While perusing the halls of
Baseball-Reference.com for next Friday's
Whose Line Is It Anyway, I strolled through the career leaders for
most strikeouts per nine innings, with pitchers who have thrown a minimum of 1,000 innings. You know what the first thing was to grab my attention?
Dwight Gooden, "Dr. K," at number 67, with 7.3686 K/9. Sixty. Seventh. He doesn't even have the highest rate in that great rotation the Mets had in the second half of the 80's; that belongs to
"El Sid" Fernandez, who ranks twenty-first with 8.4038. Other pitchers I never, ever would have guessed to be ahead of Gooden include
Brett Myers (65th, 7.3972),
Ted Lilly (44th, 7.6577),
Matt Clement (38th, 7.7534), and
Bob Veale (32nd, 7.9579), but that last one is mostly just because I don't think I've ever heard of him.
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| Dr. 7.4 K/9 |
But those are Gooden's career numbers. His numbers just with the Mets must be better, right? Before his decline years, which started after he missed a year with a drug suspension, and before he got clean? Is cocaine technically a "performance enhancing" drug? Anyway, Dr. K's K/9 with the Mets, 1984-1994, is 7.4. Which is possibly more than 7.3686, but not by much. Or not at all, if B-R is employing any of that fancy "rounding" I've been hearing about. In fact, the only season that Doc was above 10 strikeouts per 9 was his rookie year of 1984, when he racked up 11.4.
I think the lesson here (and who knew you could learn life lessons from baseball stats?) is that sometimes reputation supersedes reality. People thought of Gooden as a strikeout pitcher, and I'm not saying he was
Billy Swift (3.4859 K/9), but he never lived up to the Dr. K title. So the lesson here is don't do drugs, kids. Or give up big home runs to
Mike Scioscia in a playoff game.
That's the lesson.
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Why did they always
take his picture right
after he threw up? |
A couple more quick things from the list. Because it takes 1,000 career innings to qualify, there aren't nearly as many relief pitchers as there are starters. Discounting
Kerry Wood (47% of his appearances through 2010 are starts), the only reliever in the top 10 is
Trevor Hoffman (5th, 9.3608 K/9), whom I haven't really considered a strikeout pitcher since around the time he broke
Robby Thompson's cheekbone in 1993. It's all the changeups. The other relievers in the top 25 are
Arthur Rhodes (11th, 8.7921),
Dan Plesac (13th, 8.7397),
Lee Smith (15th, 8.7324),
Eric Plunk (20th, 8.4526),
Tom Gordon (24th, 8.2315), and
Mariano Rivera (25th, 8.2004). Plesac and Plunk? Really? Those are names I did not expect to see. For reference, longtime closer
Roger McDowell is 599th with 4.4914.
Lastly, seventh on this list is
Oliver Perez, with 9.1160 strikeouts per 9 innings. That's seventh
all time. Oliver Perez. The same Oliver Perez who the Mets cut before this season started, feeling they were better off paying him $12,000,000 to
not pitch for them. Perez has a career ERA of 4.63 and WHIP of 1.482. Those numbers are what we, in the business, like to call "not good." So the lesson we learn from this list of names and numbers is this: strikeouts are exciting and impressive, but not a terribly accurate way to evaluate a pitcher's overall effectiveness. Lesson learned.
Interesting stuff about Gooden. He came about that Dr. K reputation for good reason. That 11.4 k/9 in 1984 was the highest in baseball history up to that time for pitchers who qualified for the ERA title. And he was only 19 years old. My son was 9 years old that year, and Gooden was his favorite player. I imagine Gooden gave him the same feeling I had at the same age for Sandy Koufax, that I couldn't believe I was living to see this person who was as good as the all-time greats.
ReplyDeleteNo question that 11.4 is crazy, or that he was absolutely dominant those first couple of years. At 19 and 20. I was just totally surprised to see him so low on that list. And almost equally surprised to see Eric Plunk so high.
ReplyDeleteWalter Johnson at #382 was also surprising, but that was more about the era in which he played than his ability. Which makes Koufax even more amazing when you compare him to his peers.
Lincecum would be 4th on this list if he had 1,000 innings.