It's an amazing sight when you're watching great athletes compete at the highest levels in their sport and one competitor is so great that the opposition is just overmatched. I mean dominated; not just beat, not just bested, but dominated, almost completely helpless. In the realm of baseball, the greatest pitchers, at their best, will do this. Major league hitters, the best in the world, men with preternatural reflexes and freakish hand-eye coordination, are left to wave futilely at pitches or are so flummoxed they can't even swing.

I remember watching Clemens pitch against the Yanks in '97 and wondering how in the hell anyone ever hit the guy. I remember watching Pedro against the Yanks in September '99, the game he struck out 17, and feeling sorry for Yankee batters. Jorge Posada couldn't even get the bat off his shoulder. He had no idea what was coming - 96 mph fastball, or slider, or change-up or curveball. Yankee after Yankee left the plate after striking out shaking their head on the way back to the dugout, no doubt feeling the way Mickey Mantle felt after facing Koufax for the first time in the '63 World Series, when he said to the umpire as he was turning to leave the plate after striking out, "now how in the hell am I supposed to hit that shit."

But for sheer dominance, the ability to induce not only helplessness in big league batters but terror, there has perhaps never been anyone like Randy Johnson. It was sometimes like watching little league baseball, where the big kid is on the mound, the one that seemed to mature about two years ahead of the rest of the kids, and the ball is blowing by the batter before they can even think about swinging. One kid gets smoked and the next batter approaches the batters box looking like they're going to the gallows. They have no chance. When he was at his best, that was Randy Johnson on the mound.  Too big, too nasty, too fast. And that slider - Christ, you pitied lefthanded hitters who had to face Randy Johnson.

The ironic thing is that Johnson was arguably never considered the best pitcher in the game during his prime. Before you say, "hey, wait a minute...", consider this: Maddux was off the charts in '94 and '95, throwing strike after strike without ever hitting the white of the plate. Clemens was spinning back-to-back pitching triple crowns in '97 and '98. And then Pedro was dominating from '99 to '02, like a Marichal with more speed and a Hoffman-like change-up. Note that I didn't say Johnson was never actually the best during this period - he unquestionably was in 2001 when Pedro missed half the season. I said he was never considered the best. Johnson had the misfortune during his peak of '93 to '02 of always seeming to be in the shadow of another all-time great. Even in 2001 Johnson was a bit overshadowed by his loquacious and self-promoting  mound-mate, he of the Bloody Sock.

During his ten-year peak, Johnson posted seasons of 18-2 (the strike-shortened '94 season), 20-4, 21-6 and 24-5. After sulking his way through the first half of the season in Seattle in '98, he went to the National League and went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA in eleven starts for the Astros. I remember thinking as Johnson was doing this, "man, those NL batters have never seen anything like this."

Judging just by the W-L records, Randy Johnson was as close to unbeatable for those ten years as anyone has ever been in major league baseball. He was 175-58, for a .751 winning percentage. Only Grove had a comparable winning percentage across a similar number of decisions, going 172-54 for a .761 winning percentage between '27 and '33. There was a difference, however. Grove was pitching for Connie Mack's Athletics, the team that sent Ruth and Gehrig packing for home at the end of the season in '29, '30 and '31. Grove was lavished with spectacular run support by Foxx, Simmons and Cochrane. He pitched to one of the all-time great field generals in Mickey Cochrane. He had a hell of a supporting cast. Johnson received generally good run support from his Seattle and Arizona teams, but it was actually slightly less than team average, and needless to say the overall quality of those teams didn't approach the Athletics of the 30's.

The team relative analysis for Randy Johnson yielded a number that made me go back and double-check the formulas in the spreadsheet. After those checked out, I reconsidered the whole concept of the team relative analysis as a metric for pitchers. But I think its validity still holds. I had to reconsider the concept and double-check the methodology because it produced for Randy Johnson a result so outlandish, so amazing, that it was hard to believe.

Between '93 and '02, Randy Johnson outperformed his team, after adjusting for factors other than his own performance that might have effected his W-L record and his team's W-L record, by 50%. Yeah, you read that right - 50%.

It's a figure that significantly exceeds Seaver and Maddux. And it's a figure that I'm pretty certain will exceed Koufax's figure for his peak period of '62 to '66. If I don't miss my guess, it's a figure that only Walter Johnson will be able to approach over a decade period. And even Walter won't hit Randy's mark unless either his run support was significantly worse than other Senator pitchers received or those Senator pitching staffs were better than they appear to be at first glance.

This result is not the product of any significant adjustment to Johnson's record produced by the methodology. A straight comparison of Johnson's W-L record to his teams' records in games other than those where Johnson got the decision shows that Johnson outperformed his team by nearly 46%. After adjusting for the fact that (i) Johnson's run support was slightly below team average and (ii) Johnson was outperforming a very good D'back pitching staff from '99 to '02, that figure increased to 50%.

Unless I can identify some flaw in this concept I'm forced to reconsider my opinion that Grove was the greatest southpaw in the history of the game. Hell, Randy Johnson might have been the greatest pitcher, period. True, these analyses are restricted to peak periods of about a decade, but it's not like Randy had a short career; he won 300 games, after all. And I think it unlikely that other candidates for greatest ever will have achievements outside their peak decade that will militate in their favor, although Clemens might.

In terms of sheer power-pitching dominance, we were watching Walter Johnson at his peak when we were watching Randy Johnson from '93 to '02. We were watching peak Koufax. We were watching Grove at his very peak, say from '28 to '33. I'm not sure I appreciated that at the time. In fact, I'm pretty certain I didn't. But the Big Unit was indeed that great.

Lefty Grove weighs in at 36%. I didn't realize what tremendous run support Grove got from the Athletics in the early 30's.

It may be a shade behind Seaver and Maddux, but it doesn't change my opinion that Lefty was The Man among post-1920 pitchers. What it does do is make me appreciate how great Seaver and Maddux were. Man, that 35%+  improvement over team performance is one upscale neighborhood.

The analyses of pitcher performance relative to his team have yielded some interesting results.

