Leveraging Across the Eras (SP Lev., Part 8)
Welcome back to this series of articles on starting pitcher leverage. Normally here’s the part where I cut and paste the same opening paragraph I’ve been using for a while to explain what I’m doing. But this is article #8. I don’t have that many new readers. For those that are new, read the beginning of any of these articles. For the math behind it, just scroll to the bottom of this article.
The Question
To date, I’ve generally looked at the starting pitcher leverage era, which lasted from the earliest days of baseball until the 1960s, as one big monolithic block. Oh sure, I might make a passing mention to the fact that leveraging had its ups and downs within that nearly century long period, but I’ve never seriously looked at when leveraging peaked or when it reached its low ebb in those years. I’m going to fill that gap by finding out the whens (and hopefully whys) of the rises and falls of leveraging.
Fortunately, figuring this out is mercifully easy. The last article introduced the notion of LPA—Leverage Points Average, a very simple concept. The further a pitcher’s AOWP+ is from 100, the more Leverage Points it’s worth. Figure it out for all the pitchers with at least 20 starts in a season, and that’s the LPA for that year. (The bottom of the page has the exact formula for LPA and AOWP+). I’ve already figured out AOWP+ for a slewload of guys, so this should be pretty easy.
The Peak of Leveraging
Before giving the highest single-season LPAs of all time, please remember this isn’t based on a full sample size but “only”182,000 starts, including two-thirds of all GS from 1876 to 1969. Also, I’m tossing out the years 1871-5 and 1884 because the leagues from those seasons were so poorly organized that their AOWP+s are tainted.
Qualifications aside, here’s the highest single-season LPAs, including the number of pitchers with at least 20 GS AOWPd from that year:
Year #SP LPA 1. 1954 46 7.17 2. 1908 40 5.73 3. 1939 47 5.60 4. 1953 43 5.58 5. 1942 41 5.51 6. 1880 10 5.50 7. 1910 40 5.48 8. 1879 7 5.43 9. 1955 49 5.39 10. 1909 40 5.30 11. 1946 42 5.10 12. 1890 47 5.09 13. 1919 43 4.98 14. 1886 33 4.88 15. 1889 41 4.88 16. 1907 50 4.86 17. 1936 42 4.76 18. 1937 50 4.70 19. 1949 49 4.49 20. 1887 35 4.43
First, there are some patterns there. This list represents every decade from the 1880s to 1950s except the 1920s. Interesting. Some eras really dominate. Four straight years from 1907-10 make the list, as do three straight from 1953-5. Meanwhile, three out of four seasons make it from both 1936-9 and 1886-90. Lastly, in the early days of 1879-80 also make it. I’m not sure if that part means anything because their sample size is so small that one AOWP+ can make an important impact, and both of those 1879 and 1880 had one of the lowest single-season AOWP+s of all time.
Second, 1954 blows the competition away. They had 15 pitchers with an AOWP+ of either 106 or higher, or 94 or lower.
Name AOWP+ Whitey Ford 112 Eddie Lopat 109 Murray Dickson 109 Billy Pierce 108 Early Wynn 108 Johnny Klippstein 107 Mickey McDermott 107 Vic Raschi 107 Billy Hoeft 106 Frank Sullivan 106 Gene Conley 106 Bob Porterfield 94 Mike Garcia 94 Paul Minner 94 Harry Byrd 92
For perspective, in the last 40 years I have zero AOWP+s higher than 105, and only Andy Pettitte’s 2002 had a 94. I don’t entirely know why it’s that much greater than any other season. I imagine it’s a combination of flukerifical aligning of the stars in conjuncture with the fact that the early-to-mid 1950s were a golden age for leveraging.
Looking at five year blocks is another way to get a sense of the ups and downs of leveraging would. It also has the advantage of smoothing out any oddities like 1958’s insanely high score. When looking at five year chunks, however, it turns out the 1950s really were the all-time peak for leveraging. The best five-year stretch was from 1952-6, with 1951-5 right after it. That’s surprising. I would have guessed the Deadball era would have topped all else. It was easier to rejigger the rotation back then than any other time because pitchers could take it easier more often. The three highest single-season AOWP+s of all-time happened then. Plus, you had more extreme differences in team winning percentages then, which should make AOWP+s more extreme.
So why the 1950s? My hunch is that Casey Stengel caused it. Last article showed that Stengel was an all-time great leverager. And he won titles every damn year. I’m sure others aped him. Frankly, that’s all I can imagine. It also means that leveraging died out completely barely a decade after its golden era. Amazing.
