Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Tuesday, September 22, 2009
200 by 3x / Bob Gibson and 1968

Alex sent me the email below today after reading Joe Poz's recent article on "200/200/200 seasons" and I thought I'd respond publicly since, well, the answers are pretty crazy and hard to believe.

On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 6:07 PM, Alex wrote:

"– Bob Gibson, 1968
Comment: A 1.12 ERA, a league-leading 268 Ks, a preposterous 0.858 WHIP — league hit .184 against him — and yet he somehow lost nine games that year."

ummmmmmm, were the hitters on his team blind midgets or something?!? wow

Sent to you by Alex via Google Reader:

200-200-200 seasons

via Joe Posnanski on 9/21/09

The answer is that it wasn't just the Cardinals hitting like "blind midgets", but actually all of baseball.

Going back to the beginning of the "Live Ball Era" in 1920, the season of 1968 is by a very long shot the most offensively depressed season ever. The entire 1960s saw the pendulum swing heavily toward pitching, but 1968 was the apex of this imbalance. So much so to the degree that Gibson's 1.12 ERA, while obviously amazing, isn't actually as impressive as Greg Maddux's 94 and 95 seasons, or Pedro Martinez's 99/00 seasons. Don't get me wrong, Gibson had a historically great year, but it was one that looked MUCH better due to the strange non-offensive performance of the league. See here to see "adjusted ERA+" to see contextual comparisons.

Some relevant stats on the total insanity that was 1968 in baseball:

--How did Gibson lose nine games despite having a 1.12 ERA? His Cardinals, the World Series runner-up, hit an atrocious .249 / .298 / .346 for a .644 OPS.

--But amazingly, as bad as that Cardinals line seemed, they were actually above league average (and fourth in the league in runs scored)...the NL league average line in 1968 was: .243 / .300 / .341 .... no joke. A measly .641 LEAGUE AVERAGE OPS. (Keep in mind the DH didn't exist back then so me mentioning the NL here means nothing.)

--NL league average ERA was 2.99 (!!!!!!!!)

--EIGHT pitchers posted sub 2.00 ERAs including Gibson, with an astonishing five in the AL.

--Three pitchers (Gibson, Luis Tiant, and Dave McNally) posted equally astonishing sub 0.90 WHIPs

--Only SIX hitters in all of MLB hit above .300, including only ONE in the AL--Carl Yasztremski, who lead the AL with a .301 average... no one else even hit above .290!!!

--Yaz was also the only player in ALL OF BASEBALL with a .400+ OBP

--Not a single player scored 100 runs. Not one. And only seven scored even 90. This was the only non-strike NL season since 1920 with no player scoring 100 runs.

--As an incidental curiosity, Denny McLain of the AL won 31 games--the last time a pitcher has done so in either league. I don't believe, however that there's much to draw on this.

And perhaps the saddest footnote of all of 1968: an aging but not done 36 year old Mickey Mantle played his last season after posting a line of .237 / .385 / .398 (a .783 OPS, the worst of his career), which led many to declare that the The Mick was too washed up to succeed anymore. But this was a travesty as poor Mantle's numbers were simply a product of a league were offense was impossible. As bad as his numbers look, he actually had a 142 OPS+--meaning that his OPS was in fact 42% better than than the average AL player. To put things in perspective, a 142 OPS+ is better than many All-Stars will ever do in the entire careers (ie, Joe Carter, Carlos Lee, and better than every Derek Jeter season but one). Yes, it was Mantle's worst year since his rookie season, but he was still a productive player, and it's sad that the last four years of his career coincided with the greatest leaguewide drop in offense of nearly any point in baseball history.

Basically, things reached a peak point of "so crazy" in 1968 that, for the first time in a long-time, baseball re-wrote the balance of pitching and hitting by making two crucial rules changes: the pitcher's mound was dropped five inches, and the strike zone was shrunken to the area from the armpits to the top of the batter's knees. Almost immediately, things began to go back toward a "normal" historical mean and by the mid 70s the game was back where it had been in the 50s and before, staying that way until 1993 when roids-driven offense took a new shape and 1994 when it completely exploded.

Labels: baseball, case studies, statistics

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 9/22/2009 06:35:00 PM 0 comments

0 Comments: