Does Pitching Win Championships?
by Kirk Allen
August 28, 2000
Errors corrected September 7, 2000
We've all heard the old expression that pitching and defense win championships.
People say things all the time without any evidence, so I decided to look into this one.
Here are my methods.. First, I found every World Series matchup since 1903 up to 1998,
which is 93 seasons (no World Series in 1904 or 1994). I also found that there was a sort of
predecessor to the Series from 1884 to 1892 (except 1891). I included this data since I had it,
even though the best teams didn't always compete. This gave me 102 seasons total, which is a nice
size data set.
To evaluate the pitching and hitting prowess of each team, I compared their runs scored (RS)
and runs allowed (RA) to the league leader. I used RS since this is the bottom line for team
offense. I chose RA because it takes into account bad defense (un-earned runs), whereas ERA only
includes pitching and good defense.
I compared the teams to the league leader in each category by dividing that team's RS or RA
by the leader's RS or RA. For example, the 1997 Marlins scored 740 runs (leader 923) and
allowed 669 runs (leader 581). This gives them "scores" of 80.17% (740/923) for offense and 115.15% (669/581)
for pitching and defense. The leader in each category has a score of 100%. Scores close to 100% are best then.
The further from 100% (lower on RS, higher on RA), the worse the team is in that category.
Now for the results.. Over the course of 102 championship seasons, I found that teams had an
average of score of 95.62% on RS and 104.22% on RA. So, World Series winning teams are, on average,
4.38% worse hitters and 4.22% worse pitchers than the league leaders in each category. Basically,
the champions are equally good at hitting and pitching, only a slight edge to pitching.
I also found it interesting to note the number of champions who led the league in either
category. This broke down to 48 leading in RS and 49 in RA, with 22 teams leading in both --
more evidence that hitting and pitching are equal.
I know what you're thinking.. "Yeah, but pitching DOES win in October." So, I figured I better
look at the numbers for the World Series losers. I found that the losers had average scores of
95.88% on hitting and 104.90% on pitching. Losers actually have better scores in hitting and
worse scores in pitching. This would seem to indicate that teams with better pitching win in
October. Is this slight edge in pitching really responsible? Or is it just the product of some
other factor?
Next I investigated the individual matchups by looking at the "scores" for each winner and loser.
Since a score close to 100 is best, I subtracted winner RS from loser RS and loser RA from winner RA.
This makes it so that a positive number is preferred because of the different directions that RS
and RA move (remember, higher is better for RS and lower is better for RA).
I found that 12 World Series winners were better at both hitting and pitching (both subtracted
scores were positive), and 9 winners were actually worse at both. Now, there were 43 winners who
were better at pitching but worse at hitting; there were 37 teams better at hitting but worse at
pitching. (Note: 1942 both teams led the league in both categories, so I ignored this.)
Finally, this is a little evidence that maybe pitching is more important once you reach
the World Series. But is it enough to support the claim that "Pitching wins championships"? In my
opinion, not quite. I calculated that on average, winners had 0.26% worse hitters and 0.68% better
pitchers than the losers. Over the course of a season, World Series teams score about 800 runs historically.
The net difference of 0.94% (0.68 - (-0.26)) is only about 8 runs per year. This can easily be a fluke and
is hardly enough evidence to support the claim of pitching being more important.
My conclusion.. Bad teams don't make it to the World Series. It's rarely a fluke (1987 Twins
not withstanding). These teams are here because they are either really good at either pitching or hitting,
or they are just pretty good at both. It's really hard to even say that the better team wins significantly more often, as evidenced
by the 12 vs. 9 fact mentioned earlier (paragraph before last). Another interesting fact is that
winners have on average a Pythagorean winning percentage of only 0.8% better than the losers. This
means they are only about one game better. Forty-seven times the loser had the better Pythagorean,
and 55 times it belonged to the winner.. So, just throw everything out the
window and pick whichever team you like better. I don't see any strong trend resulting
from this information I have gathered..
What do you think of my work? I'd be interested to hear some comments.. One thing I'd like to
incorporate is some info on park effects, at least qualitatively. Basically I want to do this because
the Yankees and Cardinals have won so many and the Dodgers have lost so many. If any of these
ballparks have exagerrated effects, it would skew the results.
Park Effects Update
updated September 6, 2000
Now, all I did was grab the park effect numbers for every winner and loser and take the
average. It turned out that the batting park factor (BPF) was 1.0030 for champs and 1.0104 for
losers. The pitching park factors (PPF) were 0.9782 and 0.9917, respectively. I averaged
BPF and PPF for each team to get 0.9906 for winners and 1.0011 for losers. So, winners come from parks where offense is supressed
by about 1%, and losers come from basically neutral parks. Given this fact, you would expect the
winners to have slightly better pitching stats, which they do.
As for the effects of specific teams, I checked out the Yankees (24 wins, 12 losses through 1998), Dodgers,
and Cardinals in detail. Yankee Stadium only played as a hitters park 5 times (2 in winning years, 3 in losing years)
out of the 36 times the Yankees have been in the World Series. So, this will definately bring
the winners' numbers down towards being pitchers parks on average, more than it affects the losers'
since the Yankees have 12 more wins than losses.
For the Dodgers, you have to break it down between LA and Brooklyn. LA has 5 wins and 4 losses,
so again it basically cancels out. However, Brooklyn has only 1 win to go with 8 losses. Ebbets Field
played as a hitter's park in 7 of those 8 losing seasons and also in the winning season. This will
make the losers' stats more inflated towards hitters somewhat.
The Cards also have to be broken down between Busch Stadium (since 1966) and Sportsman's Park.
They've won 2 and lost 3 at Busch, so it's another wash. However, Sportsman's has 7 wins to only
3 losses. Better check into this one. In winning years, the average park factor was 1.040, while
in losing years it was 1.017.
So, we have found that winners play on average in slightly better pitching parks than the losers.
But, the biggest winner is from a pitchers' park and the biggest loser is from a hitters' park.
The 2nd biggest winner is also from a hitters' park, which basically offsets the Dodger effects.
This could push the overall results slightly towards pitching. Since this matches the
obtained results that pitching is possibly only slightly more important, it's likely that the
slight edge towards pitching only results from the park effects of Yankee Stadium.
So.. all that and now we're back where we started.. No evidence to support the claim that
"Pitching wins championships."
To do a more exhaustive research, it would require adjusting the runs for every team in
every season and then calculating the winners' and losers' scores. Basically, this would take
forever, and the only way I can do it is if I find the data already adjusted for park factors.
I think a rough look at the primary contenders provides enough insight at this point.