The Greg Maddux Anomaly, Part I: Not a K-Man, But Dominant Nonetheless

Even among Hall of Fame pitchers, there are very few whose dominance on the mound is so vastly superior to the average pitcher every year for at least five years running that they count as epic.  Greg Maddux is the outlier among these pitchers because he alone among them was not a big strikeout pitcher relative to the context of the times.   This Baseball Historical Insight is the first of two on the unique Maddux phenomenon: a dominating pitcher without overpowering stuff.   

The Greg Maddux Anomaly, Part I:  Not a K-Man, But Dominant Nonetheless

It is often said that the game's dominant pitchers, in the past as well as today, are the K-men--power pitchers whose strikeout ratios are significantly higher than those of the average pitcher.  It is somewhat counterintuitive, then, given how we think about a pitcher's dominance over an extended period of time, to count the seven years Greg Maddux had from 1992 to 1998 among the most dominating of any pitcher in modern history (since the birth of the American League in 1901).  Using both the wins above average pitcher and wins above replacement pitcher metrics for player value and the advanced statistic of "adjusted ERA" (also referred to as "ERA+")--which normalizes a pitcher's earned run average for both the context of the time and for his home park--as a baseline for assessing a pitcher's dominance over at least five consecutive years, some of the greatest pitchers in history (Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Nolan Ryan to name a few) are not among this group, not because they didn't have outstanding seasons that were better than virtually all of their peers for as many consecutive years, but because their margins of superiority over the league average in some years was not as great.

Going back in time, the other pitchers being considered in this analysis as having dominated their time include Walter Johnson from 1910 to 1916, when he won 199, lost 100, and never had an earned run average higher than 1.90 (the Big Train's ERA for the seven years was 1.56 in 2,485 innings); Grover Cleveland Alexander--later best known as "Pete"--from his rookie season in 1911 to 1917, during which he won 190, lost only 88, and had three consecutive seasons (1915-17) of 30 wins and ERAs well under 2.00; Lefty Grove from 1928 to 1933 (152-41 for a phenomenal .788 winning percentage), which included four consecutive ERA titles and a 31-4 record in 1931; Bob Feller from 1939 to 1947 (not including four years when he was serving in World War II), with five consecutive 20-win seasons, leading the American League each time; and Sandy Koufax, whose performance from 1961 to 1966 was said in my youth to rival that of Lefty Grove for the best five or six years any pitcher ever had at any time (verbal redundancy deliberate).  Koufax voluntarily retired because of crippling arthritis in his pitching elbow after back-to-back 26-8 and 27-9 seasons, and finished with five straight National League ERA titles, during which his earned run average was 1.95 over 1,377 often painful innings.

More recent claimants to such a string of outstanding seasons on the mound include Roger Clemens in his Boston years from 1986 to 1992, which included four ERA titles; Pedro Martinez from 1997 to 2003 (including an injury-curtailed 2001 season when he made only 18 starts), with 5 ERA titles, an ERA of 2.20 during those years, and a .766 (118-36) winning percentage; Randy Johnson from 1997 to 2004 (including an injury-curtailed 2003 season when he made only 18 starts), who led his league in winning percentage three times and in ERA three times; and Maddux from 1992 to 1998.  After winning his first of four consecutive Cy Young Awards in 1992 with a 20-11 record for the Chicago Cubs, who were six games under .500 for the season, Maddux  won 107 and lost only 42 for a .718 winning percentage in his first six years with the Atlanta Braves, had an ERA of 2.15, leading the league four times, and allowed less than one base runner per inning.

Maddux did not once lead the National League in strikeouts, although he was in the top five six times and in five consecutive seasons from 1991 to 1995 was in the top three in total Ks.  His ratio of strikeouts-to-innings pitched, however, was typically only marginally better than the league average.  Greg Maddux was not a K-man.  Each of the others won at least two strikeout titles during their best consecutive seasons being considered in this analysis, and their strikeout ratios were much better than the league average.