As I described in the "The Theory of Relativity" post, it is possible to compare a pitcher's W-L record and winning percentage to his team's and adjust for factors that distort the comparison. These adjustments involve adjusting the pitcher's run support to equalize it with the run support the team provided to the other pitchers on the team and normalizing the ERAs and runs allowed by the rest of the staff to league average. These two adjustments assure that a pitcher won't benefit or suffer by virtue of run support that deviated from team average, or by virtue of the fact that the rest of the pitching staff, to whom the pitcher is effectively being compared, were either better than league average or worse than league average. A pitcher may be a great pitcher but his W-L record relative to his team's won't be very impressive if the rest of the team's pitching staff is comprised of great pitchers. In comparing Greg Maddux's W-L record to his team's it is obviously necessary to adjust for the fact that the Braves' pitching staffs were great and produced tremendous winning percentages because of the presence of guys like Glavine and Smoltz.

Here are the new results. Curt Schilling's ten-year peak from 1997 to 2006 was pretty impressive, as his excellent winning percentage and ERAs would suggest. Schilling outperformed his team by approximately 27% over that decade. Bob Gibson outperformed his team by approximately 28% over his nine-year peak of '64 to '72; not sure whether people will find that disappointing or impressive. Both these results obviously cast Ron Guidry in a very good light, because Schilling's and Gibson's team relative performance figures are right in Guidry territory. Ron is in good company.

Here are the results I found surprising. I ran the numbers on Bunning, Drysdale and Palmer. I've always thought of Bunning and Drysdale as being very similar, and I've conceived of Palmer as an American League version of Tom Seaver, although a shade behind Tom Terrific. My team relative analyses have fundamentally changed my appraisals of these pitchers.

I didn't expect Drysdale to fare very well in this analysis, simply because his a straight comparison of his W-L records to his teams' isn't very impressive. I expected, however, that Drysdale would benefit from the fact that the Dodger pitching staffs were generally exceptional during his era. Drysdale came in at 9.75%. Now remember that Dave Stieb came in at approximately 17%. That's a big difference. I know Drysdale made in the Hall in large part because of his participation in a lot of great pennant races and World Series, but those who question Drysdale's HOF bona fides have new ammunition for their argument.

Bunning polled in at 16%. That's a pretty good figure, and it's far better than Drysdale.

Now here was a bit of a stunner. A straight comparison of W-L records for Jim Palmer and his Oriole teams never looked all that impressive, because those Orioles teams posted great records during Palmer's peak from '70 to '78. Still, I expected that Palmer would benefit greatly from the fact that those were great pitching staffs the Orioles fielded in the '70s. Well, they were great staffs in the early '70s, but from '74 to '78 they really weren't all that good when you take away Palmer. For the full nine-year period the Orioles posted a 103.6 ERA+ when you subtract Palmer's ERAs. Good, but not great. After adjusting for the quality of the Oriole pitching, Jim Palmer outperformed his team by 20.4%. That's better than Bunning, but not by much. And it's nowhere near Tom Seaver's neighborhood of 37%.

O.K., Jim Palmer wasn't Tom Seaver. Does that make me reconsider whether Palmer was a legitimate first-ballot HOFer? No, not at all. Eight 20-win seasons in nine years is quite an accomplishment, and Palmer was an undoubted big-game pitcher, posting some pretty impressive pennant race performances and superlative post-season numbers. But he wasn't as good as I thought he was.

As with any other statistic or metric, it's important to put it in context. It is an all too common failing of many fans who fancy themselves sabremetricians that they attach too much weight to a single statistic. Schilling comes out well ahead of Palmer in team relative performance. That tends to confirm what Schilling's great winning percentage and ERAs had already told us: Schilling was a damn good pitcher. But Palmer was rock-solid consistent and was generally a bigger winner than Schilling over their respective peaks, even after adjusting for the difference between the four-man rotation that Palmer pitched in and the five-man rotation Schilling pitched in. Palmer had one stinker in '75 when he had significant arm issues, but was excellent every other year. Every pitcher gets a pass for one season where he had arm issues; Seaver had one during his peak, Guidry had one in '84, and most other great pitchers also had one. Schilling had more than his share of them, however, and was significantly limited in his contribution to his team in '99, 2000, '03 and '05 as a result of poor performance or limited innings due to arm issues. He was excellent when he was on, like Saberhagen, but like Saberhagen you can't just ignore all the seasons where his team didn't get what they justifiably expected.

Bunning would appear at first glance to have had more than his share of off seasons during his peak, but that's deceptive. Bunning was very durable and never really missed time due to injury issues during his peak. Some of his pedestrian W-L records, particular in 1960, are easily explained: poor team, terrible run support. There's reason to believe that if you put Bunning on those '70s Orioles teams he might have posted another four or five 20-win seasons. But there's also reason to believe he might not have. It has to be noted that Bunning pitched on some good teams that gave him pretty good run support, like the '61 Tigers and '64 Phillies, and he didn't post 20-win seasons. He did well enough, posting good ERAs and winning 17 games in '61 and 19 in '64. But a Hall of Famer should have been winning 20 games, and probably 22 or 23. Bunning had a bit of a tendency to pitch to his team's level. That's not a particularly damning observation, but it's an important consideration.

Back to Guidry for a moment. The myth is that Guidry's spectacular W-L record was in large part a function of great run support from a powerful Yankee offense. It's a myth. The '77 and '80 Yankee teams could hit, no question, but the Yankees of the pennant winning years of '77 to '81 were unquestionably pitching and defense oriented teams. Look at the stats. And Guidry's run support from the Yankees was in any event strictly average for those teams. Guidry outperformed those teams, and those exceptional pitching staffs, because he was an excellent pitcher, made optimal use of his run support, was a clutch pitcher who pitched best in critical situations, and was in short a winner. That term - winner - is a term a lot of the self-styled stat geeks scoff at, but if they looked a little closer at the stats the concept would be plain. Some pitchers are winners. Some aren't. Blyleven wasn't. Steve Rogers wasn't. To a lesser degree Stieb wasn't either. It doesn't mean they weren't good pitchers. But it means they weren't as good as their generally superior ERAs and ERA+s would suggest. The stat geeks should ponder that for a moment.

I love a lot of the new pitching stats. They're great analytical tools. Take FIP, for example ("fielding independent pitching"). It's based on the proposition that what happens on a ball put in play is frequently a function of random chance and team fielding. Bill James recognized its utility and cited Wally Bunker's 1964 season as an example of a pitcher apparently benefiting from some good luck insofar as his BAbip that year was .216. It turns out that Bunker in fact had a pretty good facility for generating low BAbip's in his career, presumably because, like Maddux in his prime, he was adept at keeping the ball away from the fat part of the bat and inducing batters to hit pitches outside the hitter's sweet spots in the strike zone. But Bunker never again came close to posting the .216 BAbip he posted in '64, despite being backed by the legendary team defense of the '60s Orioles.

