Hey Zaidi! My Giants Business Plan: Great Starting Rotation

As shown in a prior chapter, preventing runs are very important (and espoused by Zaidi in an interview, about low-scoring games given that the Giants play in ATT Park; though we might be getting a new name by 2020, as ATT's contract is up, and the going price has gone significantly up from the approximate $2M per year paid by PacBell, to the $20M+ range; and it has happened already, Welcome to Oracle Park!) and who has the biggest influence on that? The starting pitchers, who pitch around 70% of the innings of games. That is another pillar in the strategy of creating the best team for success in the playoffs, and ultimately in the World Series.


Pitching Controls Action in Baseball

This makes a lot of sense if you think hard about it. Pitching really does control the action. If it didn't, pitchers like Barry Zito or Bobby Jones or Jeff Weaver have no chance to be a playoff hero. Yet they were. We talk all the time about how the good hitters take advantage of pitchers' mistakes. Clearly, the best pitchers make fewer mistakes. And a great defense helps out when the pitcher makes a mistake and the ball is blasted (like all those balls that Blanco caught in the playoffs, or especially that one he caught in Cain's Perfect Game).

Hence why Zaidi said that a quality, if not elite fielding defense (which Sabean and gang has aimed to build over the past 10 years, though not always successfully; but for many seasons, and especially when viewed over multiple seasons, the Giants had been among the leaders in the majors) is necessary to support a low scoring strategy, due to the ATT pitcher's park environment.

Starting Pitching is the One Dominant Skill in the Game of Baseball

That is the magic sauce that fans have been missing in baseball, the starting pitchers. In other sports, you can have a player dominate the game and take it other. In football, you got the right quarterback, the right running back, the team will be boosted over other teams. In basketball, you got the Jordans, the Abdul-Jabbars, the Magic Johnsons, the Shaq, the LeBrons, the Stephs, the KD's, who can take over a game and lead the team to victory. In hockey, you got the Gretzky's, the Lemieux's, who transcends the game.

In baseball, it is the pitchers who has such control over a game. He pitches the most pitches in a game. He sets the tone for the game, both defensively and offensively. The former is obvious but the latter is clear from the games where the starter gives up a crooked number to start, in the first inning. A kick in the gut, when you are suddenly behind 2, 3, 4, 5 runs to start, no?

My study of the PQS metric here shows how dominant a starting pitcher can be.  When a pitcher throws a DOM start (4 or 5 PQS) in the playoffs, their team won 82% of the time when the other team did not throw a DOM start, and 69% overall (including DOM vs. DOM starts).  There is no other skill in baseball that can be tied to winning 69% of the time (or better), which works out to a 112 win season.  In addition, from viewing starting pitchers' careers, one can see that there are pitchers who are dominant a majority of their starts, giving his team a critical winning advantage any time he throws a DOM start.

Why Starting Pitching is Not Recognized:  Inability to Start Every Game Played

However, unlike other sports, the starting pitcher only pitches one game in five during the regular season, one game in three or four in the playoffs, and thus most people, including experts, downplay the importance of starting pitching relative to the hitters. That is partly why the hitters have been given more importance to the success of a team (another part is the home run is an offensive weapon that turns on the fans; a great pitching performance hasn't). But even the best offensive teams can face a mediocre starter and be shut down totally (see Met's Jones start against Giants in 2000's playoffs).

However, the best starting pitchers around ARE able to regularly shut down the other team (as can be seen in the PQS studies, of how there are pitchers who have high DOM% year in, year out). And if a team is able to put together a great pitching rotation overall, particularly on a 3-4 man basis, then the importance of the starting rotation is that much more important to the success of the team IN SHORT SERIES. They may not be relying on one particular pitcher but on one group of pitchers who altogether, if the talent level is high enough, can pitch as if they were one great pitcher, pitching every game. The key, obviously, is putting together such talent.

WAR, What is it Good For?  Starting Pitching!

Another way to look at the importance of a starting pitcher is with WAR/game stats.  Everyone looks at a player's seasonal WAR stats, but I've never seen anyone talk about WAR/game.  I think WAR/game shows the value of starting pitching in any game, and thus any playoff game.

The best hitter is clearly Mike Trout.  10 WAR is where he's been producing at.  If he's starting 150 games, that's 0.0667 WAR/game.  The average from 2009-2018 is 9.4 bWAR.

The best pitcher, varies a lot.  Aaron Nola had 10.5 bWAR in 2018, but the average top pitcher from 2009-2018 is 8.7 bWAR.

So the best hitter has more WAR than the best pitcher.  But the best players tend to play 150 games, the best pitchers start 34 games.  Taking those averages, the best hitters average 0.06 WAR per game, while the best starting pitchers average about 0.26 WAR, or producing over 4 times the WAR in any game than the the best position player.

So, if we look at a team with the best position player and best pitcher, but all the rest of the starting players are average, and the closer is average (where average is 2.0 WAR), and 0 WAR for the rest of the players (bench and relievers) that works out to a 90 Win team (extreme, as usually the bench will produce some, and not every starter is average), we have 23.4 bWAR produced by the position players, 8.7 bWAR by the starting pitcher, which works out to 0.156 bWAR produced in a game, on average, for the starting position players, versus the 0.26 bWAR produced by the starting pitcher, or roughly 1.7 times more win value.

Or taking it down a notch, how about a 6 WAR position player, 6 WAR starting pitching, but similar overall lineup and team stats (i.e. 90 Win team)?   The position players still work out to 0.156 bWAR per game, but the still good pitcher (but not THE best) averages 0.18 bWAR, roughly, still more than the position players.  The break even point is at 5.1 bWAR approximately, where the sum of the position players is equal to the starting pitcher's, on a per game basis.

Correlation is Nice for Extended Playoff Runs

Going back to Baseball Prospectus's chapter on ranking good playoff teams, while they did not end up using starting pitching specifically in their final metrics used (it was tied to SP via the metric, Pitching Staff K/9), they did find a statistically significant correlation between having 3 good starting pitchers, and with deep playoff runs.

Conclusion:  Starting Pitching Can Be a Competitive Advantage in Baseball Playoffs

A lot of data supports the case for starting pitching being a competitive advantage in the MLB playoffs.  Having 3 good starting pitchers has been correlated to deep playoff runs.  On top of that, one can see how dominant the best pitchers are in a game by looking at WAR/game production and by looking at PQS studies.   There is no other skill in baseball that can enable a team to win at a 110+ win rate, which is the win rate for DOM starts in the playoffs studies I did.  Pitching controls the action, but because most people look only at seasonal production, they miss what is happening at the game level, which is much more important in the playoffs, since the series are so limited.

Another reason good starting pitching matters in the playoffs is the limited game format.  If a 97 win team faces a 90 win team, just randomly, based on those win rates, the better team still loses 43% of the time, winning only 57% of the time.  If a team can stock their starting rotation with at least 3 pitchers who can deliver a DOM start a majority of the time (i.e. over 50% of their starts), they will maximize their chances of winning in the playoffs and going deep into the playoffs.