OK; I dunno.  When I created Win Shares, the top values were balanced between position players and pitchers.   But individual pitcher's share of the team has declined steadily since the 1870s, and since I developed the system, starting pitchers have fallen below the standard of the top hitters.  Interestingly, this happened about the time that starting pitchers mostly disappeared from the MVP voting.

 

I think the WAR estimates are frankly wrong.  I think they're placing a value on pitching that isn't actually there.  Let us generalize that teams now carry 13 pitchers and 13 position players.  Prior to. . .let us say prior to 1990, or prior to 2010, pitchers accounted for about 35-38 percent of value, but there were 10-11 pitchers per team, so the value of a pitcher and the value of a hitter were essentially proportional (although if you go back far enough in baseball history, back to before Babe Ruth, pitchers values were generally higher.)   But fielding is still important, so one can't realistically argue, I don't think, that pitchers (collectively) has as much value as position players.  The gross weight of pitching HAS increased, because of increased strkeouts, but it is still in the range of 40-42%, so it is difficult to see that the proportional impact of a pitcher is still on the same level as the proportional impact of a position player.   

 

In the 1960s, 1970s, starting pitchers faced 1200-1300 batters a season, whereas batters faced 650-700 pitchers in a season.  Robbie Ray led the American League in innings pitched last year; he faced 773 batters.  To have impact comparable to Drysdale, he has to have about 60% MORE impact per batter faced.  I don't see it.  

 

Of course, the impact of an individual pitcher COULD be more disproportionate to the other pitchers on the staff.  But in short, I think Win Shares is correct in saying that, in modern baseball, no pitcher has the impact of a top position player. 

 

 

Win Shares are created top down, from the team's win total.  You start with the wins of the team, and you attribute those wins to players based on their individual accomplishment.  WAR, I think, is created from the bottom up.  It adds together small events; a strikeout has this weight, a triple has that weight, and you pile them on top of one another.  It's inherently bad architecture.  If you try to build a brick wall from the ground up, with the brick wall not resting against anything stronger than itself, the small errors in the alignment of the bricks will cause the wall to topple to the ground, certainly over time if not immediately.  A brick wall 15 feet high, no matter how perfectly built, will not support itself over time.   It's the same problem.   WAR is a facade without structure.  Win Shares are braced against the performance of the team, as a brick wall is built against a building, or against the earth (in the case of a retaining wall) or against concrete or dirt which is piled inside of the bricks.  In my opinion it is an inherently flawed approach.  WAR is not braced against anything; the small errors in it accumulate, so that the wall leans to the left or to the right.  

 

Of course, I will allow Tom as much space as he might want or need to respond to this.   Tom--if you want to respond, just send me whatever you want and I'll publish it as written.   

 

 

 Well. . . it seems like you are asking about a team worrying about something that isn't a real thing.   To which the answer would be, "Yeah, they do that all the time."  Not certain I am uderstanding the question.  

 Don't have specifics but (a) I have definitely seen game-deciding field goals like that.  Didn't somebody hit a triple-doinker a few years ago?  Hit the upright, bounced up and hit the pole above the upright, bounced back down and hit the upright again, finally fell short.   

 

I don't understand why you brought up the foul pole in baseball.  If it hits the foul pole, it's a home run; that's the end of that series, doesn't matter if it bounces into outer space after that.  The more appropriate question would be balls bouncing off the top of a wall, which in some places is a home run and in other places isn't.  I was at a KC game earlier this year in which a ball passed the foul pole in fair territory, then curved foul.  It should have been ruled a home run, but the umpiring team blew the call and it was recorded as a foul ball.  Salvador Perez.  From memory; I could have it a little messed up.  

 Interesting question.  In the 19th century there were a lot of cases where pitchers, pitching essentially every day, had larger margins over any teammate.  Since 1900 I think the only wider gaps were Nap Lajoie, 1910 (47-15) and Babe Ruth in 1923 (55-24).  

 

(a) it is always difficult to generalize accurately from one player.  (b) The assertion that Carlton HIMSELF tranformed the team from 30-85 to 29-12 is untrue.  Carlton was fantastic, but it coincidentally happened that the team scored more runs in the games that Carlton started than in the games started for other players.  This happens sometimes, but no more often for the best pitcher on the team than for the worst.  

 

**********************

 

This question triggered a REALLY interesting line of inquiry for me, from which I learned all kinds of things I didn't know.   After research, Carlton in 1972 is 77% responsible for the team's performance being better in the games that he started than in the games started by others; the hitters on the team are 23% responsible for it.   How do we know this?

