I had the following question in "Hey, Bill" from Izzy or Izzynot 24:

Hi Bill. If you were to look historically at pitching prospects first three (or four or five) starts and separate them into prospects that went on to successful careers and those that didn't, would you see a big difference in performance between the two groups?

Asked by: izzy24

Answered: 6/13/2013

I wouldn't think you would see any performance difference in 3-5 starts.    I haven't run the study. . ..I probably should study it before I comment.   I'll try to get to it.  

                I did study that, and my answer. …spoiler alert. . .it turns out that my answer was completely wrong; there IS a meaningful separation in futures that occurs within the first few starts of a pitcher’s career.

                Let’s start by explaining the method (which is how I always start. . .pose the question, explain the method, etc.)    I used the database of game logs, taken from Retrosheet, gathered for me by my son Isaac, who is a software engineer.   The database runs from 1952 to 2012, missing a few early games.   I started by eliminating from the data all pitchers whose first start was before 1955 or after 1999—before 1955, because I was studying each pitcher’s first few career starts, thus had to eliminate pitchers who were in mid-career when the data starts, and post-1999, because pitchers who started in 2000 or later might still be in mid-career, thus might not be accurately classified as to their career success.

                I needed a "career success indicator", and I came up with this because it was easy to do with the data I had in the form that I had it.   It is also pretty interesting in itself, but that was an accident; I was just trying to do what was easy and accurate.    I developed the concept of "Game Scores Above Replacement" or GSAR for those of you who like acronyms.    If a pitcher’s Game Score in a particular game was less than 40, that was zero; if it was above 40, the GSAR contribution for that game is the Game Score, minus 40.      A Game Score of 40 is equivalent to a .224 winning percentage or a 6.22 ERA, so. . .that’s replacement level.

                As a measure of career or season’s performance, Game Scores Above Replacement works well.   About half the time the Cy Young winner is the starting pitcher who leads the league in this category; about half the time he isn’t.    In 2009 the two leaders were Greinke and Lincecum, who won the Cy Young Awards.   In 2010 they were Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay; same thing.   In 2011 the leaders were Verlander and Kershaw, both of whom won the award.   In 2012, however, the leaders were Verlander and Kershaw again, but the Cy Young Awards went to Rad Ickey, who was second in the NL, and David Price, who was third in the AL behind Verlander and Felix Hernandez.    In the career list all of the leaders are the Hall of Fame starting pitchers.

                So that works well enough, but we have many ways to rank starting pitchers and don’t need another one, so I’m not going to get hung up on that.    Our focus here is the first ten starts of a pitcher’s career.    In this data, the best first start was by Juan Marichal against the Phillies on July 19, 1960—a one-hit shutout with 12 strikeouts, Game Score of 96.   These are the best debut games by starting pitchers in the 1955-1999 era:

                As you can see, two of these pitchers are in the Hall of Fame (Marichal and Eckersley) and another one could be (Tiant), but most of the pitchers who had brilliant games in their major league starting debuts did not go on to distinguished careers.    This is a list of the pitchers who had the worst results in their major league starting debuts:

                Apologies to Steve Avery, only one of those pitchers went on to a brilliant major league career, and that was in the bullpen.    Shayne Bennett’s first major league start was his last major league appearance.     In a few minutes we will need a way to generalize about player’s careers, so I set up this scale:

                In more specifics….the three lowest-scoring pitchers who had what we could call "great" careers were Doug Drabek (6011), Ron Guidry (6018) and John Candelaria (6026).    The three highest-rated pitchers in the 4500-5999 "Distinguished Career" area were Mike Torrez (5993), Dennis Eckersley (5926) and Tim Wakefield (5917), while the three lowest-scoring pitchers in that group were Jim Slaton (4518), Todd Stottlemyre (4509) and Woody Williams (4509).   Generally speaking, you have to win about 130 games to fall into that category.

                The three highest-scoring pitchers in the "substantial careers" category were Scott Erickson (4433), Jose DeLeon (4423) and Woodie Fryman (4423).   The three lowest-scoring pitchers to fall into that category were Carl Morton, Dick Bosman and Steve Hargan.  

                The highest-scoring pitchers in the "Recognizable Names" group were Larry McWilliams, Andy Hawkins and Jim McGlothlin.    The lowest-scoring pitchers in that group were Scott Bankhead, Jeff D’Amico and Chris Hammond.  

                The highest-scoring pitchers in the "Modest Careers" group were Jesse Jefferson, Darren Dreifort and Wacky Bob Milacki.    The lowest-scoring pitchers to fall into that group were Al Santorini, Kevin Kobel, and the 1990s starting pitcher named Frankie Rodriguez.  

                The highest-scoring pitchers in the bottom group (Very Limited Major League Success) were David Clyde, Dennis Ribant and Runelvys Hernandez.  