FIP tends to understate the effectiveness of a pitcher with a demonstrated ability to consistently generate very low BAbips. Take The Great Rivera, for example. I was skeptical of Mariano's decision in '97 to move almost exclusively to the cutter because it seemed to sharply cut into his strikeouts. "Throw the high fastball!", I would shout, longing for Mariano's incredible strikeout ratio in '96 when he K's 130 batters in 107 innings. Still, I had to admit that batters seemed almost incapable of getting good wood on the cutter, but bloops and dribblers can and do become hits, while strikeouts can't and don't. Bloops and dribblers that found holes in the defense became, in my mind, "Mariano Specials." Obviously Mariano's decision to go with the cutter has been thoroughly vindicated and my early concerns were unfounded. But Mariano never fares too well in the FIP stat, and that's misleading because Mariano has demonstrated an ability to consistently generate low BAbips (Mariano's career BAbip is .265, as compared to a major league average of .299).

As Bill James has noted regarding FIP and various other new and sophisticated measures of pitching performance, they have a tendency to throw out a lot of information in an effort to isolate and identify a pitcher's performance independent of non-pitching factors. Bill is a little unsettled by this, and so am I. As he's argued, W-L records are the antipode to FIP and similar stats, incorporating all information, including unfortunately things that have nothing to do with a pitcher's performance, like offensive support and team fielding. However, the inclination of the stat geeks to summarily dismiss W-L records is extremely misguided. It is possible to start with W-L records and make appropriate adjustments, and that's what I'm about to propose.

The Theory of Relativity, in contrast to FIP, throws out nothing but attempts to adjust for everything (or at least most things) that happens outside of the pitcher's performance. Simply put, it compares a pitcher's W-L record to his teams record in games where the pitcher was not the pitcher of record (i.e., it subtracts the pitcher's W-L record from the team's), adjusting for factors that effect the pitcher's and team's W-L records but are largely unrelated to the pitcher's own performance. If a pitcher received run support better or worse than the run support a team generally provided its pitchers, the pitcher's W-L record is adjusted (via the Pythagorean theorem) to reflect what his W-L record would have been had he received run support equal to his team's average. It also adjusts for the performance of the rest of the team's pitching staff, because even a good pitcher who receives excellent run support will appear to fare poorly relative to his team's W-L record if the rest of the starting pitching staff is comprised of Walter Johnson, Pete Alexander, Tom Seaver and Randy Johnson, with Gossage, Eckersley and Rivera coming out of the bullpen.

These pitching staff adjustments are accomplished by taking the team's ERA+ (exclusive of the subject pitcher's own ERA+) and adjusting the team's W-L record to reflect what it would have been had the rest of the staff generated a 100 ERA+ (again, based on the Pythagorean theorem). It simply takes the team's ERA+ exclusive of the subject pitcher's ERA+, calculates the runs allowed or saved by the staff's performance above or below the assumed 100 ERA+, and adds or subtracts those incremental runs to the team's runs allowed. A Pythagorean record is then generated assuming a league-average staff.

Once you've adjusted the pitcher's record for run support and adjusted the team's record for the rest of the pitching staff's performance, you compare the pitcher's adjusted W-L record to his team's adjusted W-L record. The impact of run support on the pitcher's W-L record relative to his team's is thereby eliminated, and the impact of the rest of the staff's performance on the team's W-L record is similarly eliminated. A good pitcher will have an adjusted W-L record much better than his team's adjusted record, and a poor pitcher will have a worse one. Measuring the difference between the adjusted records of the pitcher and the team provides a good measure of the pitcher's performance. It doesn't expressly adjust for team defense (a notoriously difficult aspect of team performance to measure), but it implicitly incorporates it because bad team defense will lower the denominator representing the team's W-L record and therefore increase the relative impact of the pitcher's W-L record (adjusted for run support) relative to his team's W-L record (adjusted for the performance of the rest of the pitching staff).

The concept of simply comparing a pitcher's record to his team's is not novel, but the defects in the system became apparent to me when I was comparing Phil Niekro's relative W-L record to Don Sutton's. Even if the records were adjusted for variations in run support, Sutton would still tend to fare poorly compared to Niekro because Niekro would benefit by being compared to the poor Braves pitching staffs of the '70s, while Sutton would suffer from being compared to the generally excellent Dodger's pitching staffs of the '70s. It was easy for Niekro to outperform the sub-average pitchers on the Braves staff, but more difficult for Sutton to outperform  the Tommy John's, Claude Osteen's and Andy Messersmith's who generally populated the Dodger staffs. It's fairly easy, however, to adjust for this, and the conceptual validity of the adjustment should be obvious. Still, the process of collating the team pitching data from different years, incorporating it into the adjustment formulas and generating the Pythagorean adjustments is a little involved and so for the moment I'll only present an analysis of three pitchers: Tom Seaver, Ron Guidry and Dave Stieb.

I selected these three pitchers because I thought they would be illustrative. Bill James has noted how spectacular Seaver's winning percentage was given the generally mediocre nature of the Mets teams he pitched for in the late '60s/early and mid-70s. I selected Guidry because I knew that his record was spectacular even after accounting for the fact that the Yankees teams he pitched for were generally pretty good, but I didn't know how his relative record had been affected by his run support and the quality of the Yankee pitching staffs. And I selected Stieb because (i) I knew that he had significantly underperformed relative to Pythagorean projections during his prime years in the early and mid-80s, and (ii) I was tired of beating up on Bert Blyleven. (I knew Blyleven also underperformed his Pythagorean projections in his prime, but I genuinely like the guy and he was by many measures a borderline great pitcher - certainly better than Stieb - albeit not a Hall of Famer).

I compared nine-year peaks for each of the pitchers. This was convenient because both Guidry and Stieb had distinct nine-year peaks that account for all of their superior seasons. One could select various nine-year periods for Seaver, because his peak extended well beyond nine years, but I selected his first nine seasons, comprising substantially his entire Met career. I'll begin the comparison by noting some things that you probably already know. For instance, the Mets were not a good team once you subtract Seaver, notwithstanding their two NL pennants and their '60 World Series championship. Their team winning percentage from '67 to '75 was .495 (mediocre, but not bad), but was only .463 once you subtract Seaver's .636 winning percentage from the equation, and that obviously stinks. You probably also knew that the Mets' problem was poor hitting. They actually had very good pitching, even after stupidly trading Nolan Ryan, posting a team ERA+ of 108 from '67 to '75. Once you subtract Seaver's superlative ERAs, however, the team ERA+ was 102.2. That's not great, but it's pretty good considering the staff's ace pitcher is excluded. Another way too look at it is that the Mets staff was above average even without the great Seaver.

