Baseball's Best Decade (21 page)

2000s –
During the 2000s, the combined slugging average for the major leagues reached .423, the highest total ever. What was going on with major league pitching during this decade? Altogether, 29 of the 30 teams topped the .400 plateau for the decade. The only team that didn’t, the San Diego Padres, came close at .397, a slugging average that would have made them the decade’s best for the 1940s, and a close second in 2 other decades.

Who almost made the list?
St. Louis Cardinals at .434, Toronto Blue Jays at .432, Philadelphia Phillies and Cleveland Indians at .431.

Johnny Mize l
ed the National League in slugging average 4 times in the 1930s and 1940s.

Carl Yastrzemski
w
as the American League slugging leader in 1965, 1967 and 1970.

Call To Arms:

Lefty Grove

If it’s true that good pitching eventually beats good hitting, what does that say about the offensive onslaught that was characteristic of the 1920s and 1930s? Or the power blast that reappeared in the 1990s and continued after the turn of the century? Was the pitching in those decades less effective than the pitching of the 1960s, when the combined major league ERA was the best since the dead ball era? Or was the hitting in the 1960s just not up to par with the other decades, an argument that, at first glance, carries some weight when the American League can produce only a single .300 hitter in 1968 and there are only 9 hitters with an average of .300 or better for the decade?

Let’s start the comparisons with this two-fold assumption: That good hitters find a way to get to great pitchers, even if only occasionally (say, 3 times out of 10 if they’re lucky). And good pitchers, blessed with nasty stuff and acute pitching savvy, can overmatch great hitters time and again, only to lose on a single mistake.

And that’s one of the beauties of baseball: no givens. With such a long season, and so many play possibilities on every pitch, the unpredictable can happen with uncanny regularity, and the impossible has no time clock to race against. So on an October afternoon in 1956, a sub-.500 pitcher named Don Larsen is as good for 27 outs as Cy Young or Sandy Koufax ever were, and more perfect than Christy Mathewson or Warren Spahn could ever be. In one season, a lifetime .264 hitter named Charlie Maxwell could outslug the likes of Hall of Famers Willie Mays, Lou Gehrig and Ted Williams with 5 extra-inning homes runs in 1960 (the most Mays ever had was 4 in one season; Gehrig and Williams each had seasons with 3).

That’s why this book takes the decade-long perspective to compare the performance of players, teams and even the combined major leagues as a unit. You need a wide perspective to put baseball’s short-term accomplishments into a meaningful context, and reserve the label of “great” to those who have stood the test of time. This is especially true for pitchers, for whom the opportunity to suffer a major injury or simply performance burn-out seems so much greater than for hitters.

While outstanding individual seasons deserve their recognition, and the one-year performance of a Mark Fidrych is no less precious to baseball lore than the career accomplishments of a Tom Seaver, the test of time wields the most authentic stamp of greatness. From the decade-long perspective, the truly great players, especially pitchers, emerge.

And great pitchers (as well as great hitters) can be found in every decade f
rom 1920 until the end of the 2000s. But were the pitchers of one decade particularly better than those of another? To be blunt, are the low earned run averages of the 1960s the result of great pitching or lousy hitting?

If we look at major league
pitching over 9 decades, and make any kind of value judgments about the quality of pitching from one decade to the next, we have to acknowledge 3 historical incidents that have made the biggest impact on pitching since the American League arrived at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Two of them had a permanent impact on the game, and have already been mentioned with reference to major league hitting: the introduction of the lively ball in the 1920s (which has been adjusted to be even livelier more than once since), and the breaking of the color barrier in 1947, which dramatically expanded the pool of quality hitters that pitchers have had to face (i.e., fewer easy outs).

The other historical “incident” occurred in, and was exclusive to, the 1960s. It was the expansion of the strike zone in 1963. Stretching the strike zone from the top of the hitters’ shoulders to the bottom of the knees gave a significant advantage to the pitchers, especially those with outstanding fastballs. Most batters couldn’t afford to lay off a higher-than-letters fastball, which had now become a called strike. Nor could they “catch up to it” when thrown by a Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson. The presence of more hard-throwing pitchers, with more of a strike target to throw through, significantly curtailed the effectiveness of hitters in both major leagues.

Of course that changed after the 1968 season, the infamous “Year of the Pitcher” when even Roberto Clemente couldn’t manage to hit .300. Attendance at the ballparks throughout the 1960s had been declining along with the dip in run production throughout major league baseball. That, according to the owners, had to be corrected. The advantage had to be tilted back toward the offense.

In the off-season following 1968, the owners made 2 significant rules changes: the strike zone was reduced to an area between the batter’s armpits and the top of his knees; and the pitching mound, whose height had been standardized in 1950 to 15 inches above home plate, was reduced to only 10 inches, literally leveling the competitive balance between pitchers (especially hard-throwing pitchers) and hitters. Pitching mound height has remained consistent since 1969. The strike zone was whittled away slightly more in 1988, and expanded again slightly (from the top to the bottom of the knees) in 1996.

