Pedro and WAR/9

by ror0071619 on May 1, 2011 8:45 PM EDT

With news of my favorite pitcher Pedro Martinez on his way to retirement I decided to take a look (again) at his career stats on Fangraphs. When looking at the leader boards for pitcher WAR for a single season I noticed Pedro's top seasons were all surrounded by seasons where other pitchers had significantly more innings pitched than Pedro. That got me to wondering about fWAR/9 IP. (I had also recently been thinking about fWAR/PA but haven't gotten around to looking at that yet.)

What I did was export all qualified pitchers (I did starters and relievers separately) split season and career spreadsheets from Fangraphs to excel. Unfortunately fWAR for pitchers only dates back to 1980 so this isn't an all encompassing study. Then I did this little calculation WAR/(IP/9) and sorted it by largest to smallest. Granted this isn't a perfect stat by any means but just something I was curious about. I also did this very quickly so any suggestions/advice is welcome. Here's some things that I found:

Pedro has the best single season WAR/9 for both SP and RP and the best career WAR/9 for SP (#2,3, or 4 overall (depending on your cutoff but more on that later)).
Pedro has the #1, #2, #5, #7 and #18 spots on the single season list for SP. Pedro had a WAR/9 of .51 in 1999, the best ever. Second best for a SP is Pedro's 2000 at .42. Pedro's 2005 with the Mets ranks 146th best for a SP.
The only other SPs in the top 10 for single season were Randy Johnson (#3 for 1995, #4 for 2001, #9 for 2004), Roger Clemens (#6 for 1997), Zack Greinke (#8 for 2009), and Doc Gooden (WAR/9 of .36, #10 for 1984)
In the top 10 WAR/9 for single season RPs, there were no repeats and no Mariano Rivera.
Gagne holds the #1 spot for 2003 with a WAR/9 of .49. Billy Wagner holds #2 spot for 1999 with a .44. Mariano doesn't show up until #11 for his 2008 with a WAR/9 of .40. Hoffman makes his first appearance at #21 for 1998 with a .37.
Pedro has the best career WAR/9 for SP with .28. The top 3 career WAR/9 for RP are .3068, .3067, and .2970. #1 is John Smoltz (reliever IP only), Jonathan Papelbon, and Mariano Rivera. Smoltz ranks #12 for SP IP only with .21. So depending on where you want to put your IP cutoff Pedro could be only #2 behind Mariano for best all time or he could be #4.
Pedro's 1999 really was insane. Compiling over a half win per nine innings is godly.
While I haven't done this for players prior to 1980, I would guess that Pedro would hold onto his claim for the top 2 single seasons marks and might drop a spot or two in career rankings especially considering how much value older pitchers gain from the sheer # of innings they used to pitch.
Pedro is awesome. So was Randy Johnson.

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Great work.

So the Mets got the bitter dregs of Pedro’s career. And he almost singlehandedly sank the team in 2008.

Oh.

Omar strikes again.

by Brian Singer on May 1, 2011 9:29 PM EDT reply actions

yeah he was a all time fav of mine, but that '08 season left a bad taste in my mouth

by graves9 on May 2, 2011 1:20 AM EDT reply actions

I dont blame him too much for '08.

Don’t get me wrong, he was pretty miserable in ‘08 but I blame it on injuries obviously but also I think that the death of his father had a lot to do with it. Obviously there’s no way we can know how it affected him but I think for a pitcher who relied on his pitching IQ and his mental make up as a Met rather than his stuff, it had a pretty decent effect.

by ror0071619 on May 5, 2011 9:39 PM EDT up reply actions

Top 10 Career WAR/9IP (min. 2,000 IP) Since 1920, Using b-ref's WAR

1. Pedro Martinez .242
2. Roger Clemens .235
3. Lefty Grove .225
4. Roy Halladay .216
5. Sandy Koufax .211
6. Randy Johnson .200
7. Roy Oswalt .199
8. Bob Gibson .1983
9. Tom Seaver .1981
10. Curt Schilling .1924

by birtelcom on May 3, 2011 9:30 AM EDT reply actions

One of the problems with this list is that pre-1969 mound heights around the game were different heights, with Koufax and other pitching off of a mound 15 inches higher than others.

Take away the roid aided players (and their bat throwing rage) and the pre-1969 pitchers and Pedro is otherworldly. He and Maddux are probably the best pitchers since 1969.

_______________________________________________
$100 to CARE per No-No and $1 per David Wright Homer.

by ScottfromPeekskill on May 3, 2011 10:46 AM EDT up reply actions

WAR adjusts for home park effects and for changes in run scoring levels across historical eras,

so the mound height issue, like all the variations in home park and league run-scoring effects that influence baseball stats over history, should wash out to a significant extent. I think an argument can actually be made that Koufax/Gibson/Seaver are really at a disadvantage in this sort of study, compared to pitchers from the PEDs era such as Pedro and Clemens, because the very low run scoring across the majors in the 1960s may have created a lower limit to how low even the greatest pitcher could reduce run scoring compared to average, a problem that pitchers in the late-90s, early-2000s did not have. I know there have been some studies of this issue that have not found such an effect, but my intuition suggests that there may still be some effect of this type that has yet to be found.

by birtelcom on May 3, 2011 1:23 PM EDT up reply actions