Isn’t it at least equally likely that pitchers like Pettitte, who seem to “have a nose for wins” (despite poor showings statistically), have their win numbers inflated by the fact that they pitch for strong offensive teams? I know it doesn’t make for as nice of a story, but it’s never made sense to me to throw logic out the window in favor of that faultiest of tools, human perception and memory.
This is demonstrably not true. I like arguing baseball, but it can be kind of pointless if one side believes X, and the other side shows 6 studies that prove that X doesn’t exist, but that person insists on believing it anyway. It is really isn’t worth arguing about. No pitcher gives up more or less runs based on how many the opponent scores. Not Jack Morris, not Andy Pettitte, and not anybody else. Pettitte has a lot of wins because he was a good pitcher on a team with a great offense and good bullpen. He had no magic ability to pitch to the score.
That’s already one of my Top 10 favorite tweets ever.
Well if you go game by game for Pettitte for his career, you’ll actually see that he throws a huge number of 6-7 inning games giving up 2-3 runs and often does not give up runs until he has a lead. He also though is good for about 5 ugly games a year where he gives up a lot of runs and thus his ERA is high. It translates to a lot of wins and the added factor of pitching for the Yanks most of his career means he did get wins in most of those games where he did pitch well. So I guess in the end I am trying to tell you it is both. Pitching for the Yanks is a big help with lots of run support and an excellent bullpen more often than not, but also his stats only tell part of the tale.
These statements are at odds with each other. You can’t say wins are important in the context of “the same basic teams” and then compare how they do outside of that team. Regardless, I’ve gone through Pettitte’s teammates throughout his career, and there are really only four examples of teammates with worse wins/Win% but better peripherals than Pettitte:
1997 David Cone: Pettitte went 18-7 (35 GS), 2.88 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 166/65 K/BB to Cone’s 12-6 (29 GS), 2.82 ERA, 1.23 WHIP, 222/86 K/BB. Technically meets your criteria, but is simply too close to call - and is one of Pettitte’s best seasons.
**1999 David Cone: **Pettitte went 14-11 (31 GS), 4.70 ERA, 1.59 WHIP, 121/89 K/BB to Cone’s 12-9 (31 GS), 3.44 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 177/90 K/BB. Cone had the better Win%, but in fewer decisions in the same amount of games. I don’t know how to look up to see how many wins the bullpen blew for particular pitchers, but the Yankees went 20-11 in games Cone started that year to Pettitte’s 16-15. Cone lost or had no decision in 8 games where he earned 2 run or less. Pettitte - 4.
**2000 Roger Clemens: **Pettitte went 19-9 (32 GS), 4.35 ERA, 1.46 WHIP, 125/80 K/BB to Clemens’ 13-8 (32 GS), 3.70 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, 188/84 K/BB. Winning Percentage difference of 0.06.
**2005 Roger Clemens: ** All I’m going to say here is that Clemens had possibly the unluckiest season a pitcher has ever had since Herb Score got cracked in the head.
In other words, you’re suffering from a really bad case of confirmation bias.
Find me a pitcher who has pitched for at least 10 years where this statement isn’t true. Again - confirmation bias.
And in 2005, Pettitte had better peripheral numbers, but fewer wins, than teammate Roy Oswalt.
I’ll be back later to either concede or put up some links to support my bias.
I’ll concede that my last statement (…last 10 years…) was mostly hyperbole, so as to not waste your time. 
But it remains true if you limit it to the people we’d be comparing Pettitte against in these types of discussions.
A study on Jack Morris the poster boy of pitching to the score
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=1815
Don’t forget that no one is saying Andy Pettitte is a crappy pitcher who got a lot of wins because of strong offensive teams. He’s an above average pitcher, who no doubt got more wins because of being on strong offensive teams. He’s also a lefty, which helps, and has a great pickoff move, which doesn’t hurt.
Don’t be a jerk. I went to play racketball and was gone. iI read fine, Insults are not needed. I read CHITWOODS post but I have seen Polanco a lot. He is a good contact hitter. He does not strikeout very often. He also has the biggest head in baseball.