                In a minute I will give percentages of pitchers who have "successful" major league careers.   That’s drawing an arbitrary line, of course, and I drew that line at 1500 Game Score Points Above Replacement—thus, between the "Recognizable Names" group and the "Modest Careers" group.    Chris Hammond (136 career starts, 42-52 record, 4.63 ERA as a starting pitcher) is considered to have had a "successful" career; Jesse Jefferson (144 starts, 35-72 record, 4.77 ERA as a starting pitcher) is not.   You have to draw a line somewhere; that’s where I drew it, between those two pitchers.

                In the study there are 2,224 starting pitchers, of whom only 481 met the standard of having "successful" careers as starting pitchers—and the standard, as you see, is not high.   That’s 22%, anyway; 22% of pitchers who get an opportunity to start in the major leagues will go on to have successful major league careers, using Chris Hammond and Scott Bankhead as the standard of what is a successful career.

                A little more messing around with the fun stuff, and then I’ll get to the results of the study.    Through two starts, the most successful starting pitchers in the data were:

                Not a bad list.   Marichal followed up his one-hit debut by beating  the eventual World Champions, Pittsburgh, 3-1 with a complete-game 4-hitter.    Tom Phoebus threw two shutouts in his first two starts as a late-season callup in 1966; at the time it seemed like a big deal that he wasn’t eligible for the World Series.    Don Ferrarese struck out 13 batters in his first start in 1956, then pitched a 2-hit shutout in his second start.

                Through three starts, the most successful pitchers in the study were these:

                Through 4 starts,  Mark Fidrych and Kansas City legend Steve Busby are on the list:

                Fernando, by the way, is way ahead at this point; he has 171 GSAR points, while Simpson is second at 143.    Through 4 starts Fernando had pitched 3 shutouts and given up one run in the other game, giving him an ERA as a starter of 0.25.   He pitched another shutout in his fifth career start, pushing him further ahead:

                Bruce Howard had an 0.81 ERA as a late-season callup in 1963, then dominated his first two starts in ’64.   Through six starts:

Seven Starts:

                DeLeon through seven major league starts in 1983 had a 1.92 ERA and 73 strikeouts.    Still, he was closer to Escobar, in 10^th place, than he was to Valenzuela.   DeLeon struck out eleven more in his 8^th start.    Through eight starts:

                Chuck Taylor was with the Cardinals in ’69.    Bill Slayback was with the Tigers in ’72.   Through 9 starts:

                And through their first ten major league starts:

                Wandering now toward the real question which is the foundation of this research.    Izzy’s query can be interpreted either of two ways:

                1)  Are pitchers who go on to have good careers more effective than other pitchers (and lesser pitchers) in their first few starts, or

                2)  Are pitchers who are very effective in their first few starts meaningfully more likely to go on to have really good careers than pitchers who struggle in their first few starts?

                The answer to both questions is "yes", but I’m going to focus mainly on the second question, since that is the more natural way of looking at the question.   When you see a young pitcher who struggles in his first few starts, like Gausman, as opposed to a young pitcher who comes up and is successful right away, like Matt Harvey. ..is that a meaningful thing?  Or should we remind ourselves not to overreact to that, because the first few games aren’t a real test?

                The first few games are a real and meaningful test.   Remember, only 22% of pitchers who get a shot will be successful.   Let’s start with one start.    I divided pitchers (again) into six groups, by their success in their very first start.   I tried to do—

                Because of ties, the groups don’t work out exactly that way, but. . .of the 100 pitchers who were most successful in their very first major league starts, 30% went on to successful major league careers.   Of those pitchers who got rocked in their major league debuts, only 17% went on to successful major league careers:

                When we look at the first two starts, the pitchers who are most successful (in their first two starts) begin to pull away from the pack:

                Now 40% of the top group go on to successful careers, whereas only 16% of those who are hit hard in both of their first two starts will go on to successful careers.   That’s far from any kind of a guarantee, but it is clearly a meaningful separation.

                The bottom group—debut group 1—consists of pitchers who have ZERO success as measured by this method, which means that they have never had a Game Score over 40.   The number of pitchers in that group decays rapidly, as pitchers either:

                a)  Have some success, or

                b)  Run out of chances.  

                There are only 6 pitchers in our data who got five starts without having a Game Score of at least 41 at least once—and none of those was ultimately a successful starter:

                The one pitcher who made it through seven starts with zero success was Yankees hopeful Brian Boehringer.   He made three starts in 1995, three in 1996 and one in 1998, and was hit hard all seven times.     He was eventually to make 21 major league starts, with a 4-13 record, 5.97 ERA.  

                Anyway, if we focus on the "six" group—the most successful pitchers in their first few starts—a growing percentage of them will go on to successful major league careers.

                Of the pitchers who dominate right out of the gate, like Harvey, about 60% will go on to successful major league careers.