I was somewhat surprised by how good Stieb's winning percentage was from '82 to '90. He was 135-90 for a very good .600 winning percentage. But I was also slightly surprised by how good the Jays teams were in that period. They had a .548 winning percentage, and were generally a pretty good team even aside from the excellent '85 and '87 seasons,  other than in '82. Even subtracting Stieb's W-L record the Jays still had a .539 winning percentage. I was very surprised, however, by how good the Jays pitching was in that period. They had a team ERA+ of 109.9 and an ERA+ of 106.9 even after subtracting Stieb. Even without Stieb the Jays staff in the '80s was  as good as the Yankees pitching in the period '77 to '85 (primarily because the Yankees pitching sagged significantly from '82 to '84). Jimmy Key and Doyle Alexander were no slouches, and Jim Clancy was a pretty good No. 4 starter. And the Tom Henke-led bullpen was generally pretty solid and sometimes excellent.

The Yankees had a team winning percentage of .575 from '77 to '86, and were well over .500 every year other than '82. The Yanks' winning percentage drops to .552 without Guidry, still very good but not that much better than the Jays' .539 W% without Stieb. The Yanks pitching was better than the Mets but not as good as the Jays, posting an overall 106.3 ERA+ and a 103.7 ERA+ without Guidry. The period of '77 to '85 was really a tale of two Yankee pitching staffs: the excellent staff from '77 to '81 and the generally mediocre staff from '82 to '85.

On the offensive support side both Guidry and Seaver received run support slightly better than team average, in each case about 3%. Stieb's run support was 1.2% below team average. Accordingly Guidry's and Seaver's adjusted W% was slightly lower than their actual W% and Stieb's slightly higher. The adjustments were quite small in each case, with Stieb's W% going up from .600 to .606. Guidry's adjusted W% dropped 18 points to .679 and Seaver's dropped 14 points to .622.

The big beneficiary of the adjustment to team W% by assuming an average pitching staff was Stieb. The Jays W% (exclusive of Stieb) drops from .539 to .518. A Jays staff with a 100 ERA+ would have added about 36 runs per year to the Jays' runs allowed total.

The effects of these adjustments were essentially negligible for Guidry and Seaver, with the reduction in their personal W%'s being largely offset by the reduction in the team W% resulting from translating their good team pitching staffs into average staffs. Stieb, by contrast, saw a significant increase in his W% relative to his team's. Simply comparing Stieb's .600 W% to his team's .548 W% shows that Stieb outperformed his team by 9.5%. Adjusting for run support and pitching staff, however, increases Stieb's relative performance figure to 17%. That's a pretty good figure, and though I've not yet run the figures for various HOFers I'm willing to bet that it compares favorably to some of the more marginal inductees.

Seaver outperformed his team after adjusting for run support and pitching staff by a tremendous 37%, which is almost precisely the figure obtained by comparing his straight W% to his team's.

Guidry outperformed his team after adjusting for run support and pitching staff by 27%, which represents less than a one point increase over the approximately 26% figure obtained by comparing his .697 W% to his team's .552 W% without Guidry.

Just to give some idea of how astounding Seaver's figure is, my preliminary calculations appear to suggest that Koufax outperformed his team during his historic five-year run from '62 to '66 by slightly north of 40%. Seaver's 37% relative performance figure maintained over a nine-year period, therefore, appears to be a historic feat, and I'm willing to bet that few other pitchers since 1920, if any, can match it.

Stieb's figures demonstrate how a pitcher who had run support below team average and pitched on a good staff can have actually outperformed his team by a larger margin than a simple comparison of W% between pitcher and team would indicate. On the flip side, a pitcher whose performance relative to his team's at first glance appears to be superlative can be revealed as a fundamentally average pitcher if he received both great run support relative to his team's average run support and pitched on a team with an inferior pitching staff. Obviously neither Seaver nor Guidry are examples of this, and I'm not sure off the top of my head which pitcher might fit this profile. I know Andy Pettitte has received tremendous run support throughout his career, but he's also pitched on generally excellent pitching staffs. If anyone can suggest such a pitcher in the comments section I'd appreciate it. I'm going to start looking by first identifying poor pitching staffs from recent decades and then examining the run support received by their starting pitchers.

The performance of Seaver, Guidry and Stieb relative to each other was not a complete surprise. For one thing, Stieb slightly underperformed his Pythagorean record from '82 to '90, compiling a .600 W% relative to a .613 Pythagorean projection (Stieb significantly underperformed the Pythagorean projection during his very best years of '82 to '85, indicating that he slightly outperformed Pythagorus over the balance of his nine-year stretch). The Pythagorean comparison doesn't provide for any of the adjustments in the Relativity method I've described, but it does indicate that Stieb didn't make particularly good use of his run support. Guidry, by contrast, hugely outperformed his Pythagorean projection from '77 to '85, posting a .697 W%, more than 40 points higher than his .654 Pythagorean projection. That's a big difference. Seaver underperformed his Pythagorean projection but by an insignificant amount, posting a .636 W% from '67 to '75 as compared to a .641 Pythagorean projection, well within the margin of error in Pythagorean projections.

What did we learn by comparing a pitcher's performance to his team's after making the Relativity adjustments? Well, without having finished fully computing the figures for a meaningful number of other pitchers, I think we learned that Stieb was a pretty good pitcher; Seaver, as one must have expected, was a truly great pitcher and a worthy member of the inner sanctum in the Hall of Fame; and Guidry was precisely between Stieb and Seaver. My own takeaway is that the gap between Seaver and Guidry was about what I'd expected: it's significant, because Seaver is unquestionably among the very elite in the history of baseball, and Guidry, although deserving of HOF induction in my opinion, is admittedly a marginal candidate if one focuses soley on career statistics and ignores the astounding big-game record and his degree of dominance over a decade. I think the Relativity analysis also suggests strongly that the gap between Stieb and Guidry is about as big as the gap between Guidry and Seaver. It's significant, and it belies any comparison of the two based on nothing more than ERA+.

