[net.sport.baseball] pitchers as MVP's

borodkin@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA (09/16/85)

   One good thing about letting pitchers win the MVP award is that
future generations can see what the conventional wisdom of the time
thought to be important.  Specifically, the MVP's of the fifties
and sixties were mostly good hitters playing an important defensive
position (i.e. shortstop, catcher, second base, center field).  Then
in the seventies the big RBI men dominated (epitome was Don Baylor).
Now we have relief pitchers being touted and winning MVP.  Thus we
can see how "clutch hitting" dominated seventies' baseball wisdom,
as relief pitching does today.

   Personally I think that in general, position players ARE more
valuable than pitchers of all sorts.  I also think that today's
emphasis on relief aces will be seen to have been overdone.

					Stephen L. Borodkin

        USENET:	...!{pur-ee,ihnp4}!uiucdcs!borodkin
        CSNET:	borodkin%uiuc@csnet-relay.arpa
        ARPA:	borodkin@uiuc.arpa

franka@mmintl.UUCP (Frank Adams) (09/21/85)

In article <15800017@uiucdcsb> borodkin@uiucdcsb.Uiuc.ARPA writes:
>   One good thing about letting pitchers win the MVP award is that
>future generations can see what the conventional wisdom of the time
>thought to be important.  Specifically, the MVP's of the fifties
>and sixties were mostly good hitters playing an important defensive
>position (i.e. shortstop, catcher, second base, center field).  Then
>in the seventies the big RBI men dominated (epitome was Don Baylor).
>Now we have relief pitchers being touted and winning MVP.  Thus we
>can see how "clutch hitting" dominated seventies' baseball wisdom,
>as relief pitching does today.

Personally, I think the fifties and sixties had it about right, except
that I would give more weight to starting pitchers.

>   Personally I think that in general, position players ARE more
>valuable than pitchers of all sorts.  I also think that today's
>emphasis on relief aces will be seen to have been overdone.

The question is, how many games do you win with a great player than
with a mediocre one?  For a starting pitcher, I think it's about 15
(24-5 with the other ten starts split 5-5, vs 5-16 with the other starts
splitting 9-9).  For hitters it's harder to estimate, but I would guess
about 18 games for a really stellar performance (Joe Morgan 1975-76).

Now how about a relief pitcher who saves or wins 50 games?  How many of
those games would have been won anyhow?  My guess is that about 10 of
them would have been completed and won by the pitcher getting the win,
and about 25 would have been saved or won in the same way by mediocre
relievers.  That leaves 15 games where a mediocre reliever would have
given up the lead; probably 5 of these would have been won anyhow.
(Remember, in some of them the other team only manages to tie the game.)
This leaves the relief pitcher making a difference of about 10 games.
Nothing to sneeze at, but not really comparable to a starting ace or
a good position player.

As further evidence, note the correlation between division winners and
relief aces.  It's pretty weak.  Look who lost Bruce Sutter to free
agency, and who got him.

Frank Adams                           ihpn4!philabs!pwa-b!mmintl!franka
Multimate International    52 Oakland Ave North    E. Hartford, CT 06108