I.  Opposition Adjusted Winning Percentage

               Let us suppose that, in calculating a team’s winning percentage, we gave each team one "win" point for each win by a team that they have beaten, and one "loss" for each loss by a team that has beaten them.   In other words, if you beat a team that wins 100 games on the season, that win is worth 100 points, because they don’t lose a lot.   But if you lose to them, that loss is only worth 62 points, because losses to that team (the 100 win team) are common. 

               Let’s take the Reds last year (2015) against the Cardinals.   The Reds were a 64-98 team, the Cardinals a 100-62.   Head to head, the Reds won 7, the Cardinals 12.   

               From the Reds’ standpoint, we count those 7 wins as 700 wins, because each win against the Cardinals is worth 100 points.     Also from the Reds’ standpoint, we count those 12 losses as 724 points, because each loss to the Cardinals only counts at 62 points.    So the Reds’ record against St. Louis, in this system, is not 7-12, but 700 – 724.  

               From the Cardinals’ standpoint, each win against Cincinnati is worth 64 points, while each loss to Cincinnati is worth 98 points (since Cincinnati was 64-98).  The Cardinals’ 12 wins against Cincinnati are worth 768 wins, and their 7 losses are worth 686 points, so the Cardinals’ record against the Reds in 2015, in this system, is not 12-7, but 768-686. 

               This method, in effect, turns every opponent into a .500 team.    But what effect would it have on the pennant race, if we determined the pennant winners in this way?

               a)  No effect; the same teams would win.

               b)  Every team would turn into a .500 team.

               c)  It would make the best teams into the worst teams and vice versa.

               d)  It would scramble the pennant race in some unpredictable way, emphasizing some factor in the schedule loading that we can’t quite anticipate.

               I honestly had no idea which of those answers would prove to be correct, so I ran the data to test it out.    The answer is (a), it makes no difference.

               I tested all teams from 1958 to 2013.   The system tends to move the winning percentages of all teams in the direction of .500, but only by a very small amount.    It tends to turn a .700 team into a .690 team, and a .300 team into a .310 team, a .600 team into a .595 team.   No meaningful effect. 

               I looked at—eyeballed—every pennant race, trying to see if I could find any pennant races in which the winner would have been different.   I was unable to find a single pennant race in which the winner would be changed by this weighting procedure.   It is theoretically possible.   I was able to find a few cases in which the order of finish in a league or a division would be altered by this method, but no cases in which the alteration would change the winner. 

               The three teams which would lose the most with this adjustment are the 2002 Minnesota Twins, the 2003 Minnesota Twins, and the 2004 Minnesota Twins.   The Twins were the best team in a very weak division.   The method takes points away from them because they are beating up on inferior competition—but it doesn’t matter, because it also takes points away from their in-division opponents.    The Twins’ winning percentages in those seasons are lowered by 26, 26 and 27 points.  

               It is possible—and likely--that this information would be useful in predicting post-season success.   Probably the Opposition Adjusted Winning Percentage is a truer measure of the strength of the team than the raw winning percentage.  Those Twins teams, in short, are not as good as their won-lost record makes them appear to be.   But any gains in predictive significance that were made would be small.

II. Stopper Points

(or, Damn You, Steve Carlton)

               In an article posted a month ago I wrote that "I can remember Mickey Vernon, manager of the expansion Washington Senators, referring to Bennie Daniels as his ‘stopper’, although how many times Daniels ACTUALLY stopped a losing streak could charitably be called an unknown."    Well, that is what I live for—to find questions about baseball

               (a) To which no one knows the answer, but

               (b) Which I can find the answers to with a little work.

               That’s what drives me, man. . .well, that and haunting dreams about finding box turtles, which I loved when I was a child.   Anyway, I set up a system to identify the "stopper" of the year for each team, and, more particularly, the Stopper of the Year, based on how many losing streaks the player actually stops.

               Sort of.   Stopping a one-game losing streak is not the same as stopping an actual losing streak, of course, so we have to have a point system.     This is the point system:

               1) A pitcher who stops a losing streak gets one point for each loss of the streak if he is the starting pitcher in the game but not the winner,

               2) And two points for each loss of the streak if he is the starter AND the winner,

               3) Plus "low offense" points if the team wins the game (after a loss in the previous game) without scoring many runs.