The results for Stieb and Guidry confirm a few things and dispense with a few myths. They confirm that Guidry's improved performance in high leverage situations translated into incremental wins, and Stieb's poor performance in high leverage situations translated into incremental losses. Stieb may have had the superior ERA+, but Guidry's LevERA+ was distinctly superior, and the difference explains in part the disparity in their ability to outperform their teams. The Relativity analysis also dispenses with the myth that Guidry's outstanding career winning percentage was just a product of good run support and great teams. Guidry did indeed get good run support and pitched for good teams, but the fact remains that he outperformed his teams by a huge margin. A .600 winning percentage for a Yankee pitcher in the years '77 to '85 would be good but not that much better than the Yanks' record for those years. A .697 winning percentage, however, is spectacular even after adjusting for run support and the quality of the Yankee teams.

Based on what we've seen so far I think it's clear that elite pitchers will outperform their teams by 17% after adjusting for run support and the quality of the rest of the pitching staff. All time greats - and I mean pitchers among the top six or eight of all time - may outperform their team on an adjusted basis by more than 35%. And it should be clear that pitchers who outperform their team on an adjusted basis by more than 25% are no doubt Hall of Famers. If there are any doubts about that, the Relativity analyses of pitchers like Drysdale, Bunning, Sutton, Niekro, Ryan, Palmer are likely to resolve those doubts.

UPDATE: I just ran the numbers for Greg Maddux for the period '92-'02. He's an interesting case, of course, because he pitched on such great pitching teams, and so his 15% outperformance of his team's record on a straight comparison of W% could be expected to rise significantly. But - wow. Maddux shoots up to a relative performance index of 42% when adjusted for run support and pitching staff. I didn't appreciate how poor Maddux's run support was relative to team average. The Braves scored 4.86 runs/game when Maddux wasn't pitching, but only 4.41 for Greg. Maddux is just north of Seaver's 37%. I guess no one should be surprised.

I've noted before the fact that Ron Guidry is the only pitcher in baseball history to lead the major leagues in wins and lead his own league in ERA and SO over a ten-year period and yet be rejected by the Hall. He averaged nearly 17 wins per season in the decade between '77 and '86 and had a 3.23 ERA (121 ERA+). When apprised of Guidry's achievement, my fellow baseball fans have had remarkably similar reactions, initially expressing some surprise at Guidry's accomplishment but then arguing that Guidry's statistics during this period, while impressive, were pre-eminent during this period only because this decade happened to occur at an odd interregnum in baseball, when greats like Seaver, Palmer and Carlton had just passed their prime and before the rise of Clemens, Maddux, Johnson and Martinez. They suggest that Guidry's performance really wouldn't have been that exceptional in any other era in baseball.

I must admit that I was inclined to give some credence to this argument. I assumed the win total wouldn't be that impressive when compared to all the titans who pitched during the eras of four-man rotations that prevailed in baseball until the '80s. I believed it was probably true that averaging about 17 wins a season over a decade while posting an ERA+ of 120 or greater was not all that unusual during many other eras in modern baseball history, and so I decided to check the record book. It turns out I was wrong. Averaging nearly 17 wins a season over a decade while compiling an ERA 20% better than the park-adjusted ERAs of your contemporaries has always been an achievement only the greats have attained. It turns out that this level of excellence over a decade gives a pitcher an almost automatic entree into Cooperstown. By my count, there have been 27 pitchers who accomplished this since 1920. All but four have already been inducted into the Hall of Fame or are almost certain to be inducted upon eligibility. And it further turns out that Guidry's accomplishment is becoming exceedingly rare in the age of the five-man rotation and seven inning starts.

The last pitcher to average as many wins as Guidry did over a decade was Randy Johnson from '97 to '06. Maddux came very close during the same period but finished a win shy of equaling Guidry's 16.9 wins per season. Maddux averaged 16.9 or more wins per decade from '95 to '04 and for each of the preceding seven ten-year periods* (i.e., every ten-year period commencing between 1988 and 1994). Since Guidry, only five pitchers have averaged 16.9 wins or more per season over a ten-year period while compiling an ERA+ of 120 or better: Maddux, Johnson, Clemens, Glavine and Mussina. Only two pitchers currently pitching have a realistic chance at accomplishing the feat any time in the next four years - Halladay and Santana. Halladay needs to win 39 games in the next two seasons to do it. Santana can do it by winning 70 games over the next four years. Although each as a realistic chance, the odds are long. (For the most recent ten-year period - 2000 to 2009 - Andy Pettitte led all major league pitchers with 148 wins.)

Guidry's statistical accomplishments between '77 and '86 were relatively rare even in the day of the four-man rotation, at least in the American League. Just as only Clemens and Mussina matched Guidry's feat in the AL over the 25 years since Guidry did it, only three American League pitchers accomplished the feat in the 30 years before Guidry. Bob Lemon did it for each of the ten-year periods concluding in '55, '56 and '57, averaging 19.7 wins per season with a 122 ERA+ during his best ten-year stretch. Whitey Ford did it for each of the ten-year periods concluding in '63, '64 and '65, averaging 17.3 wins with a 136 ERA+ during his best ten-year stretch. And Jim Palmer did it for each of the ten-year periods ending in '77, '78, '79, '80, '81 and '82, averaging 19.2 wins and a 139 ERA+ from '70 to '79.

In the history of the American League since 1920, only ten pitchers have averaged 16.9 wins per season and a 120 ERA+ over a ten-year span: Grove, Ferrell, Feller, Newhouser, Lemon, Ford, Palmer, Guidry, Clemens and Mussina. Only four other pitchers have averaged 16.9 wins per season in the AL since 1920: Hunter, Morris, Lolich and Wynn. There have been only two ten-year periods in the American League in which as many as two pitchers have accomplished this: Grove and Ferrell from '28 to '37 and Grove and Ruffing from '31 to '40. Feller and Newhouser would have done it within the same ten-year period if Feller hadn't lose four years to military service. In other words, had Guidry's magnificent decade occurred at any other time in AL history since 1920 he would have been one of only three pitchers at most to accomplish this feat in that ten-year period.