Note, Ozzie played on turf. So what? I think he is over rated. I think the attempts to put fielding in the stat field a mistake. I think there are too many variables . My opinion. Live with it. You disagree. I understand that. Rhere are others on your side. Does that prove you 4 guys are correct? Hell lets just vote in it then .We don’t need to discuss it at all.
Can we use another good pitcher that Baseball-Reference considers very similar to Pettitte as an example: I think Orel Hershiser might test my case. A very good pitcher who played for good teams. His life time ERA is 3.48 but of course that needs ballpark and league adjustments. His winning percentage was only .576 to Andy’s amazing .629. I note their ERA+ is nearly identical.
Now the Yanks and even Houston were very good during Andy’s career but so were the Dodgers and then Cleveland for Orel. Even the '99 Mets were a very successful team with good offense and bullpen. So I think these two allow for easy comparison. Please note I did not spend a lot of time digging, I looked at the list of 10 pitchers that B-R listed as Similar Pitchers and Orel’s name jumped out as one that was recent and did not play for the Yanks.
Andy with similar teams and stats seemed to be better by a significant amount at getting wins that Orel who most would acknowledge was a very good pitcher. Please break my logic now but at least acknowledge where my bias might be coming from.
And you still haven’t responded to any of the posed questions seeking to see if we were responding in a coherent manner that might help you learn about the numbers *you *were asking about. You brought the subject up, looking for a discussion. It seemed like a very honest request, so we bit. I guess we’ll never learn, will we?
Huh? The Dodgers went to the playoffs twice in Orel’s 11 full years there. The Yankees went to the playoffs 11 of the 12 years for Pettitte.
Bingo. That’s going to support the “run support” argument much better than “pitching to the score”. In a mostly likely riddled with errors* quick calculation of adding up the run support for each player’s 15 full seasons (Run Support * Games Started), Pettitte had nearly a full run more of support than Orel did. (5.44 to 4.52 - per game, and 2492 to 2063 total).
*I think baseball-reference calculates run support on total runs scored in a game they start, rather than runs during their IP. I’m not sure that’s going to really affect things.
Although to be fair, Orel pitched most of his career in the 80s in Dodger Stadium in a non-DH league. And the Dodgers probably would have made the playoffs a few more times in an 8-team playoff league than they did in a 4-team league (without looking, I recall that they had one of the best team winning percentages for the 80s.) Still, I don’t think any team from the 80s had the kind of record that the Yanks of Pettitte’s career have had.
Whoops - the Indians went to the playoffs 3 times with Orel. My bad.
Also, I’m trying to figure out how to come up with a rough “pitching to the score” measurement. Run Support - ERA?
Checking that, I see that the Dodgers probably would have made it in 1990 (fourth-best record overall, and a better record than any of the future NL West teams) and definitely would have in 1991 (third-best record in the league, better by a long way than #4). And they also would have been in the playoffs in 1994 were it not for the strike. Also, he technically pitched for the 1983 team that made the playoffs, though that was one game, probably a September call-up.
Still, even saying that the Dodgers would probably have been in the playoffs half of Hershiser’s 12 seasons under modern rules, that still leaves six seasons when they finished 4th, 5th, 4th, 4th, 6th (of 6) and 4th during Hershiser’s tenure.
His last five years (not counting a Carltonesque final season with the Dodgers) were all with playoff teams, some of them quite strong. But even so, the strength of his teams doesn’t really match those of Pettitte.
Well even if Orel was -1 run support he was also -.5 ERA, you cannot use the League ERA for that comparison. I think Andy’s much higher winning pct and wins is still a significant deviation from the “No such thing as a nose for winning” measurements mentioned. As you came back and posted, those were three years where Cleveland was great and had the best offense in the Majors those years or at least better than the Yanks. The Rangers might have been as good.
Also as I mentioned, even his year with the Mets was a very good year for the Mets in general. A very good team hitting for the NL.