In the first half of the century, Walter Johnson, Lefty Grove, and Bob Feller figured in one of those great baseball debates--the one about which of the three had the most overpowering fastball.  Johnson led the AL in Ks 12 times during his career, including eight seasons in a row, and twice struck out more than 300 in the dead ball era, when teams averaged only 4.2 strikeouts per game.  Grove also led the league in strikeouts eight consecutive times.  Feller won seven straight strikeout titles (discounting his four war years when he had priorities other than throwing a baseball at blazing speed), including 348 in 1946 for a strikeout ratio of 8.4 per nine innings that was nearly double the league average of 4.3.  Pete Alexander may not have been in the fastest-ever discussion, but he led the NL in Ks in five of the seven years he was at his best.

That Maddux's strikeout ratio of 6.9 per nine innings from 1992 to 1998 was higher than Alexander's ratio in any one season, was exceeded only twice in any season by Walter Johnson (both times when he struck out 300 batters), and was better over seven years than the highest single-season K ratio achieved by Grove--whose fastball was nonetheless legendary--was only because Maddux pitched in an era when hitters were much more disciplined and focused on making contact.  Indeed, throughout the first half of the 20th century, striking out was an embarrassment for most hitters.  (Well, maybe not for the Babe, but even he never struck out more than 93 times in a season.)  Indicative of the difference between then and now, fireballer Feller and finesse artist Maddux had exactly the same 6.1 strikeout ratio per nine innings for their career.  In the only season Maddux corralled 200 Ks (1998), his career-high 7.8 strikeout ratio matched Feller's second-highest K ratio--in 1938 when Rapid Robert won his first strikeout title with 240.

Strikeout ratios for power pitchers increased dramatically after the 1950s, and Maddux's 6.9 K-rate in his best years from 1992 to 1998 pales in comparison to those of Koufax, Clemens, Martinez, and Randy Johnson--not to mention other great power pitchers like Seaver and Ryan.  Sandy Koufax exceeded 10 Ks per nine innings five times in his career, including when he set a new major league strikeout record with 382 in 335.2 innings in 1965 (broken by Nolan Ryan with one K to spare in 1973).  In 18 of his 24 years on the mound, Roger Clemens (who led the AL in Ks five times) averaged at least 8 strikeouts per nine innings.  Pedro Martinez, meanwhile, struck out more than one batter an inning nine consecutive years with a K-ratio of 10.8 from 1996 to 2004, including 13.2 with 313 strikeouts in 213.1 innings in 1999. Randy Johnson, The Big Unit, led the major leagues in Ks every year from 1998 to 2002, averaging 350 over those five years with a strikeout ratio of 12.4 per nine innings pitched, and led the majors again with 290 in 2004.

Greg Maddux was most definitely not a dominating power pitcher. He was an artist who pitched with command and finesse. Yet from 1992 to 1998, the years he was at his best, Maddux was one of the most dominant pitchers of all time.  My next post in Baseball Historical Insight will explain why.

Final Reflections on "42": The '59 Dodgers and the Consolidation of Integration

After Jackie Robinson had "made it" in the major leagues, especially with Roy Campanella and Don Newcombe at his side, it was a certainty that black superstars like Mays, Aaron, Banks, and Frank Robinson would find a place in starting line-ups.  Black players whose abilities were not indisputably superior to that of the white players they were competing with for jobs, however, were not necessarily going to get a fair chance to become regulars in the major leagues.  This Baseball Historical Insight looks at how the success of the 1959 Dodgers made the most compelling case for integration by winning the pennant and World Series with four black players, whose abilities were more typical of the average major league regular, in key starting roles in the pennant-race drama.  

Final Reflections on "42":  The '59 Dodgers and the Consolidation of Integration

My previous post about the first generation of black players following Jackie Robinson into the major leagues noted that the majority of those who became core regulars for at least five years between 1947 and 1960 were elite players who were among the best in their league or with a career arc headed towards the Hall of Fame.  I concluded by writing: "for integration to take hold, it was still necessary for black players blessed with only average major league ability to be given the chance to compete for--and win--regular positions against white players of comparable, ordinary major league ability."  Even enlightened Brooklyn was careful at first not to push the envelope on integration too far beyond the comfort level of most major league teams in the first five years of Jackie's career, limiting the number of blacks on their team to three superior players--Robinson, Roy Campanella, and Don Newcombe.

It was not until 1952 that the Dodgers began to expand their horizons about which blacks would be given a chance in the major leagues.  Joe Black made a substantial contribution as an ace reliever to the  Dodgers' 1952 pennant (winning NL Rookie of the Year honors); second baseman Jim Gilliam did the same when Brooklyn was the NL's best team in 1953 (winning Rookie of the Year honors), 1955, and 1956; and outfielder Sandy Amoros was a competent platoon player on the 1955 and 1956 Dodgers, making an iconic catch in the 7th game of the 1955 World Series to help preserve Brooklyn's one and only World Series triumph.  But the cornerstone players on the Dodgers' four pennant-winning teams in Brooklyn in the 1950s (before their westward ho) still included Robinson, Campanella, and Newcombe, although big Newk missed out on 1952 and 1953 when he was serving as a draft pick in the Selective Service on account of the Korean War.  All three were elite players:  from his rookie season until he started slowing down in 1954, only Stan Musial and Ted Williams could credibly be considered better players than Jackie Robinson, and he was the best player in major league baseball in 1951 and 1952 according to the wins above replacement (WAR) metric for player value; Campanella won three National League MVP awards in the odd-number years between 1951 and 1955; and Newcombe won the first-ever Cy Young award and was the NL Most Valuable Player in 1956.

With black players not of superstar stature having been added seamlessly, although piecemeal, to the roster throughout the 1950s, by the time the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, it was no longer necessary for the black players they promoted from their vaunted farm system to be great players the caliber of Brooklyn's early trailblazers. When the Dodgers in 1959 unexpectedly--(because they had ended the previous year next-to-last in the National League)--competed with a far superior Milwaukee Braves team coming off back-to-back pennants for the right to go to the World Series, they did so without their Big Three from Brooklyn; Robinson had retired (after being traded to the arch-rival New York Giants, it must be said); Campanella was paralyzed in a tragic accident before their first season in LA; and Newcombe had been traded to Cincinnati after an 0-6 start to the 1958 season.  Most of the other "boys of summer" from Brooklyn were also either gone or in the twilight of their careers. The Dodgers would not have finished the scheduled season tied for first with the Braves and gone on to sweep a best-of-three playoff to win the pennant without significant contributions from four blacks in their starting line-up--none of whom would ever play to the level of Robinson, Campanella, or Newcombe.

• Switch-hitting Jim Gilliam, a regular in the Dodgers line-up since his rookie season in 1953, was a versatile player who had started out as Jackie Robinson's replacement at second base (with Jackie finishing his career alternating between third and left field) and moved to third in 1959, hitting .286 in the lead-off spot.  He was in the middle of a very respectable fourteen-year career in Dodger blue.  His season high was .349 at the All-Star break, which was crucial to an inferior Dodgers team keeping pace with the Braves and the Giants, only a half-game behind both at the break.
• Charlie Neal made Brooklyn's spring training cut in 1956, by 1957 had replaced Pee Wee Reese at shortstop (with Reese moving his body of declining skills to third), and by 1958 was the Dodgers' new second baseman in their first season in LA (with Gilliam alternating between the outfield and third base). Batting behind Gilliam, Neal had the best season of his career in 1959, hitting .287 and leading the team in runs scored (103), hits (177), doubles (30), and triples (11, which also led the league).  Neal hit .295 down the September stretch, and his 4.5 wins above replacement was the second-highest (behind outfielder Wally Moon) on the '59 Dodgers.
• Catcher Johnny Roseboro was in his second full season with the Dodgers in 1959, after becoming their backstop the previous year only because of the accident that abruptly ended Campanella's career.  A left-handed hitter, Roseboro was platooned at catcher with Joe Pignatano and had only 41 plate appearances against southpaws, hitting .232 with 10 home runs.  His 10th home run broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth inning of the first playoff game against Milwaukee and proved the difference in LA's 3-2 victory.
• Maury Wills was called up in June and became the Dodgers' regular shortstop beginning on July 4, displacing Don Zimmer, who was batting all of .175 at the time. Batting primarily in the eighth spot, Wills hit .260 in 88 games for the season, but his .345 batting average in September was absolutely indispensable to the Dodgers winning the pennant in a tight three-team race that also involved the Giants until the final week of the season.

