A "Hot Stove" discussion from my mailbox:
From: Lawdog
To: Uncle Scoopy
Out of forty-eight seasons in the history of the game in which a player has been 10.0 or greater offensive wins above replacement (per baseball-reference's formulation, which is slightly different from FanGraphs), the Sultan of Swat has nine (!) of them.
Gehrig and Hornsby are tied for second, with five each. Holy shit, how good were the Yankees when Ruth and Gehrig hit back to back?
Great googly moogly, though, Ruth really was from Krypton. As Joe Posnanski writes today:
"But Ruth … how can you beat a hitter who outhomered every team one season AND ALSO led the league in ERA when he was 21 AND ALSO went 3-0 with an 0.64 ERA in the World Series AND ALSO led the league in OPS every year but one from 1918 to 1931? You can’t. Ever. Williams may have been a better pure hitter — Bonds too, in his bulked up years — but Ruth will always have that pitching trump card."
From: Scoop
To: Lawdog
Both Ruth and Gehrig were at ten or higher in 1930, but the team finished third, because the pitching staff essentially consisted of replacement players. The team ERA plus was 89!
That year the batters had a WAR of 40 (best in the league), the pitchers a measly 2. Their 897 runs allowed was only 18 away from the worst figure in the league.
Their best pitcher, Red Ruffing, had a WAR of 2 for his batting - same as the pitching WAR for him and all the other pitchers added together. Ruffing batted .374 with an OPS of 1.011. He also went 15-5 on the mound, although I probably could have done that with their lineup behind me. By the way, Ruffing started the season with the Red Sox. He went on to pitch for the Yankees until 1946, and is in the HOF with 273 wins. When he finally figured out what he was doing, he was the star pitcher of the Gehrig/DiMaggio years with four consecutive 20-win seasons. The Sox traded him in May of 1930 for the immortal Cedric Durst, who put up one homer and 24 RBI as the Sox' full time left fielder that year, then never played another season. Durst wasn't even as good a hitter as Ruffing. Not that year, certainly (Ruffing had 4 HR, 21 RBI in only 99 at bats), and really not ever. His lifetime OPS+ was 67, compared to 81 for Ruffing ... plus Ruffing had the little matter of the HOF pitching.
Nice move, Sox. The mighty Yankees had one great weakness - their pitching sucked. And you shipped them a guy who went on to win 273 games.
To the Sox' credit, they did also get $50,000 in that transaction. Presumably that went to create "No No Nanette 2, the Wrath of Tom."
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Back to the subject of 1930 ....
The A's batters were "only" 29 WAR in 1930, but their pitchers were at 18. (Thank you, Mr Grove, who was 28-5 that year.)
The Senators' position players were 32 WAR, their pitchers 19. The Senators used a 5-man rotation, and they all won 15 or more. Their pitchers allowed 687 runs, compared to 897 for the Yankees. Some of that success was attributable to their cavernous stadium, and some was because they were just pretty damned good. They allowed 300 runs at home, 387 on the road. The Yankee pitchers allowed 390 at home, 507 on the road. If you divide 507 by 77, you'll see why the Yankees finished third, despite having two guys with WARs in the 10s.
All of which goes to show you, Mr. General Manager, that you might set aside a few bucks to pick up some good arms.
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