There was only one brief era in modern baseball history - the late '60s to late '70s - when there were more than three pitchers in any ten-year period to average 16.9 wins per season while maintaining a 120 or better ERA+. There were five pitchers to accomplish the feat in the decade from '69 to '78: Jenkins, Perry, Palmer, Carlton and Seaver. There were four pitchers in each of the decade periods of '68 to '77 and '71 to '80, and it was the same four pitchers for each period: Perry, Palmer, Carlton and Seaver.

In other words, Guidry's statistical accomplishments from '77 to '86 would have placed him among the very top echelon of elite pitchers in any era, generally accompanied by only one or two other pitchers in averaging nearly 17 wins per season and a 120 ERA+.

Here's the full roster of pitchers on the 17 wins/120 ERA+ list since 1920, listed in chronological order (click here to see a spreadsheet with the full details of their peak ten-year stretches):





Besides Guidry, there are three other pitchers on this list who failed to make the Hall of Fame. Two of them, Wes Ferrell and Lon Warneke, had their peak years in the '30s. The other, Bucky Walters, had his peak years in the late '30s and during the war years. They had remarkably similar careers, each winning between 192 and 198 games and compiling ERA+s between 115 and 119. Each won between 170 and 175 games during their peak decade, meaning that for each pitcher his peak decade comprised substantially his entire productive career. Of the three, Walters was the only one to receive more than token support among HOF voters, twice topping 20% in the balloting in the mid-60s.

Bill James argues in his recent Gold Mine article that none of these three pitchers have as strong a case as Guidry for inclusion in the Hall. According to Bill, none had as many seasons as Guidry in which he ranked among the very best pitchers in the league, and though each had one or more truly superlative seasons, none had a season of historical significance comparable to Guidry's '78 season. As Bill saw it, Ferrell had a marginal case for the Hall, but Walters and Warneke fell distinctly short of the standards HOF voters have historically applied to pitchers.

I generally agree with Bill's analysis (although I think he sells Ferrell a little short). I would make another point, however. While each of Walters, Ferrell and Warneke was among the leading winners in baseball during his peak decade, their ten-year win totals (175 for Ferrell and Warneke; 170 for Walters) were not particularly notable for the period. Certain of their contemporaries, as well as premier pitchers in succeeding decades, far exceeded their 10-year win totals, with Grove, Hubbell, Spahn, Marichal, Feller, Roberts, Lemon and Jenkins all averaging approximately 20 wins per season or more. Guidry's ten-year total, by contrast, ranks with the very best ten-year win totals during the era of the five-man rotation. Since Guidry's ten-year peak, only Maddux, Glavine and Johnson have eclipsed Guidry's tally by as much as one victory per season, and only Maddux's best 10-year stretch ('92 to '01) topped Guidry's total by two victories per season.

Guidry won almost as many games in a decade as did Ferrell, Warneke and Walters, despite pitching in an era where the five-man rotation and sharp decline in complete games have rendered the 17-win season the functional equivalent of the 20-win gold standard of prior eras. That fact alone would seem to distinguish Guidry from the three other pitchers who have failed to make the Hall despite a decade of averaging 17 wins per season and a 120 or better ERA+, and would seem to dictate that he join the 23 other pitchers who have accomplished this feat and are either already in the Hall or on a glide path to Cooperstown.

My last post on pitchers who won two-thirds of their starts in a season got me to thinking again about Gator's amazing record in September division title races. I noted Lefty Grove's incredible '31 season in which he won 27 of 30 starts, a feat unmatched in baseball history. I noted that Bob Welch won a higher percentage of his starts in 1990 than any pitcher since 1954, and he won only 24 games during his best 30-start stretch.

I've noted before the sheer improbability of winning 26 of any 30 starts selected on the basis of any unbiased criterion. It's highly improbable that a pitcher would win 26 of 30 weekend starts, or starts in day games at home, or starts against teams in your own division. But to get an even clearer idea of how difficult it is to win 26 of any 30 starts, even 30 starts selected by a manifestly biased criteria, consider the following.

Let's make the criterion games in which a great Hall of Fame pitcher received 11 or more runs of support in a start, a very biased criteria because tremendous run support will skew the results toward an extraordinarily high percentage of starts won. Steve Carlton made 32 starts in his career in which he was lavished with 11 or more runs of support. He won 27 of those games, or a slightly lower percentage than Guidry's percentage of wins/start in September pennant races. Don Sutton got 11+ runs of support in 25 starts and won 20. Phil Niekro won 16 of his 21 starts in which he received 11+ runs. Fergie Jenkins had the best record in this category of the pitchers I examined, winning 20 of his 22 starts where he received 11+ runs.  All in all, these four Hall of Fame pitchers started exactly 100 games in which they received 11+ runs of support and they won 83. You don't need your calculator to determine that works out to 83%. Ron Guidry won 86.7% of his September starts in division title races.

That's how difficult it is to win 26 of 30 major league starts under even the best of circumstances. Take a Hall of Fame pitcher, give him the run support of his dreams, and he still won't win 26 of 30 starts.

I'll be turning back to Guidry's big-game record in future posts because it is, I believe, the crux of his case for the Hall of Fame, if for no other reason than that most fans, sportswriters and HOF voters are probably unaware of this record. Guidry for some reason isn't associated with the term "big game pitcher" in the same way that various other pitchers are. If you ask most knowledgeable baseball observers to name a big-game pitcher from the '70s and '80s they'll mention Jim Palmer, Tom Seaver, Jack Morris or Luis Tiant. Each of those pitchers was indeed a great big-game pitcher, but Guidry was even better. I think the Veterans Committee of the Hall of Fame should be aware that Guidry was the best big-game pitcher of his generation. It might not be enough to put him over the top, but I think we can all agree that a pitcher's big-game performances are an important qualification for the Hall. It certainly helped put Catfish Hunter in the Hall. It was unquestionably the reason why Bob Gibson was a first-ballot inductee in 1981 and Juan Marichal wasn't. And when Curt Schilling makes the Hall, as he almost certainly will, it will be in no small measure a result of his spectacular big-game record in October.

I obviously believe, with passion and conviction, that Gator belongs in the Hall. If the Veterans Committee disagrees, if they believe his career was too short, or his peak too brief, I'll disagree but I'll respect their judgment. But if the Veterans Committee denies Gator and are unaware that he was one of the greatest big-game pitchers in baseball history, that would be a shame.

Trivia question: since 1920 there have been only two pitchers to win two-thirds or more of their starts in a season more than twice (minimum 30 starts). Who are they? While you think about that I'll give you some idea of how special this achievement is.