               The "low offense points" are 2 points if the team scores only 4 runs in the game, 4 points if they score 3 runs, 6 points if they score 2 runs, and 8 points if they score only one run in the game, but win the game 1-0.     If the team scores five or more runs in breaking the losing streak, no bonus points for the pitcher. 

               Now, to get to the obvious first, who do you think is the #1 Stopper in my data?   Of course.   Steve Carlton in 1972 stopped 22 losing streaks, earning 180 Stopper Points—easily the most of any pitcher in my data.   Vastly the most.   He wins the all-time stopper contest by a sort of ridiculous margin—180 points to 117.   The distance between #1 and #2 is larger than the distance between #2 and #500.  

               It’s a bad answer because it is a predictable answer.   When you do a study like this you don’t want a predictable answer.   You want the public to say, "Oh, that’s interesting", not "Of course."   This is the "of course" answer.   

               There is, however, something kind of interesting in there.   Carlton won 27 games for a bad, bad team in 1972.   But the third-best "stopper" year in my data was by Jim Palmer—also in 1972.   The Orioles weren’t Philly-like bad in 1972, but they had an off season, finishing just 80-74.   Palmer stopped 17 losing streaks and earned 116 Stopper Points.

               Were it not for Carlton and Palmer (116) and the guy who has 117, the record would be held by Gaylord Perry.

               Also in 1972.

               Many of you probably know that Gaylord Perry did have a historic season in 1972, pitching 343 innings with a 1.92 ERA and winning 24 games for a bad team, a team that didn’t finish last, but would have finished last without him.   His season is obscured in history by the shadow of Carlton’s remarkable campaign, but it turns out that three of the four greatest Stopper Seasons in the last 60+ years were all in 1972.   Phil Niekro in the same season would also be sixth on the list, so that’s four out of the top six. 

               I found the Stopper of the Year for each season from 1952 to 2015, sort of.   From 1952 to 1956 I have spotty data, and the answers that I found to "Who was the stopper of the year" are not necessarily right, even if you accept my methodology, and in 2014-2015 I don’t have data, so I just spot-checked teams and pitchers until I found what seemed likely to be the right answer.  

               The "Stoppers of the Year" have two characteristics:

               (1) that they are good pitchers, and

               (2) that they tend to be on bad teams, which gives them more opportunity to stop losing streaks.  

               Of course this is not necessarily "right" in a certain sense.    A person could say that "I don’t want a stopper who stops losing streaks after 6 games or 8 games.   I want somebody to stop the losing streak after two games or three games at most.   I want somebody who stops a losing streak before it starts."   I understand the logic, but. . .this was my method.   Stopping an 8-game losing streak is a bigger deal than stopping a 2-game losing streak.  

               Anyway, Steve Carlton in 1972—a great pitcher on a terrible team—is the ultimate and obvious example of a good pitcher on a bad team, so we would expect him to be at the top of the list.   But other than Carlton, the list is not all that predictable.   The two elements of the process work at cross-purposes to one another, which tends to make the winners generally not predictable.    Most good pitchers are not on bad teams, and most pitchers on bad teams are not good pitchers.   In many seasons, probably most seasons, there is no one who stands out as a good pitcher on a bad team—or, if there is, he won’t happen to have stopped as many streaks as a good pitcher on a not-so-bad team, or a not-so-good pitcher on a very bad team.    The results, Steve Carlton aside, tend to be NOT predictable. 

               Anyway, these are the Stoppers of the Year for the 1950s, warning you that, because of gaps in my data, some of the very early selections could be inconsistent with the formula:

               Bobby Shantz was the American’s League’s MVP in 1952, going 24-7 for a team that was barely over .500; he was sort of the Steve Carlton of 1952, except that he was short and nice.    Harry Byrd also had a decent year for that team in ’52, going 15-15 and pitching a lot of innings.   When Shantz got hurt the next year Byrd was left to carry the load by himself; he wound up as one of I think four stoppers on our list who had pretty ugly seasons in terms of losses and ERA, but who did manage to stop more losing streaks than any other pitcher.   