 

Well, in the games Carlton started, the Phlllies outscored their opponents 154 to 93, a margin that would probably lead to a 30-11 record in 41 starts.  It was actually 29-12, as you noted.  If the Phillies had performed in those games the same as in all of their other games, that ratio would have been 132 to 167.   The Philly opponents underperformed in those 41 games by 74 runs, and we can reasonably attribute that to Carlton, who was pitching like 90% of those innings.   But the Philadelphia offense ALSO overperformed by 22 runs in those games, scoring 154 runs against an expectation of 132.  Those 22 runs certainly cannot be attributed to Carlton, who was a good hitting pitcher, hitting .197 that season with a .501 OPS, but certainly creating nothing like 22 runs, let alone 22 runs more than an average hitting pitcher.   

 

If we say that those 96 runs are +74 for Carlton, +22 for the hitters on the team, then that's 77% for Carlton, 23% for other players.  

 

The 96 runs by which the team with Carlton outperformed the team without Carlton is, as you could probably guess, the most for any pitcher in my data.  However, perhaps surprisingly, the 74 runs on the "pitching" side of the ledger is NOT the most in my data.  Pedro Martinez in 2000 was +76 runs, the Red Sox allowing only 57 runs in his 29 starts, against an expectation of 133 runs based on the team data.   Randy Johnson in 2004 was also +74, the same as Carlton; no one else in the data was better than +64.  

 Thank you very much.  I should put much more effort into making sure the readers know what data is hiding out there in that section of the site.  Appreciate your pinch hitting for me there.  

 Oh, it has always been common for young players to be assigned to hit down in the order for the first couple of years of their careers, even if they play well.   I don't think there is ANYTHING unusual in that.   You could check; I might be wrong.   Just the way it seems to me.  

 Thank you.   

 

Interesting word, "leveraged".   In my youth, first of all, "leverage" was never used as a verb.  The only common usage of the word "leverage" was in discussions of things like ropes and pulleys and crow bars.  At some point "leverage" evolved into 'leveraged", and began to spread all over the landscape.  A house bought with a small down payment was said to be leveraged; a small object traded in partial payment for a larger object was "leveraged" into the larger object.  One business taking over another was a leveraged buyout; a person or a business carrying too much debt was said to be heavily leveraged.  A guy we had with the Red Sox was hired as a mail room clerk, did a super job as mail room clerk, leveraged that into a better job with the organization, and leveraged his Red Sox connections into a $200,000 a year executive position with another company--which he deserved, by the way; he was one of the most competent people in the company.   Jimmy Garoppolo filled in for Tom Brady for a couple of games and played great; the Patriots leveraged his good games into a package deal with the Giants, or, if you prefer, Garoppolo leveraged his short window into a full-time quarterback deal.   "Leverage" has leveraged its small foothold in the ropes-and-pulleys industry into a prominent and distinguished role in the English language.  

 Well, everything possible happened to that book.  My original editor for the book, Bill Rosen (as I recall. . .apologies to Bill if this isn't right). . . but Bill left the original publisher to go to another publisher before book was delivered, making the book an orphan at the publisher.   I was assigned another editor, who was fired before the book was delivered.  THen that publisher went bankrupt/into receivership, and their assets, including my book, were sold to another publisher where, as I recall, it re-united with Bill Rosen after the book was delievered but while it was in process.  

 

Do you understand the role of a publicist in the success of a book?   The publicist sends out notices to the press saying that the book is coming out, then arranges interviews for you with radio and TV stations and newspapermen, and sometimes buys advertising to support the book.   

 

In THE VERY WEEK when the book came out, my publicist quit without giving notice. 

 

And baseball went on strike.  Summer of 94.  That was actually a month or two later; I think the book came out at the All Star break, and the strike was early August.  

 

So the book did not thrive in the market. and the publishing company asked itself, "Why did this book not do well?"  Do you think it was the fact that it bounced from editor to editor, the bankruptcy of the original publisher, the fact that it came out with no publicity campaign, or the fact that baseball was on strike and baseball fans were annoyed about that, or do you think it was the title.   MUST HAVE BEEN THAT TITLE.   So they insisted on changing the title for the paperback.   

 Thank you.   I think that's essentially right.  

 No; I hadn't thought of it.  I'll add it to my list of 728 books I want to write before I die. . . .

 No. 

 Maybe.  Possibly.  He could certainly have played short, and his bat would compare more favorably at short than second.   But I don't think we know enough to assert that he would have been a GOOD defensive shorttop, a top-level guy. 

 No right answer, but you can multiply the number from 2020 by 2.7; works for some things.  It is probably better. . .well.

 

The favorite toy relies on the Established Performance Level.  There are different ways to figure the Established Performance Level.  One way to do that, post-2020, and using the generic term PL for performance level. . . one way to do that is 2018PL + 2*2019PL + 3*2020PL, divided by 6.   For 2020, though, you cut the "6" down to 4.11, and you can figure the Established Performance Level that way.   Then, doing the same for 2021, you cut the "6" down to 4.74, and post-2022, you would use 5.37.