Earned Winning Percentage

[timconnelly]

I'm just ripping off Lee big time here but as I was thinking about various ways of measuring pitching performance, I realized that his concept of neutral wins and neutral losses was probably about as good a method as we could conceive. However, rather than just leaving it at that, it seems to me that coming up with the neutral winning percentage completes the job. With one stat, we can look at a season and how well the pitcher pitched against the conditions of his park, his era, and league averages.

Since it equates closely to Earned Run Average but is more comprehensive because it takes league averages and park factors into consideration, it ties thing up nicer than any formula I've ever seen! Another really good thing about this method is that it crosses eras perfectly and it works just as well for both a season or a career!

[Xanadu Dragon]

You do know that Lee's a trained legal eagle, don't you. ;)

[timconnelly]

Using this system:

Lefty Grove .676
Walter Johnson .675
Greg Maddux .666
Roger Clemens .664
Kid Nichols .656
Cy Young .644
Grover Cleveland Alexander .644
Christy Mathewson .643
Whitey Ford .626
Tom Seaver .605
Satchel Paige .593
Ferguson Jenkins .571
Doc Gooden .555

[Xanadu Dragon]

Leads to some interesting debate - -

who would you rather have - - - - -

Grove or Johnson?
Maddux or Clemens?
Young or Alexander?

according to the stat, it's a push.

[sweaver]

Give me Lefty, but as you say it's basically a push.

Tim, is that the all-time leaders list, or some interesting players? In other words, how complete/comprehensive?

[timconnelly]

Originally posted by sweaver
Give me Lefty, but as you say it's basically a push.

Tim, is that the all-time leaders list, or some interesting players? In other words, how complete/comprehensive?

That's just a list of the pitchers who've been drafted in the survival competition some of the others are having on the board. The all time leader is Pedro Martinez! Pedro is in a league of his own. I hope he will be able to come back this season because I never fully appreciated what a fantastic pitcher he was until I looked at him more carefully. We've had perhaps the greatest pitcher in baseball history right under our noses and didn't notice!

Lee's the guy we should ask for a comprehensive list. I don't think it's possible to come up with one with the Sabermetric Encyclopedia. I could be wrong about that: it's a pretty amazing piece of software.

[nyy26wc]

I have spoken to Tim about this privately and will now make a public announcement about what I've decided to do.

Since I already have neutral wins and neutral losses in the encyclopedia, we've decided to call this stat neutral percentage.

Neutral wins and neutral losses are computed by determining the pitcher's projected PCT, as if he had an average amount of run support, and then mulitiplying that figure by his number of decisions (W+L) and rounding off the wins and losses to get whole numbers.

So, it makes far more sense to just use that projected PCT for this stat, rather than taking the rounded off W & L and figuring out a winnning percentage based upon that.

As an example of what happens with the rounding off of the W & L, Roger Clemens's 2001 neutral percentage would be anywhere in about a 45 point range, depending on what the actual neutral wins and losses were, before the figures were rounded off.

This stat will be in the next edition of the encyclopedia.

Some time in the next week, I'm going to tinker with the database to change the neutral wins and losses to their non rounded off numbers and then change the encyclopedia's code to get the neutral percentage stat displayed, have it included as a sortable stat and have everyone's top 10 annual rankings added to that area.

I've already told Tim that I'll send him a revised copy of the encyclopedia, so he'd be able to take advantage of that feature, rather than wait until the next edition comes out.

I'll also extend that offer to anyone else at the forum. If any of you have already purchased the encyclopedia and now you also want immediate access to that stat, I'll also send you the new copy. Meanwhile, for those at the forum who don't already have a copy, but order one and want the edition with neutral percentage in it, let me know and I'll send you that version.

[SmedIndy]

Lee, you sure don't sound like a lawyer! What a nice gesture!