Comparing Pirates Aces

Only one team remains in my WAR-based analysis of NL Central aces of the last half century: the Pittsburgh Pirates. Once again, I had to do some digging to find my four candidates. Two were obvious: Doug Drabek, whose brilliant 1990 campaign is an early formative baseball memory of mine, and Dock Ellis, charter member of the Shrine of the Eternals and subject of some of the great baseball stories of the '60s and '70s. Once I bolstered my Pirates knowledge with a bit of research, I realized that to round out my final four I need look no further than the Bobs: Bob Friend and Bob Veale. Both were excellent pitchers who get overlooked because, with the exception of Friend's World Champion Pirates of 1960, their teams were mediocre to terrible. But, as I hope to show, they were extremely valuable on the mound during their tenures in Pittsburgh.

Because Friend started pitching before my available WAR data (his rookie year was 1951, but Sean Smith's WAR database begins with 1953), he gets short shrift in this analysis. But, once each pitcher's seasonal WAR is graphed in descending order, it becomes pretty obvious that Friend was still far and away the most valuable Pirates pitcher of the past half century:

Friend easily outpaces the rest of the Pirates pitchers on my short list. His 48.2 Pirates WAR is likely low by 2-3 wins since neither his 1951 nor his 1952 season is accounted for (which, by the way, is why I haven't included a career WAR graph as I have in previous posts), but Veale's 26.8 is the next highest total, and he's not even close. Veale surprised me, actually. I expected him to beat out Drabek, which he did (26.8 to 21.8), but I expected Drabek's peak to be higher. Basically, I figured that Drabek burned a bit brighter but not for long enough, when in fact Veale's Xth best year beat out Drabek's Xth best year every single time. Impressive.

Unfortunately, Ellis surprised me, too. I was really pulling for Dock to make a better showing than the 14.5 WAR he put up as a Pirate. But he just didn't produce like the other three men on my list (though I will say this for Ellis: how many stories do people tell about Bob Friend throwing at every single batter he faced in order to motivate his team?).

Next up: the final "battle royale" between the top pitchers from each team. Gibson! Jenkins! Higuera! Oswalt! Rijo! Friend!

Numbers! Graphs! Unicorns! Exclamation marks!

A Raise of the Glass to The Bird and the Voice of the Phillies

The baseball world lost two icons yesterday: Harry Kalas, the voice of the Philadelphia Phillies, and Mark Fidrych, the eccentric but beloved former Tigers Rookie of the Year.

Kalas had been calling Phillies games since 1971. Those of us who aren't Phillies fans may know him best for his "outta here!" call or his NFL Films voiceover work. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame as a broadcaster in 2002.

Fidrych burst onto the MLB scene in 1976 when he won 19 games and the American League Rookie of the Year Award for the Detroit Tigers. Although he would never recapture the magic of that first season due to a string of injuries that limited his career to five years and a whole lot of "what ifs," Fidrych remains one of the most beloved sports figures for a generation of Tigers fans who watched "The Bird" and his mound antics in that summer of '76. He was inducted into the Shrine of the Eternals in 2002.

I should say that as much as I (obviously) love debating the statistical merits of players, I'm very glad that the Shrine exists to honor "distinctiveness of play (good or bad); the uniqueness of character and personality; and the imprint that the individual[s have] made on the baseball landscape"; to honor, in other words, those characters who make the game of baseball more than simply a game of numbers, but a game that can captivate its fans enough that they are willing (and eager!) to wade through all of those numbers.

Cheers to you both, gentlemen.