Jacob DeGrom has almost no shot at the HOF, discuss...

[BobC]

Originally Posted by nat

"That last one in some ways makes WAR pointless as it's typically figured.
If it was done based on comparing not to the league overall, but to other pitchers in a similar position - like only including first or first and second starters- it would probably be much lower."

People have looked into starter matchups, and have found that once you're more than a few weeks into the season, aces don't match up against aces with any regularity any more. (Nor 2nd starters with 2nd starters, etc.) Different teams have different days off, different pitchers get rested at different times, some teams have a rookie they want to see, so they slot him into the rotation for a couple weeks, and so on. Once any of those things happen, the aces don't match up with the aces any more. Once you're more than a few weeks into the season, who the opposing pitcher is, is mostly just random.

As for a recency bias in WAR for modern pitchers: totally not. Here's the all-time top 10 in pitching WAR (baseball-reference version):

Cy Young
Walter Johnson
Roger Clemens
Kid Nichols
Pete Alexander
Lefty Grove
Tom Seaver
Greg Maddox
Randy Johnson
Christy Matthewson

Give or take a player here or there, that's the list basically anyone will give you of the greatest pitchers of all time. By my estimation we've got players who peaked in the:

1890s
1910s
1990s
1890s
1920s
1930s
1970s
1990s
2000s
1910s

The next ten feature Tim Keefe, Eddie Plank, and John Clarkson, and Pud Galvin is 21st. The advantage that the old guys had is that they pitched tons of innings, and they're getting credit for all of those innings that they pitched. Basically, if a modern pitcher is pitching five innings, and an old guy was pitching nine, at the same rate of performance, the modern player is going to accumulate only 5/9ths the WAR. (Pitchers do, on average, pitch better in shorter stints, but as the list above indicates, not enough to make up for the lower workload.)

The reason that WAR allows cross-era comparisons is that it compares players to how well they performed against their contemporaries, and you can compare those comparisons against each other. For example, newly elected HOFer Jim Kaat's best season (1975) was worth 7.7 wins above replacement; this means that if you dropped him into an American League team in 1975, you could expect them to win about 8 games more than they would have had he not been on the team. This is a pretty good match for Tim Lincecum's 2008. What that means is that you should expect Kaat's pitching in 1975 to win as many games for a team as Lincecum's pitching would have won for a team in 2008.

That is, you're comparing Kaat against other pitchers in 1975, and Lincecum against other pitchers in 2008. You find that in their respective contexts they were each worth about 8 wins to a team. And looking at that, you can see that, in their respective contexts, they were about equally valuable.

It doesn't tell you what would happen if you put Kaat in a time machine and sent him to 2008. You really can't know that with any certainty, and that's the kind of "cross era comparison" that WAR can't (and doesn't try) to do. When people talk about modern players being so much better than the old guys, this is what they have in mind. In Honus Wagner's day players often didn't have proper nutrition, they certainly didn't have kinesiologists plotting out optimum workout routines, and medical care didn't compare. Wagner was probably as naturally talented as any modern player, but if you put an adult Wagner in a time machine and told him to suit up for the Pirates, he wouldn't be a superstar, just because he wouldn't have the advantages of modern training and nutrition. That's what people are talking about when they say the old guys weren't as good. But that's not very interesting - it's just a remark about how science and technology have advanced, it doesn't really tell you anything about baseball players. So it's really not a weakness of WAR that it doesn't allow THAT kind of cross era comparison. The kind it DOES allow - about how much a player meant to the league he played in - is important and interesting, from a baseball perspective.

It is all part of what makes the debate fun because you can only do so much with pure statistics, and it is literally impossible to effectively measure and account for all the variables that are out there. I've just seen how modern statistics for pitchers are based, or at least seem to be skewed, on today's starting pitchers not going for complete games anymore, and disregarding wins as an important statistic. Some of today's statisticians then claim that modern pitchers are all so much better than pitchers from earlier eras because today they're all bigger, stronger, and throw faster than pitchers ever used to. I've questioned though how these modern pitchers would fare if they had to pitch complete games like their predecessors, and how well they would hold up with the added stress, wear, and tear their bodies and arms would face pitching like the old-timers did. But statisticians can't really account for that in their formulas, nor do they have a way to give more credit to old-time pitchers for their wins that they were certainly way more responsible for by pitching complete games, than their modern counterparts who may only pitch 5-6 innings before turning it over to their bullpen and defense to get them the W.

If you hadn't seen the Greatest Lefthander of All Time thread from a couple months ago, go check it out and you'll see how some some statistical experts were blatantly saying how pitchers like Grove and Spahn would barely be just a little above average compared to today's pitchers. So their point was that WAR was not a good cross-era measure at all, and Spahn being the the all-time winning-est lefty in history, by a wide margin despite losing three prime years in the service, basically didn't mean anything. That is where I'm kind of coming from.