The Deadball era, especially 1907-12, was leveraging’s silver era. Aside from reasons already given, that was the start of the 154 game schedule. (Yes, I know there were two non-consecutive 154 game schedules in the nineteenth century. This was when it stuck, though). Facing opposing teams 8-10 series a year gave teams more opportunities for leveraging.
Fighting for the bronze it’s essentially a toss up between the late 1880s and late 1930s. In 1886, both the NL and Double-A expanded their schedules. The increased number of series against rivals led to higher AOWP+s. It dropped down when baseball became one 12-team league in the 1890s. You didn’t see opposing teams as often, causing, the late 1880s to be the 19th century peak. Platoon leveraging, a central component to leveraging, reached a crest in the late 1930s, causing the other bump in AOWP+.
Leveraging Lulls
I already know when leveraging bottomed out: 1966-present. 1965 had an LPA of 2.66. Next year it fell to 1.64. It’s been like that ever since. There’s no real leveraging in any of those years. Lows are mostly random happenstance caused by the much smaller percentage of games AOWPd, and happenstance. I’d rather look at leveraging’s years when leveraging was dormant, not dead. In that spirit here are the lowest L#s from 1876-1966. For perspective, I’ll toss in the last 40 years’ cumulative LPA:
Year #SP LPA 1. 1958 47 1.40 2. 1923 46 1.65 3. 1900 29 1.76 4. 1944 40 1.78 1966-2005 1285 1.80 5. 1959 49 1.94 6. 1914 64 2.30 7. 1943 41 2.37 8. 1918 37 2.38 9. 1922 48 2.46 10. 1926 50 2.62 11. 1965 65 2.66 12. 1917 51 2.67 13. 1902 46 2.67 14. 1896 26 2.69 15. 1963 63 2.71 16. 1898 34 2.74 17. 1945 35 2.74 18. 1940 45 2.76 19. 1920 56 2.79 20. 1928 51 2.92
Again, some eras dominate. There are several years from around the turn of the century, a slew around 1920, three straight in WWII, and several from final eligible years including 1965. The real story might be that damn near every single season scored higher than modern standards. With rare exceptions, it’s never even close.
Most amazingly, just four years after the greatest season ever for leveraging, you have the worst season until the complete end of leveraging. Here’s a comparison of the AOWP+s for individual pitchers from those years:
1954 AOWP+ 1958 15 106+/94- 0 4 105/95 1 6 104/96 1 5 103/97 4 4 102/98 3 8 101/99 21 4 100 17
The top row refers to AOWP+s of 106 or higher, and 94 or lower. It looks like leveraging died in four years. But I’ll be damned, it came back in 1960-2, fell down in 1963, revived in 1964, before declining again in 1965, then falling completely. Leveraging’s death throes was not a neat, orderly process, but 1958 was the beginning of the end. The reasons for its death frankly deserve an article for themselves (and that’ll come later on in this series). The most important fact lies with the rise of a new pitching philosophy: standardized roles.
Baseball for about a century managers fluidly used their starting pitchers. Rather than lock themselves into a fixed ABCDABCD rotation, they constantly reworked their rotation, even when everyone was healthy and effective. Also, virtually all pitchers were swingmen. As late as the 1960 AL, all pitchers with at least 20 starts had at least 1 relief appearance. That was common back then. Now 75% have zero relief appearances.
Around 1960, baseball teams began locking their pitchers into a fixed ABCDABCD rotation and making a sharper distinction between starters and relievers. Fluidity gave way to rigidity. Leveraging depended on that lost fluidity and hence its decline came as a result of this change forty years ago.
Breaking it into five year bunches, each five-year period from 1962-1966 scores lower than every five-year period before it. No exceptions. Making the break even more impressive, in the last 40 years, the two highest periods are 1962-6 and 1963-7. Well yeah, that’s the transference period.
The next lowest five-year periods are 1920-4, 1922-6, and 1921-5. Clearly the leveraging didn’t roar in the 1920s. The key lay in platoon leveraging. As previous articles showed, platoon leveraging was a key component in overall leveraging. Well, the 1920s were the heydey of offensive leveraging. That would lead to a decline in pitcher platooning, which would hurt pitching leveraging altogether. Makes sense.
The Course of Leveraging
Looking back, you can see a sensible rise and fall emerge. Leveraging became big with the expanded schedules in the 1880s. It declined in the 1890s, as teams didn’t face each other as often in the 12-team NL. It picked up again rising to new heights in the Deadball era with the creation of the 154 schedules in eight-team leagues. It began to decline as offensive platooning caught on later in the century, falling to new lows in the 1920s. The decline in that offensive philosophy reignited pitcher leveraging in the 1930s, remaining fairly strong for decades. It came to a whole new prominence when Casey Stengel widely used this strategy while guiding the Yankees to five successive titles. Finally, in a back-and-forth, decade-long process standardization slayed leveraging. It has never risen from the grave.