All four were productive players through most of their big league careers.  But none of the four were so good that had they come along in the first years of integration they would have been given the opportunity to compete for a position as a regular on a major league team at the expense of a white player.  According to the WAR metric, in their collective fifty years in the major leagues, only Gilliam (in 1956 and 1963) and Wills (in 1962 and 1965) played at or close to All-Star level, contributing at least 5 wins above what would be expected of a replacement-level player.  Of the four, only Wills received any Hall of Fame votes by the Baseball Writers Association of America, and though he was on the BBWAA ballot all fifteen years of eligibility, Wills never came close to the threshold for Cooperstown immortality.

It was almost certainly necessary for Jackie Robinson and his fellow trailblazers to be far better than the typical (white) major league player for them to win and hold onto starting roles before blacks became accepted in major league baseball.  But integration could only be consolidated once teams allowed any black player with potential major league ability to realistically compete for a starting position.  It was the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers winning the pennant and World Series with Robinson, Campanella, and Newcombe no longer in Dodger blue but four blacks (Jim Gilliam, Charlie Neal, Johnny Roseboro, and Maury Wills) who were not close to being elite players that paved the way for major league baseball's broader acceptance, based on merit, of African Americans and black Latinos--not just superstars and a token handful of others--in starting positions.

The powers that be in major league baseball surely took notice, including teams that even by 1959 were slow-walking integration (even though it was obvious by now there was no going back to segregated baseball).  Because, even for an ownership group that was in general not enlightened about racial diversity, still less about equality, winning was the bottom line.

Continuing Reflections on "42": Great Players Dominate Integration's First Generation

A postscript to the movie "42" could well have ended on the inspirational (and educational) point that the first (1950s) generation of black players in the major leagues spearheaded by Jackie Robinson included a disproportionate share of great players who otherwise would not have had the opportunity.  This Baseball Historical Insight looks at what their excellence meant in the process of integrating major league baseball.

Continuing Reflections on "42":  Great Players Dominate Integration's First Generation

Ten years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, 88 black players had donned a major league uniform.  Of those 88 who had major league experience by the end of the 1957 season, only 19--sixteen position players and three pitchers--could claim to have been a core regular on their team for at least five years by 1960.  (Five others would become established regulars in the 1960s.)  Eleven of those 19 were elite players--defined here as those who were among the ten best players in their league for the years they were regulars, based on the wins above replacement (WAR) metric of player value, or who had career arcs that led them ultimately to the Hall of Fame--including Roberto Clemente, who really did not reach elite status until the next decade.  Of the elite eleven, all but two are in the Hall of Fame, including Monte Irvin, who was elected for his career in the Negro Leagues.  And the two who are not?  Well, Minnie Minoso was good enough to be on the Veterans Committee ballot last year for reconsideration, and Don Newcombe, who also failed to be elected when he was on the Veteran Committee ballot in 2007, might well be enshrined in Cooperstown today had he not lost two years of his prime in the service during the Korean War.

That nearly 60 percent of the black players in the 1950s who were five-year regulars for their teams were far better than the average major league player is astounding when you consider that fewer than one in five of all major league players (regardless of race) who were core regulars for at least five years between 1947, Robinson's rookie season, and 1960 could be considered "elite." Quite clearly, the 11 elite black players--(in order of appearance: Jackie, Larry Doby, Roy Campanella, Newcombe, Irvin, Minoso, Willie Mays, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Clemente, and Frank Robinson) --were too good to be denied.  What this speaks to is the lack of opportunity given to other black players with more ordinary major league-level talent to compete against whites with comparable ability for starting positions, which in turn was indicative of the continued resistance at the time by most major league owners to the idea of integration, even once Jackie Robinson's success ensured that would be no turning back to the days of whites-only big league ball.

It is also revealing that from 1947, when Robinson integrated major league baseball, to 1960, when there was no longer any doubt about the ability of blacks to play at the major league level, five of the top ten position players in the National League, based on their cumulative WAR for their five best consecutive years, were black, compared to only two of the top ten in the American League, which was by far the more resistant league to integration.  (See table at the end of this post.)  By 1959, when the major league's last holdout against integration--the Boston Red Sox--finally fielded a black player, 41 blacks had played in the American League, less than half the number (89) who had worn the uniforms of National League teams.  And only five of those 41, including Minoso and Doby (who both played for more enlightened AL franchises, at least where integration was concerned), were regulars on their team for as many as five seasons, compared to fourteen black five-year regulars in the National League.