               Bob Turley walked 181 men for the Orioles in 1954; traded to the Yankees that winter, he walked 177 more for New York in 1955, but won 17 games.   Robin Roberts. . .that was just his ordinary season.   The 1960s:

               I have a near-obsessive fascination with the Glen Hobbie season in 1960.   Hobbie’s was one of the first baseball cards that I had when I discovered baseball cards in the spring of 1961, based on a truly distinctive seasons.    Hobbie not only started 36 times, going 14-17 as a starter, but also worked ten times in relief.   He never repeated the season, but I always think of that as the prototype of a group which includes Art Mahaffey in ’61 (11-19), Ed Rakow in 1962 (14-17), and dozens of others—hard-working, quality pitchers stuck with awful teams.   Many of them wound up on this list.

               But many of them never repeated their seasons.   A bad team has one pitcher, they’re going to tend to push him as hard as they can push him.   In the modern world not so much, because we have very strong expectations about workloads, and no one will stray too far beyond those norms even in desperation.   But in the 1960s. . .they mostly burned themselves out trying to save teams that were destined to drown. 

               Buzhardt in 1961 is pretty unique; he was credited with only 6 wins, but managed to stop 9 losing streaks, several of them long ones.    We’ll get to another guy like that in 2003.  

               Dean Chance in ’64 was the first Cy Young winner to double as the Stopper of the Year, but if it wasn’t for Chance Larry Jackson would have been both—the Cy Young Award winner, and the Stopper of the Year.   He won 24 games for a team that was 52-75 with other pitchers—certainly a Cy Young worthy campaign—and also piled up 95 stopper points, which is more than most Stoppers of the Year.

               Mel Stottlemyre was called up late in ’64 and led the Yankees down the stretch, saving a pennant that it looked like it would go somewhere else, but then the team collapsed memorably in ’65, leaving Stottlemyre as the first mate of a sinking ship.    Koufax in ’66 was the first pitcher to be Stopper of the Year for a team that had a winning record without him, although there have been many of those since. 

               In 1968 Jerry Koosman, 19-12 with the Mets, was major league Stopper of the Year with 90 points, but a teammate (Seaver) and a third pitcher also had 90 points.    I thought it was interesting that two teammates could both be leaders in breaking streaks.   Doesn’t speak too well of the rest of the pitching staff.   Koosman is Stopper of the Year because he had 15 stops to Seaver’s 11, although Seaver stopped some longer streaks. 

               Sudden Sam McDowell was the only pitcher to be Stopper of the Year twice in a row, 1969 and 1970 (below).    Sam, a giant left-hander with perhaps the best fastball of his era, was a great pitcher at that time, but never really got credit for that, because

               a) his teams were bad,

               b) his alcoholism cut him down in mid-career, and

               c)  at the time, people would obsess about his walks.

               He struck out and walked everybody, about 300 strikeouts and 130 walks a year.   At the time, given the prejudices of the era, this made it easy for people to blame the walks for the fact that he didn’t go 22-10 every year.     The 1970s:

               As I mentioned, pitchers generally don’t stay on this list.   What usually happens is that a good pitcher with a bad team, his team pushes him too hard and he gets hurt.    But Cleveland has a pretty good run of dominance going from 1969 to 1974.     McDowell, Stopper of the Year in 1969 and 1970, was traded to San Francisco after a 13-17 season in 1971, traded in exchange for Gaylord Perry.   Perry wasn’t the Stopper of the year in 1972 because of Carlton and Palmer, but had a historically high total of 112 Stopper Points that year.   In 1973 Perry "won" the "Award", and in 1974 he finished second again, just two points behind Ferguson Jenkins. 

               The list from the 1970s has a lot of Hall of Famers and 20-game winners, more than the other decades do.    There are no Buzhardts or Ron Klines here, although Lemanczyk is sort of like that.  Bert Blyleven, traded in mid-season in 1976, had the second-highest Stopper Points total in the study, 117, and also became the first player traded in the middle of a Stopper of the Year campaign.  Other than Carlton no pitcher in my data stopped twenty losing streaks, but Ron Guidry in 1978 stopped 19 losing steaks, although they were mostly just one- and two-game streaks.   There will be another pitcher like that later. 