Since 1954 a pitcher has started 30 or more games in a major league season more than 3000 times. Only 30 times has a pitcher started 30 or more games and won two-thirds of his starts. That's less than 1% of the 30-start seasons since 1954.

Since 1954 only four pitchers have accomplished this feat more than once. Can you name them? Here are some hints. Sandy Koufax never did it, narrowly missing in '66. Greg Maddux never did it, either, although he came close in '95 when he won 19 of 29 starts. Whitey Ford came close in '56 and '63, but never did it. Steve Carlton never did it, although he won 27 of his 41 starts in '72.

The following all-time greats did it once: Bob Gibson, Randy Johnson, and Tom Seaver. What year do you think Gibson did it? No, it wasn't '68, it was '70. Doc Gooden did it in his great '85 season. Denny McLain did it in '68 when he won 31 games.

Here are three of the four post-1954 pitchers who did it more than once: Roger Clemens did it twice, in '86 and '90. Juan Marichal did it twice, in '66 and '68. Pedro Martinez did it in '02 and would have done it '99, when he won 22 of his 29 starts. Let's give Pedro credit for that season, however, because he would have done it even if he hadn't won that 30th start.

The answer to our trivia question? Here's another hint first: both pitchers to have won 2/3s of their starts in a season more than twice are lefties. The answer? Lefty Grove did it four times, in '28, '30, '31 and '32. And Ron Guidry did it three times, in '78, '83 and '85. They are the only two pitchers since 1920 to have won 2/3s of their starts in a season more than twice.*

Bob Welch won an extraordinary 77.1% of his starts in 1990. The only other pitcher to have started 30 or more games in a season and won 75% or more of them is Denny McLain in his great '68 season when he won 75.6%. Pedro won 75.9% of his 29 starts in '99. The only other pitchers to have topped the 70% mark are Clemens in '86 (72.7%), Seaver in '69 and Guidry in '78 (71.4%), and Cliff Lee in '08 (71.0%). Dave McNally won precisely 70% of his starts in '71.

The only pitchers since '54 to turn the trick while winning 25 or more games are McLain, Welch, Marichal, Seaver, Guidry, Newcombe and Stone.

Doc Gooden, of course, was the youngest pitcher to turn the trick - 20 years old. Warren Spahn, of course, was the oldest - 42 years old.

Lefty Grove's 1931 season deserves special mention. Grove went 31-4 in '31, making 30 starts and 11 relief appearances. Grove won 27 of his 30 starts. Yes, you read that right: Grove won 90% of his starts in '31. He lost his first start of the season to the Senators. He lost his last start of the season to the Yankees. In between he won 27 of 28 starts, losing only a 1-0 decision to the St. Louis Brownies on August 23rd. Grove was outdueled that day by Dick Coffman, who would go 9-13 for the season and would win finish his career with only 72 wins and a .431 winning percentage. However undistinguished Coffman's career, for one Sunday in August in 1931 he was better than the man many believe to be the greatest pitcher of all time.

Here are some more pre-1954 seasons where pitchers won two-thirds of their starts:

Warren Spahn. In addition to his great '63 season, Spahnie won 23 of his 32 starts in 1953, making him one of the very select club of pitchers two have accomplished the feat more than once.

Hal Newhouser. Prince Hal won 2/3s of his starts in '45 and '46. He almost certainly did it in '44 as well, but splits aren't available for that year. However, unless Hal won 6 of his 13 relief appearances that year (very unlikely) he also won 2/3s of his starts in '44.

Bob Feller. Rapid Robert accomplished the feat twice, in '40 and '51. He also narrowly missed in '39, winning 23 of his 35 starts.

Carl Hubbell. King Carl won 24 of his 34 starts in his great '36 season.

Dizzy Dean. The Diz won 26 of his 33 starts in his great '34 season. He won 24 of 36 the next year.

Robin Roberts. Roberts won 28 of his 37 starts in '52.

Bucky Walters. Bucky won 27 of his 36 starts in '39. He won 2/3s of his starts in '44, too.

Dazzy Vance. Dazzy did it in '24 and '25. Dazzy joins Lefty, Dizzy and Hal Newhouser as the only pitchers to accomplish the feat in consecutive seasons.

Paul Derringer. Oom Paul did it in '39, the same year his teammate Bucky Walters turned the trick. They are the only teammate tandem to ever accomplish the feat.

Lefty Gomez. Lefty won 2/3s of his starts in '32 and '34.

Bob Lemon. Bob won 22 of 33 starts in '54.

That's not a comprehensive pre-1954 list, but it demonstrates how difficult it was for even great pitchers to win 2/3s of their starts in a season.

Here is the full list since 1954, including Pedro's '99 season in which he made only 29 starts:





































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* As noted above, Hal Newhouser might have done it, too, but the game logs for 1944 aren't available. However, even if Hal did it three times, two of those times would have occurred during the depleted WWII years.

It's been surprising to me, given the profusion of new pitching statistics (FIP, VORP, Component ERA), that we haven't seen an expression of ERA or ERA+ that adjusts for leverage, weighing runs allowed in high-leverage situations more and runs allowed in low-leverage situations less. The data is available in the game logs at Baseball-Reference.com, but aggregating the data would be a tedious exercise. Fangraphs.com aggregates the data on a seasonal basis in the WPA, WPA/LI and Clutch statistics, but expresses the statistics in terms of incremental games won or lost rather than adjusted ERA.

Fangraphs calculates "Clutch" by subtracting WPA/LI, which aggregates the unleveraged increase or decrease in win probabilities associated with each plate appearance against a pitcher, from WPA, which also aggregates the win probabilities but assigns a leverage factor to each event based on the game situation (score, inning, base and out situation). Generally speaking, a pitcher with a positive Clutch factor performed better in high-leverage situations relative to his overall seasonal performance, or declined in performance in low-leverage situations relative to his overall seasonal performance, or some combination of the two. A better performance in high-leverage situations means that the incremental outs the pitcher got in high-leverage situations count for more than an average out (i.e., an out obtained in a game situation with a leverage factor of 1.0). A worse performance in low-leverage situations means that the incremental runs the pitcher allowed in low-leverage situations count for less than the average run (i.e., a run scored in a game situation with a leverage factor of 1.0).