Black players dominated the top half of the NL list, accounting for three of the league's four best position players and four of its top six.  All five had an average annual player value during their five best years well above the standard for All-Star quality performance of 5 wins above a replacement-level player, with Mays and Jackie Robinson playing at an MVP-level of 8 wins above replacement, and Banks and Aaron were just below.  Roy Campanella, meanwhile, was the NL's fourteenth best position player based on his best years from 1949 to 1953--far ahead of Cincinnati's Ed Bailey in player value as his league's best catcher during this time frame.

It was likely necessary that the majority of the first black players to become regulars on major league teams were exceptional ballplayers.  Given the opposition to integration by most club owners and their concern that it would destabilize the game, implicit quotas limiting the number of blacks on big league rosters to a handful well into the 1950s--accepted even by the enlightened teams at the forefront of integration (including the Brooklyn Dodgers)--put a premium on favoring elite black players for scarce big league jobs.  A key consideration for doing so was to avoid provoking any more clubhouse dissension than necessary among white players who were skeptical, wary, or downright hostile to the idea of black teammates.  For the great majority of (white) major league players at the time, for whom big league jobs were intensely competitive and tenuous, accepting a black teammate who played with much superior ability--like the Dodgers' big three (Robinson, Campanella, and Newcombe), Doby, Mays, Aaron, or Ernie Banks--was one thing, a hurdle that could be overcome in the beginning phases of integration because superior talent cannot be denied; having to compete for their positions with players of comparable ability, with the better player winning the job, was something else entirely--a far bigger obstacle to overcome.

Major league baseball would first have to accept black players as worthy of the big leagues before black players of more ordinary talent would be welcome.  Branch Rickey understood this dynamic.  He calculated that the social experiment he unleashed on major league baseball was most likely to be accepted sooner if there were no doubts about the major league ability of the black players presented at big league ballparks.  That integration's first generation of black players was so disproportionately weighted towards players with exceptional ability guaranteed there was no going back in time.  But for integration to take hold, it was still necessary for black players blessed with only average major league ability to be given the chance to compete for--and win--regular positions against white players of comparable, ordinary major-league ability.

Top 10 NL and AL Position Players, 1947-60: 

Most Wins Above Replacement By Position Players For Their Best Five Years

Top 10 NL Position Players                WAR          Top 10 AL Position Players                  WAR

Willie Mays, OF, 1954-58                 44.3            Mickey Mantle, OF, 1954-58                46.4

Stan Musial, OF/1B, 1948-52             43.1            Ted Williams, OF, 1947-51                  38.1

Jackie Robinson, 2B, 1949-53          40.5            Al Kaline, OF, 1955-59                        31.6

Ernie Banks, SS, 1955-59                37.8             Larry Doby, OF, 1950-54                   28.9

Duke Snider, OF, 1953-57                 37.7             Al Rosen, 3B, 1950-54                       28.8

Hank Aaron, OF, 1956-60                37.6             Minnie Minoso, OF, 1954-58             27.3

Eddie Mathews, 3B, 1953-57             35.3             Yogi Berra, C, 1952-56                       25.3

Ralph Kiner, OF, 1947-51                  34.5             Nellie Fox, 2B, 1955-59                      24.2

Richie Ashburn, OF,1954-58              30.7             Joe DiMaggio, OF, 1947-51                23.4

Frank Robinson, OF/1B,1956-60      28.2             Gil McDougald, IF, 1953-57                22.5

     

Black Players in bold face italics.

Introducing Baseball Historical Insight

More than any other sport, baseball's history informs the present.  Baseball honors its history with both import and reverence, which helps keeps alive its heroes of the past as totems against which the accomplishments of current players, teams, and even managers are invariably measured.  Unlike for statesmen, for whom it is said that to be unaware of history is to be condemned to repeat mistakes of the past, for baseball fans, to be unaware or unmindful of the game's history is to be missing out on what makes the game so special and endearing.  As we are about to be caught up in the drama of the 2013 season and follow the daily highlights, my purpose in Baseball Historical Insight is to remind baseball fans of the legacy implicitly carried by every player, every manager, and every team in the major leagues today.

The following is the first Historical Insight:

JOHNNY MURPHY TIME

As Mariano Rivera embarks on the final season of his Hall of Fame career,it is worth remembering that he follows in a New York Yankees' line of exceptional relief pitchers--typically the best in baseball, or at least the American League, during their time in pinstripes--dating back to Johnny Murphy, who pioneered the role in the mid-1930s.