But why take my word for it? I got the numbers, and there’s no fun in sitting on them. Here’s the number of AOWP+d pitchers for every year, and the LPA for each season from 1871-2005. Next article I’ll look at franchises and leveraging.
Year #SP LPA 1871 1 0 1872 3 1.33 1873 3 4.33 1874 4 0.25 1875 5 22.6 1876 5 2.2 1877 2 4 1878 3 3.33 1879 7 5.43 1880 10 5.5 1881 10 1.9 1882 16 2.13 1883 22 2.73 1884 28 5.46 1885 26 2.46 1886 33 4.88 1887 35 4.43 1888 35 3.46 1889 41 4.88 1890 47 5.09 1891 40 4.1 1892 36 3.08 1893 33 3.42 1894 29 4.34 1895 28 3.21 1896 26 2.69 1897 26 3.54 1898 34 2.74 1899 39 4.15 1900 29 1.76 1901 47 3.04 1902 46 2.67 1903 44 3.73 1904 50 3.62 1905 54 3.69 1906 56 3.73 1907 50 4.86 1908 40 5.73 1909 40 5.3 1910 40 5.48 1911 42 3.83 1912 42 4.38 1913 41 3.12 1914 64 2.3 1915 63 3.7 1916 48 3.48 1917 51 2.67 1918 37 2.38 1919 43 4.98 1920 56 2.79 1921 45 2.93 1922 48 2.46 1923 46 1.65 1924 45 3.44 1925 53 3.21 1926 50 2.62 1927 52 3.08 1928 51 2.92 1929 53 3.68 1930 53 4.06 1931 50 3.52 1932 56 3.55 1933 48 3.13 1934 46 3.93 1935 46 4.09 1936 42 4.76 1937 50 4.7 1938 46 4.22 1939 47 5.6 1940 45 3.18 1941 44 3.95 1942 41 5.51 1943 41 2.37 1944 40 1.78 1945 35 2.74 1946 42 5.1 1947 46 3.65 1948 51 4.41 1949 49 4.49 1950 48 4.4 1951 42 3.74 1952 45 4.02 1953 43 5.58 1954 46 7.17 1955 49 5.39 1956 45 3.84 1957 48 3.46 1958 47 1.4 1959 49 1.94 1960 51 3.67 1961 53 3.72 1962 58 3.12 1963 63 2.71 1964 58 3 1965 65 2.66 1966 64 1.64 1967 61 1.59 1968 64 1.22 1969 57 1.98 1970 54 2.63 1971 48 1.75 1972 41 2.56 1973 40 1.48 1974 35 1.31 1975 32 2.16 1976 31 1.58 1977 27 2.15 1978 30 1.6 1979 29 1.76 1980 30 1.63 1981 28 2.79 1982 32 2.41 1983 31 1.68 1984 31 0.87 1985 29 2.24 1986 36 1 1987 37 1.7 1988 32 1.41 1989 33 1.52 1990 32 1.47 1991 30 1.63 1992 33 1.85 1993 35 2 1994 25 2.2 1995 25 2.4 1996 25 1.48 1997 23 0.91 1998 23 2 1999 23 2.04 2000 16 1.81 2001 13 1.46 2002 15 3.27 2003 13 2.46 2004 11 1.82 2005 11 1.82
References & Resources
What the heck is AOWP+?: The stat I invented to judge pitcher leveraging. It’s AOWP/TOWP*100. AOWP is Average Opponent Winning Percentage. TOWP is Team’s (Average) Opponent Winning Percentage. To figure AOWP for a single season, you take the number of starts a given pitcher had against each opposing team, and multiply that by the team’s winning percentage. After doing this for all rival squads, add up the products and divide by the pitcher’s total GS. The result is his AOWP. The same logic applies to TOWP, only here you look at how many games the team played against all rivals. If a pitcher’s used evenly, his AOWP will be the same as the TOWP, and he’ll have an AOWP+ of 100. If he’s used more against better teams, he’ll have a higher AOWP+. I calculated AOWP+ for 659 pitchers who started 182,000 games, including over two-thirds of all games from 1876-1969.
What the heck is LPA? Leverage Points Added tells you how common leveraging was in a given subset. For example, when looking at how common leveraging was in a given year, you figure award a certain number of points to every AOWP+. An AOWP+ of 100 is worth 0 points. 99 & 101 are worth 1 point each. Then 102 & 98 are worth 3. Each successive integer AOWP+ moves away from 100 is worth an additional two points. So an AOWP+ of 110 or 90 is worth 19. LPA can show how common leveraging was for a year, for a manager, for a franchise, and various other subsets.