               Carlton in ’72 is the third Cy Young Award winner to also be Stopper of the Year and the only one of this decade, but Ferguson Jenkins in ’74 might have won the Cy Young.   Jenkins and Catfish Hunter were similar pitchers, both workhorse pitchers with very high ratios of home runs allowed to walks, because they both figured that a solo home run wasn’t going to beat them but walks might.   In 1974 both pitched 300+ innings and they were 1-2 in fewest walks per nine innings, and both finished 25-12.   Both won 20 games every year, almost, both were very good hitters, and both are Hall of Famers.   Catfish won the Cy Young Award, in part because he had not won one before whereas Ferguson had, but I think modern analysis believes that Ferguson was actually the better pitcher that season.  

               These are the Stoppers of the Year for the 1980s:

               In the 1980s, as I have noted before, there really are no great pitchers; there are the leftovers of the 1970s (Carlton, Sutton, Palmer, Blyleven), and there are some brilliant young pitchers (Saberhagen, Gooden, Clemens) and there is Jack Morris, but there really are no great pitchers whose careers are centered in the 1980s.  

               Anyway, there are only five pitchers who had multiple seasons as Stopper of the Year, and three of those are centered in the late 1980s.   Mike Krukow, of all people, was Stopper of the Year in both 1981 and 1986, when he was 20-9 with a 3.05 ERA.   He was followed in quick order by Charlie Hough and Bert Blyleven.    Danny Jackson would have won the Cy Young Award in 1988 but for Orel Hershiser’s historic run late in the season.   Hershiser had a 0.00 ERA in September of 1988.   In 55 innings.

               The 1990s:

               In the first 25 years of our project, the Stopper of the Year was often a pitcher stuck with a losing record.   Between 1978 and 2002, however, there is not a single pitcher with a losing record who shows up as the Stopper of the Year—and actually, there are only a handful of those in the entire 64 years.  

               Two Cy Young Award Winners were Stopper of the Year in the 1990s, Drabek and The Big Unit.   Dave Mlicki is the Mike Krukow of the 1990s.   The 2000s:

               2002 was my last season as a sort of a Royals fan, and I remember that Paul Byrd season well.   Byrd went 17-11 on a team that lost 100 games.   He is listed at 6-1 and 185, but looked shorter and heavier.   I loved the guy.   He didn’t throw the ball as much as he heaved it.  He muscled the ball toward the plate, overhand but from a low starting point anyway, got ground balls and hung in really well during tough times.  

               Randy in 2002 wasn’t the Stopper of the Year, but stopped 19 losing streaks, like Guidry in ’78, stopping them mostly before they could get rolling.   Mike Maroth was the #1 starter on that awful Detroit team that lost 119 games.   The streaks got rolling on that team, and they kept rolling.    He was a kind of a #3 starter who held the fort for the Tigers while they were looking for Justin Verlander or somebody who could attract Kate Upton.   Announcers would say about Maroth that he would have better years when his team developed, which is kind but almost always untrue.    

               Contreras was one of our first Big Adventures after I joined the Red Sox.   Theo went to Honduras or Ecuador or some damned place to try to sign Contreras, came back very disappointed because the Yankees got him, which worked out great for us; he had a career ERA of 9.24 in Fenway Park.   He was a great pitcher when he wasn’t facing the Red Sox, but our guys used to beat him like a drum, so the Yankees had to unload him and he helped the White Sox win the World Series in 2005.

               Three Cy Young Award winners (Pedro, Freak, Greinke) plus three pitchers who won Cy Young Awards in other seasons (Johnson, Smoltz, Santana.)    Santana was the Stopper of the Year in 2007 with only 61 points, the lowest total ever.  Up to the present:   

               So the Stopper of the Year is usually, but not always, a #1 pitcher.   Of the 64 Stoppers of the Year, 50 had winning records, 10 had losing records, and 4 were at .500.   18 of the 64 won 20 games, and 10 won the Cy Young Award.   12 of the 64 are now in the Hall of Fame.   All pitched at least 200 innings in the relevant season except Mlicki (199), Maroth (193) and the winners from the strike seasons of 1981 and 1994.   Thanks for reading.