While I agree with your assessment, it's not like we had some scrub on the mound. So I'd say last night is a good example of if you don't score a run, you're not gonna win.
Holy crap, people, do we have to cover this every freaking season? The damn chicken comes first. All right? The damn chicken comes first, then he lays the ******* egg. All you egg fans, I'm sorry. But hey, you get omelettes. And breakfast tacos. So can we just move on, now?
Not many teams win with good pitching, good defense, and no offense. Looking at the last few WS winners one will see that offense has played a significant role in winning. National League teams might get to the WS with just pitching and defense, but if that's all they have they aren't going to win it all. Your good pitching might slow their offense, but their average or above average pitching will shut down your crappy offense.
Largely true...I've just never seen a team with bad pitching even make it to the playoffs. You can get by on a weak offense with good pitching...see the Astros in 05...see the D-Backs last season (who finished 14th in runs scored in the NL and 16th in batting average, yet won their division)...see the 88 Dodgers (they always come to mind in this regard). I'm unaware of any team that won with the inverse of that. Just great hitters with pitching and defense at the bottom of the league. And...remember that the 05 Astros lost in the WS because their pitching did not perform as expected...their offense was right on pace with what it had been. In fact, they had 3 games in that series where they scored 5, 6, and 7 runs. They never scored more than 5 runs in any of the 6 NLCS games preceding it...and they only scored 5 once. So it seems to me if you're going to err, you err towards pitching. So I think it's fair to say not many teams win merely with great pitching and defense....but I'm unaware of any that win without it. That finish in the bottom of the league in runs allowed, and still win.
You are correct. I don't think it's smart to build all offense, but all pitching won't cut it either. If you don't have a good offense in today's game it's unlikely, but not impossible, that you are going to win the WS.
I thought we covered this in the last thread. The Phillies made the playoffs last season with the 13th best ERA in the National League. One spot worse than the Astros. They had the best offense in the NL. The Padres had the best ERA in baseball, and missed the playoffs. I'd love to land a great starting pitcher, but who? The farm system is destitute these days, nobody's going to trade us a #1 or #2 starter for what we have to offer in prospects. So in the meantime, I'll root for the team we've got.
The Yankees won the division in 04 with the 6th best pitching in the AL and in 05 with the 9th best pitching in the AL. In 2004 their pitching was worse than the Texas Rangers and they won the division.
I didn't catch that in the other thread...thanks for that! I didn't realize the Phils ERA was that poor. I'm with you 100%...there's no one to get. The 'stros are my team, come hell or high water.
This is an incomplete analysis, though, because it doesn't allow for park effects. When corrected, the Pads drop to #4 in the NL - still good obviously, but it doesn't quite have the ring of 'best ERA in baseball'. Likewise, when you correct the Phillies team ERA for the bandbox they play in, their ERA jumps 4 spots, better than Houston by a fair margin. Still not great, but closer to marginal than the raw numbers, which say the Phils were turrible. Source - Team ERA+)
Fair point. I think the real truth is that you can make the playoffs if you are extremely good at either hitting or pitching, but no matter how good you are at one you are unlikely to advance far, and even more unlikely to win the WS if you aren't at least above average in both. This does not account for luck.
Exactly. I went back & looked at the AL over the past 10 years; of the 20 ALCS participants, 3 finished 5th in the AL in ERA+, the other 17 were in the top-4. 10 were in the top-2. No ALCS winner had a league ERA+ worse than 4th (2 teams). Haven't looked at the NL, but I'd imagine the same holds true (minus a couple of "flukey" teams that got hot at the right time...Cards in '06 & Marlins 2nd WS come to mind).
But that's also incomplete analysis because it doesn't account for a difference between teams with 2 good starters and three average ones and 5 average ones. Further, I'd like to see a breakdown of teams that reached the WS and what their RPG was like during the playoffs, etc. Anyway, the point remains you need both (normally) to win.
I'd be interested in seeing a NL evaluation of this statistic. I don't think you can base your evaluation on the AL for two reasons - the Yankees and the Red Sox. They both make the playoffs virtually every season, accounting for half the playoff spots. They also both generally have top-5 offenses and top-5 pitching, over the course of the last decade. That's what 200 mil payrolls get you. So they're both good offensive and pitching/defense teams, making the pitching v. offense discussion nullified with respect to those two. I suspect that the NL evaluation will be different.
I'll check when I get a minute. Your point about NY/Bos is a good one (they accounted for half of the 20 ALCS teams), I picked the AL because it's thought of as the "monster offenses" league. But you don't win over there without pitching either.
15 of the 20 NLCS participants were in the top-4 in ERA+. 2 were 5th. The outliers were: STL in '06 (t-10th in ERA+, 9th in R/G allowed, but their offense was a mediocre 8th in OPS+ & 6th in R/G scored, so it's not like their hitting carried the team); Marlins in '03 (8th in ERA, 7th in R/G; t-5th in OPS, 8th in R/G); and the ******* mets in '99 (6th in ERA, 5th in R/G, t-1 in OPS, 5th in R/G). 2 of those won the WS, 1 lost in the LCS. This is certainly unscientific & superficial analysis, but I'm not seeing any sort of track record of teams with very good offenses & mediocre pitching having a whole lot of success. You need balance, but if you have to pick one or the other, take pitching.
Well for example, a team might have 5 pitchers slightly above 100 in ERA+ and then a bullpen full of average guys with a bunch of league average guys in the minors to fill in for injuries. They'd probably rank pretty high in total pitching at the end of the year (the 04 Yankees for example), but their pitching was in actuality subpar and was exposed in the playoffs when they pitched against good offensive teams. The flipside is a team like the Red Sox who had two REALLY good pitchers and then some subpar pitchers. The average stats of the teams might be similar, but there's no question that one team is built better for the playoffs. I'm not sure if I've worded that appropriately, but my point is that where a team ranks in terms of overall pitching doesn't really tell how good that team's pitching is.