Despite the success the Washington Senators had winning back-to-back pennants in 1924 and 1925 using hard-throwing right-hander Firpo Marberry nearly exclusively in relief--which was unprecedented for a pitcher with his talent--there was still no epiphany in major league baseball that "relief ace" deserved to be its own pitching discipline, that good pitchers might be developed and used for years specifically in that role.  In 91 relief appearances those two years, in which he finished 70 games, Marberry proved the value of his role by winning 15 games while saving 30 of Washington's 188 victories.  And thus was the relief ace born.

But the concept of a dedicated relief ace was slow to catch hold.  Major league teams were not especially warm to the idea of using talented young pitchers like Marberry in relief roles for very long before making them starters, and starting pitchers were expected to get complete game victories.  Consequently, most teams continued to use multi-role pitchers who both started and relieved to "save" close games, or auditioned pitchers in the relief role before either moving them after a season or two into the starting rotation or determining that they were unlikely to achieve starting-pitcher quality and letting them go.  And rather than use the designated relief pitchers in any given year to "save" victories, managers typically relied on some of their top starting pitchers for such an important task.  Lefty Grove and Dizzy Dean, for example, were both top-flight starting pitchers who, in their peak years, also routinely led their team in saves.  Most pitchers who worked primarily in relief spent much of their time replacing starting pitchers who were knocked out early, or working in games that were lost causes.  Obviously, no self-respecting pitcher with ambition wanted any part of "relief pitcher" as a career path.

It wasn't until the Yankees in 1935 that another team specifically groomed a young pitcher--in their case, Johnny Murphy--to be an ace reliever as a career calling.  The previous year, as a 25-year old rookie, Murphy had started 20 games and relieved in 20 games, and pitched well in both roles, but his manager, Joe McCarthy, did not see Murphy as a front-line starter--at least not on a staff that also included future Hall of Famers Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez.   Deciding to divide his pitching staff into exclusively-starters and exclusively-relievers, McCarthy persuaded Murphy to give up whatever dreams he may have had of being a starting pitcher to become his ace in the bullpen.  Unlike other managers of his day, McCarthy in all his years of winning success with the Yankees rarely used his top four starters out of the bullpen.  Instead, he routinely carried three (sometimes four) pitchers he used almost exclusively in relief, the best of whom--Johnny Murphy--was both his "fireman," coming in late in the game with runners on base to douse the flames of an opposition rally (and, indeed, one of Murphy's nicknames was "Fireman"), and his "closer" (although the term was not yet used in a Mariano Rivera context), coming in specifically to save games.

McCarthy used Murphy judiciously and efficiently.  From 1935 to his final season with the Yankees in 1946 (not counting the two years--1944 and 1945--he served in the military during World War II), Johnny Murphy appeared in as many as 38 games in relief only once (in 1939) and relieved in 35 games or more only four other times.  But his relief appearances were invariably productive.  Working about two innings per relief appearance, and leading the American League in saves four times, Murphy pitched 262 games in relief for the Yankees from 1936 to 1943, when they won seven pennants in eight years. His record in relief during those seasons was 60 wins and 34 losses with 88 saves, meaning that in 70 percent (182 games) of his total relief appearances, Johnny Murphy figured directly in the outcome of the game.  McCarthy was clearly using Murphy when it mattered the most.

Indicative of McCarthy's genius in handling his pitching staff during the Joe DiMaggio-era Yankee dynasty, the New York Yankees led the league in both complete games and saves in 1937, 1939, and 1942.  This had been done only once previously, by the 1926 St. Louis Cardinals, and would be done only once more in the twentieth century--by the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers.  The significance of this hardly needs to be said:  at least until the 1990s, when complete games plummeted to less than 10 percent, teams with starting pitching good enough to lead the league in complete games did not need to go to relief pitchers so often that their pitching staff also led the league in saves.  That happened only five times in the twentieth century,including three times in six years by a Yankee team that had excellent starting pitching and a strong bullpen led by Johnny Murphy.  Manager McCarthy was more than astute in how he employed his pitching staff.  He gave his starting pitchers every opportunity to complete a victory, but was intuitive enough to know when it was . . . Johnny Murphy time.