                Since we have six groups of success levels and ten starts, we have 60 data points to describe the pattern of separation that occurs.   Not quite 60, because the "zero success group" disappears in less than ten starts:

                I’ll annoy you with one more fun fact before I go.   Among the "6" group through ten starts—the most successful pitchers in their first ten starts—the least successful major league career belonged to a pitcher named Herb Moford.   I had never heard of Herb Moford, and I’ve heard of everybody, so I had to chase that down.    Here is Herb Moford’s major league record:

                You look at that, and you think "wait a minute. . .how can that guy possibly have been one of the 100 most successful pitchers in the group through his first ten starts?

                Here’s how it happened.    Herb Moford was a minor league veteran, signed by the Cardinals in 1947.   He went 20-4 at Salisbury, a Class D League, in 1948.    He went 14-7 at Allentown, a B League, in 1952, and 17-14 at Columbus, a top minor league, in 1954.

                The Cardinals in the spring of 1955 were trying to re-build a pitching staff that had posted a 4.49 ERA in 1954, 42 points over the league, and they brought several rookies out of their bloated minor league system to help with effort, among them Larry Jackson, Luis Arroyo, and Herb Moford, as well as knuckleballers Bobby Tiefenaur and Barney Schultz.  

                Mofford was in the bullpen except for one start, June 12 against the Giants, and it was a bad start; he was hit hard, and the Cardinals lost 8-3.     Moford was returned to the minor leagues after that start.

                He pitched well enough in the minors in ’56 (13-10), and was traded to the Tigers in a minor league transaction in 1957.     In 1958, pitching for the Tigers’ top minor league team, he started the season 6-0 with a 0.95 ERA, pitching in relief except for three starts, two of them shutouts.    He was called to the majors in early June, 1958.  

                Pitching out of the bullpen, he posted a 5.30 ERA through 8 appearances, 18 and a third innings.    Nonetheless he was given a start—his second major league start—facing the Baltimore Orioles on July 14, facing Skinny Brown in front of 2,742 people at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore.   The game was 1-1 through 7 innings.   Moford gave up a home run to Bob Boyd in the 8^th inning, and lost the game 2-1, but did pitch a complete game, giving up only 6 hits and 2 runs.   He cut his ERA from 5.30 to 4.39.

                He went back to the bullpen then, and was no more effective than before (out of the bullpen);  over his next four appearances he gave up 4 runs in 6 innings, his ERA going back up to 4.68.     He started again against the Washington Senators on July 28, and pitched another complete game, beating Washington 9-1 on six hits.  A triple by the opposing starting pitcher, John Romonosky, deprived him of a shutout. 

                That made his record 1-3, 3.89 ERA.    He pitched once more in relief, then started again against Baltimore on August 1, this time facing Jack Harshman.   He beat Harshman 3-1 with a complete game five-hitter.   

                Moford has now started three times in 1958, has completed all three starts and has a 1.04 ERA as a starting pitcher, but, because of his bullpen work, his record is just 2-3 with a 3.21 ERA.      He started again against the White Sox on August 9, and that was not a good one; he was hit hard in that one.   But then he started against Cleveland on August 13, matched up against Hoyt Wilhelm, and pitched a complete game 3-hitter, defeating Wilhelm (and Rocky Colavito, who pitched three innings of hitless relief in the game), 3-2.    That’s four outstanding starts in six tries.  

                He started again against the Senators and Camilo Pascual on August 19.   He gave up three runs in six innings, but lost the game 3-1, as Pascual dominated the Tigers. 

                He started against the Yankees on August 24.   He pitched a complete game, limiting the Yankees to 4 hits and three runs—but lost the game, 3-2, to Bobby Shantz.    

                He started against the White Sox on August 29.  He gave the White Sox only three runs in six and a third—but took another loss as the Tigers were shut out.    He is now 3-7 with a 3.71 ERA.  

                He started against the Kansas City A’s in Kansas City on September 2, 1958, in front of 2,655 fans, his tenth major league start.   He pitched a 2-hit complete game, defeating Kansas City 6-1.   A 7^th-inning home run by Bob Cerv denied him a shutout.

                So in his first ten major league starts, Moford completed six of the ten contests and had a 1.73 ERA in those games, giving up 26 hits and 10 runs (all earned) in 52 innings.    Of the other four starts, two would qualify as Quality Starts, although he lost both games, giving him eight quality starts in his first ten tries.   

                Because he mixed in relief appearances that were not good, Moford did not have a brilliant ERA.   Because he lost four games in which he pitched well (and one game in which he did not pitch well, and some games out of the bullpen) he did not have a good won-lost record.   Because he was just a 30-year-old minor league veteran, nobody really cared anyway.     But through his first ten major league starts, Herb Moford was one of the 100 best in the study.

                Thanks for reading.

                Bill James