09/14/06
Pitching is for Losers

The age old baseball proverb is “pitching wins championships”. Actually, as is the case with many “sayings”, there are as many different version of the saying as there are versions of “Diddy”s name. “Pitching wins in the postseason”, “good pitching beats good hitting” and other such adages abound in the dreary repetition of commentators’ favorite phrases.
Like most such anecdotes, there is a grain of truth to the statement, but the rest of it just doesn’t make any sense. Let’s look at the three main versions of the statement.
“Pitching wins championships”. Umm, duh? What is the point behind this statement. It is reminiscent of “defense wins championships”, or “accurate quarterbacks win championships”, or “teamwork wins championships”. Is it even worth saying? You do three things in baseball, two of which are most important: hitting and pitching. Is it a big surprise that teams who win are usually proficient at, you know, an entire half of the game? Or, on the subject of Super Bowl teams, is it hard to believe that the best team in the league has a good defense, or an accurate quarterback, or team chemistry? (Nevermind the fact that in another major sport, the NBA, you don’t need team chemistry, you need Dwayne Wade, Shaq, a ton of useless role players, and refs who call everything for the leagues “stars”, but I digress.)
So from that point of view, of course pitching wins. Teams that win are good teams. Good teams generally have good pitching. This is not some useful, genius statement. It is tantamount to noting that “Good teams win championships”.
“Pitching wins in the Postseason”. Now this phrase is every bit as redundant as the first phrase, but it tends to have an assumed corollary: pitching wins, and hitting doesn’t. First off, this simply is not true. The Red Sox of ’04 won with the league’s best line up and a couple hired gun pitchers. The Angels of ’02 won without the league's best line up or hired gun pitchers; they just won with the league’s hottest lineup, which decided to bang the ball at precisely the right time.
What about those other teams, you say? What about the White Sox, what about the Marlins, what about the Yankees? Yes, what about them. The Marlins of ’03 and the White Sox of ’05 both won for the same reason, and, they both won for the same reason the Red Sox and Angels won: they got hot at exactly the right time. The only difference is it manifested itself in the pitching more than the hitting. But the reasoning behind the “pitching>hitting” rule is that pitching is consistent while hitting is streaky. This just is not true. The White Sox stunk in September last year. Their pitching got hot in October, and they threw their way to a world series (with, by the way, a line up that hit over two hundred home runs in the regular season. So even if their pitching rightfully took the spotlight, their hitting was still top 3 in the league). The Marlins also had a good line up in ’03, without which they would not have been able to score eight runs in an inning, overcome the Cubs and reach the World Series.
So what about the Yankees? What about that pitching dynasty, that unbelievable 125 win team? Well, people don’t want to admit it, but while their starters were good, they were... good. They were not great until Roger Clemens came along at the tail end of the run. David Wells, David Cone, Andy Petitte; we are not talking about Hall of Famers here. But that ’98 team? They scored 965 runs in the regular season! In case you were wondering, that is only ten fewer runs than the legendary ’27 Yankees knocked in. It was the best hitting team in recent memory, maybe in living memory, since 1927 was a long time ago. Sure, they had pitching also. But wouldn’t the best team of all time have to have both?
“Good pitching beats good hitting”. If there was ever a false statement, this is it. It simply is not true. It is wrong. It is erroneous. It is about as real as Suri. Almost every All-Star game every played testifies against it. Why, when the best hitters and best pitchers get together, are the scores so darned high? Because good pitching does not beat good hitting. The reason this myth pervades society like bad horror movies is because pitchers have a 9 to 1 advantage.
A good pitcher can indeed dominate a game. A good hitter cannot do a darn thing if the other team intentionally walks him. Every line-up would need nine good hitters (you know, like the Yankees) to test this myth (you know, like all star games). Because even though most line ups have at least one good hitter, maybe two, three or even four, a good pitcher is the only guy needed for the defense.
In football, nobody would argue that an offensive lineman is more important than the QB. Why? because there is one QB, and five linemen. Just the math of the whole matter makes the QB more important. But is he more important than the whole offensive line? Of course not!
In the same way, a good line up can beat the crap out of a good pitcher; good line ups are simply far more rare than good pitchers.

Minor Rants


Perhaps he Should Call Luigi: While writing this article I happened to notice a show on ESPN about some NFL rookies, including Mario Williams, Mr. #1 overall pick. It was clear in the show—and this is one of those shows where nothing except the positive gets shown, and any negative is at best ignored, if not outright lied about—that Mario Williams was having serious problems in the Texans training camp. He is a defensive end, and he was having trouble even getting by the tackle, much less getting a sack.

Think about who he was practicing with: Texans offensive lineman. TEXANS OFFENSIVE LINEMAN. Mario Williams is the only guy on the planet who hasn’t blown by the Texans O-line. This line is so pathetic they have led the league in giving up sacks for the last forty years, which is impressive seeing as the Texans have only been around for about five. They would let seventy year old grandmothers by. They would let me by. They would let you by (unless Mario Williams happens to be reading this, which I doubt). They would find some way to let a sloth by. They would find some way to let a Diet Pepsi machine—err, wait, Diet Pepsi machine is a pretty good player. Scratch that. BUT YOU GET THE POINT! Mario Williams can’t beat the Texans offensive line. He is hopeless. Mark it down.

Fans: There are two kinds of fans: realistic ones and unrealistic ones. I consider myself a realistic fan. Sure I root for the Titans, but they aren’t going anywhere this year and I am not crazy enough to think otherwise. The two kinds of fans can be better categorized as: Bill Simmons and Skip Bayless. Both are die-hard Red Sox fans, and that is where the similarities end.

Bill Simmons hates the Yankees every bit as much as Skip, but he doesn’t lie about them. Skip tries to pretend the Yankees have a mediocre offense, a wretched starting rotation and no bullpen besides Rivera (whose greatness, it might be added, even quasi-morons like Skip can’t deny). Bill Simmons has them as the favorite to win the World Series. Skip says the Red Sox were the best team in the league this year until they got hit by injuries, and says he would STILL take a healthy Red Sox over the Yankees. Bill Simmons thinks the Red Sox overachieved, were never that good, and relied on the NL (14-2 record against NL opponents) to stay afloat. This is obviously true, since the Red Sox have a losing record against AL teams. And this injury nonsense is ridiculous. The Red Sox lost Jason Varitek. He was batting .239. The Yankees lost Hideki Matsui and Gary Sheffield, both of whom are 30+ homer guys—for almost the entire SEASON. Varitek was out for about a month.

Sure the Red Sox started losing guys later (funny how the team had one massive injury bug as soon as they found themselves 8 games back), but by then the division was well in hand. Bill Simmons, I salute you for your baseball integrity. Skip... you are funny to watch, much for the same reason Tom Cruise is funny to watch. It is hard to imagine someone being so darned wrong.

Topics: Yes I am a bit partial to Yankees/Red Sox topics, and yes this was supposed to be a weekly column, but if every random writer on ESPN can get away with favoritism and unpredictable schedules, so can I, darnit.