sleaver. Seaver? Whatever. In 34 starts Seaver never faced off with another Hall of Famer, and faced only four #1 starters, those being Mel Queen, Claude Osteen, Gary Nolan and Mike Cuellar. His teammate faced those guys four times plus the 13 Hall of Famers. Seaver matched up with 14 #4 starters, and 8 #3s—a 22-3 edge for Seaver in facing third and fourth starters. I tell ya, Fisher was working off some Bad Karma.
And the Stopper of the Year was: Tom Seaver. Seaver stopped 11 losing streaks adding up to 32 losses, the highest total in the league. I tell ya, buddy, sometimes life is just not fair.
1968
In 1968 the Stopper of the Year was another Mets’ rookie, Jerry Koosman. Koosman stopped 15 losing streaks summing up to 26 losses, thus 56 points. Tommy John won only 10 games, but nine of them came after losses, and the losing streaks totaled up to 30.
Up to now the pitcher facing the most difficult opposing starting pitchers has never had a winning record:
1960—Glenn Hobbie (16-20)
1961—Pedro Ramos (11-20)
1962—Roger Craig (10-24)
1963—Larry Jackson (14-18)
1964—Jack Fisher (10-17)
1965—Bob Bruce (9-18)
1966—Mudcat Grant (13-13)
1967—Jack Fisher (9-18)
In 1968, however, Mel Stottlemyre won 21 games (21-12)—and did that despite facing the most difficult list of opposition starting pitchers in the major leagues. Stottlemyre faced #1 starters in 15 of his 36 starts. On the other end of that scale in 1968, facing the fewest tough opponents, was Catfish Hunter.
1969
In 1969 Dave McNally and Mike Cuellar were teammates on the Baltimore Orioles. McNally went 20-7. Cuellar went 23-11—and won a half of a Cy Young award.
It’s like 1967; they were teammates, but one of them got all the tough assignments. McNally faced the easiest starting pitching opponents in the major leagues, including 14 #4 starters. Cuellar battled 14 #1 starters.
I can hear some of you muttering to yourselves "See, rotation position does matter; Cuellar was the #1 starter, so he was matched up against all those other number ones." But here’s the thing, see; McNally was the Orioles’ opening-day starter. That stuff only really matters in the first two-three weeks of the season—and for that time period, McNally was the lead mule. It’s just random.
Cuellar actually didn’t lead the majors in the quality of opposing starters; he finished second to Rudy May of the Angels. May, who hadn’t made a start in the major leagues since 1965, finished 10-13 despite a streak of 18 straight starts matched up against a #1 or #2 starter.
The Stopper of the Year was Sam McDowell (18-14)—eleven wins after a loss, stopping losing streaks totaling up to 33 losses:
1967—Tom Seaver
1968—Jerry Koosman
1969—Sam McDowell
Wrapping
OK, there are two things that I haven’t discussed here, which are the scale of the differences and the totals for the decade.
As we have seen—and will continue to see, if I get the energy to carry this forward into the other decades--the pitcher who faces the most difficult opposing starting is usually from a bad team. Is there an exception in this decade? Let’s see. …Hobbie, Ramos, Craig, Jackson, Fisher, Bruce, Grant, Fisher, Stottlemyre, McDowell. . .OK, three exceptions. Mudcat Grant pitched for a good team (89-73), but happened to draw really tough assignments all year anyway, and Mel Stottlemyre and Larry Jackson pitched for .500+ teams (83-79 and 82-80). Otherwise, they pitched for wretched teams. This happens because the largest bias in this tournament is that you don’t have to pitch against your teammates. That, and the random effects.
Taking the decade as a whole, #1 starters won 61.8% of their starts. Well…their teams won 61.8% of their starts; #1 starters actually won 49.8% of their starts but the teams which put a #1 starter on the mound won the game 61.8% of the time.
Teams that started a #2 starter won 53.2% of the time; a #3 starter, 47.3%, and a #4 starter, 37.5%. We could generalize, then, that each step up in the quality of a starting pitcher is worth about 7.9% of a win, or .079 wins.
OK, and how many "steps" separate the pitchers?
In 1960 the difference between the "luckiest" starting pitcher (Hal Brown) and the unluckiest (Glen Hobbie) was 35 steps. In 1961 the difference was 28.5 steps, in 1962 26 steps, in 1963 26.5, etc. (You get half-steps because of uneven numbers of starts comparing pitchers.) In 1967 the difference between the two teammates, Fisher and Seaver, was 40 steps—the widest single-season gap of the 1960s.
On average, the difference between the luckiest pitcher of the year and the unluckiest was 30.65 "steps", one step being a game against a #3 starter as opposed to a #4, or a game against a #1 as opposed to a #2. So the difference between the luckiest and unluckiest pitchers in a typical season is .079 * 30.65, or 2.42 games per season.
It’s not a huge, huge factor. The unluckiest pitcher in the league, in terms of facing strong quality opponents, typically incurs a disadvantage based on that factor of about 1.35 games; the luckiest pitcher in this respect typically receives an advantage of about 1.05 games (for some reason it’s not symmetrical.) It’s not an immense difference.
Decade totals. The five luckiest pitchers of the 1960s, in terms of facing less-than-average quality of opposing pitching, were:
|
1
|
Don
|
Drysdale
|
|
2
|
Ray
|
Sadecki
|
|
3
|
Ray
|
Culp
|
|
4
|
Joe
|
Sparma
|
|
5
|
Steve
|
Hargan
|
Drysdale for the decade was +41.5, which means that he gained an advantage, for the decade, of somewhere between 3 and 4 games, as opposed to an average pitcher.
The five un-luckiest pitchers were:
|
1
|
Bob
|
Friend
|
|
2
|
Jack
|
Fisher
|
|
3
|
Whitey
|
Ford
|
|
4
|
Denny
|
Lemaster
|
|
5
|
Don
|
Cardwell
|
Which clearly proves; F names are unlucky.
The Top Stopper of the 1960s was Juan Marichal. Marichal between 1960 and 1969 stopped 82 losing streaks, totaling 153 losses, which makes 317 points. He’s followed by:
|
Rank
|
First
|
Last
|
Stops
|
Losses
|
Score
|
|
1
|
Juan
|
Marichal
|
82
|
153
|
317
|
|
2
|
Larry
|
Jackson
|
78
|
149
|
305
|
|
3
|
Jim
|
Bunning
|
77
|
142
|
296
|
|
4
|
Claude
|
Osteen
|
63
|
148
|
274
|
|
5
|
Jim
|
Maloney
|
70
|
120
|
260
|
|
6
|
Don
|
Drysdale
|
70
|
118
|
258
|
|
7
|
Camilo
|
Pascual
|
56
|
138
|
250
|
|
8
|
Dick
|
Ellsworth
|
60
|
128
|
248
|
|
9
|
Bill
|
Monbouquette
|
54
|
138
|
246
|
|
10
|
Bob
|
Gibson
|
61
|
119
|
241
|
Could you say honestly that that’s just a list of the best pitchers of the 1960s? Well, no, not quite. If you just list the best pitchers of the 1960s, I don’t think Ellsworth and Monboquette make the list, and I’m not sure about Osteen, Maloney and Larry Jackson. You’d have Koufax there, and Ford, and Dean Chance. Bob Gibson won 30 more games in the 1960s than Jim Maloney did (164-134)—but Maloney stopped more losing streaks that Gibson did, so we did learn something by doing this. That, and. . .F names are unlucky. We’ve proven that.