During the 1960s, pitchers dominated in a way that baseball hadn’t seen since 1920.

The changes in the strike zone and the height of the pitching mound almost immediately improved the hitting in both leagues. During the 1960s, an average of 15 players per year hit .300 or better. In the 1970s, the average number of .300 hitters per season increased to 22, an increase of 69%. And during the 1970s, the designated hitter was another boost for the number of .300 hitters, which increased from an average of 7 in the American League before the DH to 11 per season with the DH for the rest of the 1970s.

The introduction of the designated hitter in American League play starting in 1973 was the last great impact on pitching (and the game as a whole). Now American League pitchers had one less easy out each time through the line-up. And for a few aging sluggers, the DH meant they could continue their careers even with a noticeable decline in base path speed and fielding nimbleness. As mentioned more than once above, the increase in total major league offense can be traced conclusively to the impact of the designated hitter in the American League.

All that taken together, it still comes down to the fact that great hitters will find a way to hit against great pitchers, and everybody else is going to be an out more than 70% of the time. Likewise, great pitchers find a way to beat the averages when facing great hitters. Other pitchers learn to live with earned run averages around 4.00.

One fact is indisputable: During the 1960s, pitchers dominated in a way that baseball hadn’t seen since the introduction of the lively ball in 1920. If hitters owned the 1920s and 1930s (and, as we have seen, the 2000s), pitchers owned the 1960s.

The following pages feature the best pitchers, and the best
pitching teams, over the last 90 years. Pitchers and teams are ranked according to 3 different decade-long categories: victories, strikeouts and ERA. In each case, for each decade, one or 2 good seasons doesn’t get you on the list. Even 4 or 5 excellent years isn’t going to put you among the decade’s elite (unless, of course, you’re Sandy Koufax, and can string together league bests in wins, strikeouts and/or ERA year after year). Considering the normal wear and tear on pitching arms, it’s actually amazing how many of the pitchers listed below were able to put together a decade or more of outstanding performances.

Warren Spahn

In the last 90 years, 4 different pitchers have won 190 or more game in a decade … and none of them were Yankees. Warren Spahn won more games in a decade than any pitcher since 1920, and more games in his career than any pitcher who’s pitched since 1930. You might not be surprised to learn that Lefty Grove and Burleigh Grimes are among those top 4 winners. But you might be surprised to learn that the winningest pitcher in the 1960s was not Koufax or Gibson or Drysdale. Or that the fifth-winningest pitcher during the 1960s isn’t in the Hall of Fame. In fact, of the 40 pitchers listed as having the most wins in each of their respected decades, 15 are not in the Hall of Fame (though only 10 of those are currently eligible).

In term of strikeouts, major league hitters are hitting more home runs, and major league teams are scoring more
runs than ever before, but major leaguers are also striking out at an unprecedented rate. Total strikeouts are naturally higher, as there are nearly twice the number of teams now compared to the 1920s through 1950s. A more accurate measure from one decade to the next is strikeouts per nine innings. While hits per 9 innings have leveled off and scoring is down less than a run per game from the average in the 1930s, strikeouts per 9 innings in the 1990s and 2000s were more than double that of the 1920s. This would suggest that swinging for the fences hasn’t necessarily produced more runs, but has resulted in more strikeouts.

Even though the changes to the strike zone and pitching mound height instituted prior to the 1969 season were supposed to make hitters more competitive and the games higher scoring, and seemingly accomplished just that almost immediately, it would appear that pitchers are again getting the upper
hand, at least through the 2000s … and in spite of the fact that the home run total for the 2000s was 5 times that of the 1920s and nearly 4 times the total of the 1930s. Strikeouts are definitely on the increase. Hits per 9 innings are still significantly short of the averages achieved during the 1920s and 1930s.

Perhaps it’s true that the pitchers of the 1990s and the present have become bigger and stronger and generally harder throwing than those of earlier times. (It would be interesting to see how Bobby Shantz, the 139-pound American League MVP of 1952, would fare against today’s hitters … or if he would even be given the opportunity. Or would Whitey Ford
, based on his physical attributes, be able to attract a second look from a major league scout?) And there may be 2 other factors that would help account for the major league “boom” in strikeouts over the 4 previous decades. First there’s the slider, the breaking pitch that batters before the 1960s didn’t have to swing at. Without the slider, a pitcher who couldn’t master a true curve ball was forced to survive on a fast ball and possibly a change-up and hopefully good control … good enough, at least, to keep the ball in play. Ban the slider (not recommending that, just making a point) and watch major league batting averages zoom to 1920s levels. (Would Tony Gwynn and George Brett have been baseball’s last .400 hitters if there had been no slider? And would Ted Williams, baseball’s last .400 hitter who almost certainly never faced a slider in his prime, have been able to adjust if the slider were being pitched back in 1941 and hit .400 anyway? Yea, probably.)