From: cs169061@cs.brown.edu (Michael Kalman)
Subject: Re: What is baseball?
Organization: Brown Computer Science Dept.
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 17:59:47 GMT

In article <1992Sep28.013443.17807@cs.cornell.edu>, tedward@cs.cornell.edu (Edward [Ted] Fischer) writes:

|> Real complaint: while this *seems* to address the question, it really
|> has nothing to do with the matter.  After all, a hockey goalie will
|> stop ~90% of the shots, yet hockey is IMHO dominated by offense.  The
|> real question is, how good is good?  Is the variation in pitching
|> greater or less than the variation in hitting?
|> 
|> If all the hitters were very close in ability, then pitching (and
|> defense) would be almost all of the game.  If there were little
|> difference between a good pitcher and a bad pitcher, then hitting
|> would be almost all of the game.
|> 
|> Let's look at the best and the worst (or second-best and second-worst
|> to get rid of outliers).  The second-best offensive teams (as of 9/20)
|> are Oakland (691) and Pittsburgh (631).  The second worst are Boston
|> (546) and SF (533).  A difference of 243 runs.
|> 
|> For pitching/defense, we have Baltimore (606) and Detroit (716), In
|> the NL, we have Atlanta (543) and Houston (621).  A difference of 188
|> runs.
|> 
|> Seems that on the team level there is *less* variance between
|> pitching/defenses than between offenses.  (Okay, so this isn't a
|> proper variance, and it isn't done over many years.)  Which is
|> strange, because it would seem to me that there is a slightly bigger
|> difference between a great pitcher and a horrible pitcher than between
|> a great hitter and a horrible hitter.  I guess it is just harder to
|> get hold of more than your fair share of the quality pitchers.
|> 
|> Conclusion: The game is roughly 50% offense, 40% pitching, and 10%
|> defense.  I pulled these numbers out of thin air, but they seem
|> reasonable given the data.  A split of 10% offense, 80% pitching, 10%
|> defense is ridiculous given the above numbers!
|> 
|> Cheers,
|> -Valentine



          Your perfectly right that the game is roughly 50% total 
hitting, and 50% total pitching+defense.  But when most people 
refer to pitching being more important than hitting, what they're
really talking about is how to best build a winning ballclub.

        The ratio of batters to pitchers is about 3:2 (~10 pitchers 
per 25 man roster).  Since pitching is by far the most important
factor in how many runs a team will allow, a team can improve 
more in the runs-allowed category by adding 'x' number of pitchers
than it can improve its runs-scored by adding 'x' number of 
hitters.   
(To address you're hockey goalie analogy: In hockey,
good defense, checking, and puck control reduces goals-allowed 
moreso than good goaltending, so one player can greatly improve a 
teams offense *and* its defense at the same time)

         Moreover, when you add extra pitchers to a ballclub, 
you can bump off the weakest pitchers from those you already
have. But this doesn't work as well for hitters because 
acquiring a great hitting firstbasemen doesn't let you
bump a weak hitting shortstop from the lineup.  

         Also, in a short term, playoff situation, a star pitcher,
who can absorb as much as 1/3 of his team's innings in a 7 game
series, becomes even more valuable than a great hitter who still
gets little more than 1/9 of his team's at-bats.


                                Just my $.02 perspective
                                Michael Kalman

Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball