Friday, December 20, 2013

Mike Mussina And The Hall Of Fame

Jen Mac Ramos has a good article in support of him at "Beyond the Boxscore." See Mike Mussina and the Hall of Fame argument.

One thing Mussina had going for him was a great strikeout-to-walk ratio. He had 3.58, while the league average was 1.80. So his relative score, according to Lee Sinins Complete Baseball Encyclopedia, was 199 (3.58/1.80 times 100). That was 9th best all-time for pitchers with 3000+ IP through 2012 (130 pitchers in that group).

Mussina had pretty good peak value. He had 7 top 5 finishes in WAR for pitchers at Baseball Reference. Click here to go to his page. 

Now maybe pitchers should be judged on what they largely control: HRs, strikeouts and walks. So I created a crude fielding independent ERA relative to the league average for all pitchers with 3000+ IP. It was based on a regression with a pitcher's relative ERA being the dependent variable and HRs, strikeouts and walks (all relative to the league average) being the independent variable.

The equation was

ERA = 47.38 + .167*BB + .253*SO + .17*HR

So, taking Mussina for example, his relative HRs was 113 (he gave up 13% fewer HRs than average), relative BBs was 174 and strikeouts 114 (struck out 14% more than average). Plugging those numbers into the equation we get 124.49 (almost exactly his actual relative ERA of 124). So he was about 24% better than average. Curt Schilling & Kevin Brown both do even better here and on the next list.

Here is the top 20


Rank
Pitcher
Pred Rel ERA
1
Lefty Grove
133.96
2
Walter Johnson
133.59
3
Cy Young
129.70
4
Roger Clemens
129.36
5
Tim Keefe
128.91
6
Amos Rusie
128.82
7
Nolan Ryan
127.90
8
Greg Maddux
127.55
9
Curt Schilling
127.18
10
Randy Johnson
127.05
11
Jim Whitney
126.83
12
Kevin Brown
126.82
13
Christy Mathewson
126.57
14
Eddie Plank
126.25
15
Eppa Rixey
124.69
16
Bob Feller
124.64
17
Mike Mussina
124.49
18
Paul Derringer
123.27
19
Three Finger Brown
122.87
20
Grover C Alexander
122.80

So he ranks pretty high (again, out of 130 pitchers-Jack Morris was 96th and Morris only had 261 more career IP). Here are the Hall of Famers he is ahead of that he also exceeds in IP:

Three Finger Brown
Dennis Eckersley
Chief Bender
Stan Coveleski
Don Drysdale
Whitey Ford
Herb Pennock
Catfish Hunter
Rube Marquard
Juan Marichal
Joe McGinnity

I might have missed one or two. None of the stats were park adjusted. Using the Bill James Handbooks, I came up with a rough estimate of his HR park rating for his career of about 108, meaning his parks allowed about 8% more HRs than average. So he got no help here.

The Sinins database does have a park adjusted stat for pitchers called RSAA or runs saved against average. I put that into a per 9 IP stat for this group of pitchers. Here is that top 20:


Rank
Pitcher
Per 9 IP
1
Lefty Grove
1.53
2
Roger Clemens
1.34
3
Kid Nichols
1.21
4
Randy Johnson
1.15
5
John Clarkson
1.01
6
Cy Young
0.99
7
Greg Maddux
0.99
8
Walter Johnson
0.98
9
Curt Schilling
0.95
10
Whitey Ford
0.91
11
Grover C Alexander
0.91
12
Carl Hubbell
0.89
13
Amos Rusie
0.88
14
Kevin Brown
0.84
15
Three Finger Brown
0.84
16
Mike Mussina
0.82
17
Stan Coveleski
0.82
18
Bob Gibson
0.81
19
John Smoltz
0.81
20
Christy Mathewson
0.76

Again, Mussina does very well, saving .82 runs per 9 IP compared to the average pitcher and it is park adjusted (Jack Morris was 104th). Now it is not fielding independent, but it is impressive how high he ranks in both cases. Here are the guys he is ahead of in this last one and IP, too, who are in the Hall:

Juan Marichal
Joe McGinnity
Don Drysdale
Dennis Eckersley
Herb Pennock
Rube Marquard
Catfish Hunter
Chief Bender
Stan Coveleski

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