[Snapolit1]

"Almost no chance" seems a bit hyperbolic, perhaps Scott's attempt at riling up a few Mets fans. I'd agree it will be difficult and unorthodox. "Almost no chance" would be Jeurys Familia or Gary Sanchez.

[Seven]

Comparing across eras is noticeably harder for pitchers than hitters IMO because how much the game has changed (especially over the past 20 seasons) when it comes to the hyper specialization of pitchers nowadays.

Even as far as the 90s we were still really seeing pitchers go deep into games, not as much as the 80s or 70s, but the Complete Game leaders were still finishing in the teens.

To the argument where people say the pitchers from "x" years aren't as good as the ones now, I call BS. Yes if you grabbed Sandy Koufax from 1965 or Bob Feller from 1938 and stuck them into the game, right now, as they were back then, they wouldn't be as good. The game is entirely different, they didn't have any form of modern training, nutrition, hell most of them worked second jobs in the off-season. Give them access to all the things that the players have today and I don't see why they wouldn't be dominant.

Hyper Specilization for pitchers is one of my biggest gripes with the sport. But the more these guys get paid, the more they become an investment, and now with all the new aged analytics, and everyone throwing 100 MPH with insane breaking pitches, these guys arms are falling off their bodies. Tommy John is the norm now, and it's a damn shame. I also blame how we handle sports here, having kids play baseball year round is definitely one of the reasons we see so many injuries, but I feel I've gotten off topic, it's a different discussion, for a different day.

I think Degrom has Hall of Fame stuff, but lacks the proverbial peak of a HoF pitcher assuming his career ended today. Like I said he would need to have a few more dominant, healthy seasons, which is possible, but considering his overall track record is unlikely.

[Snapolit1]

I think Degrom has Hall of Fame stuff, but lacks the proverbial peak of a HoF pitcher assuming his career ended today. Like I said he would need to have a few more dominant, healthy seasons, which is possible, but considering his overall track record is unlikely.

I don't understand the comment. Putting aside 2020, he's had one year of injuries, last year. Before that (2015-19 as a regular starter) he was averaging about 30 starts a season. What are you getting at with "track record"?

Seems to be a narrative taking hold that he's struggled within injuries his whole career. Which isn't true. That would be Steven Matz.

He won 3 Cy Youngs in a row and was well on his way to a 4th last year when he came down with injuries. So any "track record" he has of being injured started last summer.

[BobC]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

I think Degrom has Hall of Fame stuff, but lacks the proverbial peak of a HoF pitcher assuming his career ended today. Like I said he would need to have a few more dominant, healthy seasons, which is possible, but considering his overall track record is unlikely.

I don't understand the comment. Putting aside 2020, he's had one year of injuries, last year. Before that (2015-19 as a regular starter) he was averaging about 30 starts a season. What are you getting at with "track record"?

Seems to be a narrative taking hold that he's struggled within injuries his whole career. Which isn't true. That would be Steven Matz.

He won 3 Cy Youngs in a row and was well on his way to a 4th last year when he came down with injuries. So any "track record" he has of being injured started last summer.

I don't know Steve, 3 Cy Young awards in a row sounds like a pretty good peak to me. But I get the point that if these injuries pretty much shut him down and reduce his effectiveness over the remainder of his career, it really hurts his chances. Almost like a reverse-Koufax situation. Just think how differently Koufax's legacy may have ended up being viewed had he switched and started the first 5 or 6 years of his career on fire, and then ended the last 5 or 6 years of it as not overpowering and very effective at all, just like he actually started his career.

Cory Kluber is another pitcher in recent years to have stellar seasons and win the CYA, but injuries and wear and tear to his body and pitching arm have made him mostly forgotten now as well. And when he finally had a chance to come back after a long injury layoff, his return didn't last for long, and he went right back out with injuries, and likely will never be what he once was as a pitcher. Same type of situation seems to be looming before DeGrom now. If DeGrom can rebound and get back to pitching at least near the level of where he was while winning those three CYAs, and stay there for at least a full season or two, that should really change his chances in a very positive way. We'll just have to wait and see how he does going forward.

[D. Bergin]

When did he win 3 Cy Youngs in a row?

[BobC]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

When did he win 3 Cy Youngs in a row?

i just took what Steve said and ran with it. I didn't look it up till now, but I think Steve was referring to the two Cy Youngs he did win back-to-back, and maybe that he was on pace to win a third in-a-row, had he not gone down with injuries. But you are correct, he's only a two-time CYA winner.