The significance of the Clutch statistic should be obvious: not all runs allowed (and runs prevented) are equal. For example, the run surrendered in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game should be counted differently than the run surrendered in the bottom of the first inning after the visiting took a six run lead in the top half of the inning. ERA and ERA+ count each run the same, notwithstanding that the two runs I used as examples are likely to have had hugely disparate impacts on the outcome of the game. The advantage of expressing the number of leverage-weighted runs allowed as a variation on ERA should also be obvious: most fans will not know whether a Clutch factor of 0.74 is merely above average, or very good, or a spectacular achievement, but fans know how to compare a 116 ERA+ to a 135 ERA+.

It turns out that a Clutch factor of 0.74 - meaning that the pitcher's clutch performance was worth 0.74 wins for the season - is very high. A Clutch factor of 2.0 in a season is truly spectacular, and 3.0 or above exceedingly rare. Curt Schilling was a spectacular clutch performer in 2001, improving on his usual performance that year by 30% with runners on, by 48% with runners in scoring position and two-out, and by 20% in "late and close" situations. These spectacularly clutch performances translated into 2.03 incremental wins for Schilling as measured by win probabilities added. But if one expresses this same statistic by adjusting his ERA and ERA+ to reflect not only how many runs he allowed, but the impact of these runs given the game situation, what happens to Curt's 2.98 ERA and 157 ERA+ for 2001?

Leverage-adjusted ERA+ (or "LevERA+) is calculated by expressing the 2.03 wins Curt added by virtue of his clutch performance in terms of the equivalent number of runs. The concept of expressing wins in terms of equivalent runs is a common one in sabremetrics, although the appropriate win-to-runs conversion factor is difficult to calculate and varies depending on the league scoring level and "park run environment". Fortunately, Fangraphs has already calculated the conversion factor for us, and it can be found simply by dividing RE24 by REW (here's the Fangraph glossary that describes these two stats). Curt's RE24 for 2001 was 50.87 and his REW was 5.09. That means the appropriate win-to-runs conversion factor for Curt in 2001 was 50.87/5.09, or 9.99 (which is a fairly typical conversion factor in today's game). Multiplying Curt's 2.03 Clutch factor by 9.99 reveals that Curt's clutch performance was the equivalent of allowing 20.28 fewer runs than the 86 runs Curt allowed in 2001, or 23.58% fewer runs. Reducing Curt's earned runs allowed by the same 23.58% results in a figure of 65 leverage-adjusted earned runs (as compared to Curt's actual 85 earned runs in 2001). That means Curt's LevERA in 2001 was 2.28 and his LevERA+ was 205.

This is an extreme example, of course, because a Clutch factor of 2.03 for a season is extremely high. Most pitchers will have a Clutch factor much closer to 0 (that is, they were neither "clutch" nor "anti-clutch") and accordingly a LevERA+ that varies very little from their ERA+.

Just to give a further idea of how extreme Curt's 20 run Clutch improvement was, consider that since 1974 (the date from which the Clutch stats are available at Fangraphs) the largest career Clutch improvements and declines measure less than 100 runs. Curt, oddly enough, had a career Clutch factor of negative 5.26, which translates into 53.4 more runs and 50.75 more earned runs over his career. Again, that may not sound like much but it moves Curt's career ERA+ of 127 to a 122.1 LevERA+. That's still excellent, of course, but it's a difference to which most fans, and certainly most sabremetrically inclined fans, would attach some significance.

Another HOF aspirant with a significantly negative Clutch factor is our old buddy Bert Blyleven. Bert's Clutch factor for the first four seasons of his career - '70 to '73 - are not available, but it can be estimated on the basis of the leverage statistics at Baseball-Reference.com that Bert's Clutch factor for those four years would be slightly negative (very negative in '70, very positive in '71, mildly negative in each of '72 and '73). Let's assume for purpose of calculating career LevERA+ that his Clutch factor was precisely zero for his first years. That leaves Bert with the -3.88 Clutch factor he accumulated from '74 to the end of his career. That translates to 37.12 more runs and 33.48 more earned runs over his career, making Bert's career LevERA+ 115.9.

Here are the top 25 LevERA+'s among pitchers with 2000 or more innings pitched since 1952:

Guidry, Appier, Tudor, Palmer and Santana had the largest increases over ERA+. Maddux and Brown had the largest decreases.

There were three pitchers who ranked in the top 15 in ERA+ but not in LevERA+: Schilling, Smoltz and Mussina. Schilling had the largest drop (127 ERA+, 122.1 LevERA+). Smoltz dropped from a 125 ERA+ to 122.4 LevERA+. Mussina dropped from a 123 ERA+ to a 122.4 LevERA+.

In evaluating levels of run support provided to pitchers, increasing attention has been focused on run distribution and the potential that an adverse run distribution can make a pitcher's run support look better than it really was. A pitcher whose run support as measured by average runs/game scored by his team in his starts may have really received relatively poor run support because he received a very large number of runs in a small number of games, or had a concentration of games at the both the low-end and high-end of the spectrum. Although these kinds of adverse run distribution situations can (and do) occur within seasons, it is very unlikely that the phenomenon could persist over a lengthy pitching career, and I've seen no data that suggests that any pitcher in fact suffered from adverse run distribution over the course of his career.

Very little attention has been paid, however, to the distribution of runs allowed by pitchers, despite the fact that certain pitchers have exhibited distinct tendencies to pitch differently in high-leverage and low-leverage situations. Unlike distribution of run support, adverse distribution of runs allowed is far more likely to persist over a career because of the potential that a given pitcher possesses the tendency to pitch better or worse in high-leverage situations (or pitch better or worse in low-leverage situations, or some combination of the two). LevERA+ is a measure of the impact of the distribution of runs allowed by a pitcher. It reveals that certain pitchers, like Bert Blyleven, contributed to their own mediocre W-L records by performing relatively poorly in critical situations, and it reveals that other pitchers, like Ron Guidry, produced spectacular W-L records not only because of superior run support but because of their superior performance in critical situations.

There are eleven pitchers since 1954 who won at least 50% of their starts. Here they are:

Pettitte, 49.8%
Seaver, 47.9%
Maddux, 47.9%
Morris, 47.6%
Schilling 47.2%
Gooden, 47.1%
Hunter, 46.6%
Carlton, 46.1%
Tiant, 45.2%
Glavine, 44.7%

UPDATE: As of May 1, 2010, here are the top 100 pitchers in terms of percentage of stars won since 1952 (clicking on the preceding link will take you to the spreadsheet at Google Docs):