Hall of Fame Weekend: Cox, Maddux, Glavine and the '90s Atlanta Dynasty

With manager Bobby Cox and two of his three aces, the sublime right-hander Greg Maddux and the sublime southpaw Tom Glavine, accounting for half of the six Hall of Fame inductees being honored this weekend in Cooperstown, a subtext is surely the remarkable run of the Atlanta Braves between 1991 and 2005. The third ace, right-hander John Smoltz, becomes eligible for consideration in next year's Hall of Fame class. They were together for ten years beginning in 1993, when Mad Dog (that would be the perpetually-innocent looking Maddux) signed with the Braves as a free agent (after six years with the Cubs), until Glavine departed as a free agent after the 2002 season. In the first year they were all together, 21 years ago, the Braves won major league baseball's last great traditional pennant race with a dramatic come-from-way-behind surge to take the National League's Western Division.    

Hall of Fame Weekend: Cox, Maddux, Glavine and the 1990s Atlanta Dynasty

Bobby Cox was in his third full season as the Braves manager in 1993. He had stepped from the plush air conditioning of the front office where he was General Manager into the outdoor heat and humidity of the Atlanta dugout in the summer of 1990. The Braves finished with the worst record in the National League that year, making it quite the surprise then when he managed Atlanta to the NL Western Division title the very next year, and into the World Series besides. In a year that is a prime candidate for his best managerial performance, Cox's 1991 Braves trailed the Dodgers by as much as 9-1/2 games on July 7 before storming back into the pennant race that went down to the last weekend. Cox managed the Braves to 18 wins in 25 games down the September stretch in which first place was directly at stake with his team no more than a game ahead or a game behind at the start of play.

But 1991 was nothing compared to the drama of 1993, when Atlanta trailed San Francisco by 10 games on July 22--their worst deficit of the season--and by 9-1/2 as late as August 7. From then until the end of the season, Cox managed the Braves to a phenomenal 39-11 record (.780 winning percentage) the rest of the way to overtake the Giants. A nine-game winning streak got them started, bringing the Braves to within 6-1/2 games on August 18. A stretch of 17 victories in 21 games finally put them in first place alone on September 11, but the division title was not secured until the final day of the season when the Braves won their 104th, while the Giants had to settle for 103 after losing to the Dodgers.

If this was the current wild card era, Atlanta and San Francisco would both have been virtually assured a place in the playoffs even as early as September 10 because, even though they were tied for first in their division, they shared a 9-1/2 game advantage in what would have been the wild card race. The Braves and Giants would have spent the rest of the season battling each other for position rather than a playoff berth, their focus geared more towards lining up their starting pitchers and providing whatever rest was needed for the weary to enhance their prospects in the post-season. Moreover, losing out on first place then was not as consequential as now when MLB has a single-elimination game for two wild card entries in each league, because then the wild card team was an automatic entry--although without home field advantage--in the best-of-seven division series round. But 1993 was the last season before the wild card format began, which meant the only avenue to the post-season was winning the division. The Giants' only consolation for winning the extraordinary number of 103 games was ... knowing they had won 103 games (well, there is that), as they sat at home while the post-season went on without them.

The offensive catalyst for Atlanta's momentous drive to the division title was the July 19 acquisition of San Diego first baseman Fred McGriff, who hit .310 with 19 home runs and 55 RBI in 68 games for the Braves. It was the Braves' brilliant pitching, however, that kept up the momentum. Maddux, who began the month of August in his first year in Atlanta with a 12-8 record and 2.83 ERA, was 8-2 in his last 12 starts with an ERA of 1.46 to earn his second consecutive Cy Young Award. Glavine was 11-2 after the Braves had trailed by 10 games and ended the season with a 22-6 record. Smoltz, who was muddling about with an 8-8 record as of July 22, finished with seven wins in his last ten decisions. And now-forgotten southpaw Steve Avery was 8-3 from that point to finish with an 18-6 record.

Superior pitching defined the Braves' run of excellence--Atlanta led the National League in fewest runs allowed 11 consecutive years between 1992 and 2002--and it was Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz who defined the Braves' superior pitching. As noted in an earlier post on this blog, http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/12/maddux-glavine-and-smoltz-incomparable.html, from the time Maddux came to Atlanta in 1993 until Smoltz was forced to sit out the 2000 season with Tommy John surgery (after which the three were not in the same rotation again because Smoltz returned as the closer), the Braves had the most sustained run of starting pitcher excellence in major league history. No other team ever had a trio of starters that could match them for performance excellence for multiple seasons. In the seven years they were together in the rotation, Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz had a combined 342-166 record (that's a .673 winning percentage) and won five Cy Young Awards between them.

Maddux, of course, won three of them--all in a row in 1993, '94 and '95--making him the first pitcher not only to win four straight Cy Young Awards (his string began in 1992 with the Cubs), but the first pitcher to win that many in all. I argued in back-to-back posts last year that, notwithstanding that his excellence has never been questioned, Maddux is under-appreciated for the dominating pitcher he was because he did not fit the classical mode of being a power pitcher or a big strikeout pitcher in the context of his times. http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-greg-maddux-anomaly-part-i-not-k.html and http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-greg-maddux-anomaly-part-ii-maddux.html.

Greg Maddux was most definitely not a "dominating" power pitcher; he never led the league in strikeouts and his strikeouts-to-innings pitched ratio was typically only marginally better than the league average. Even so, from 1992 to 1998--the years he was at his best--Maddux was one of the most dominant pitchers of all time. In his first six years in Atlanta (1993-98), Maddux's 2.15 ERA was more than two full runs less than the National League average ERA of 4.18; his walks plus hits ratio per inning was less than one at 0.97 while the league average WHIP was nearly 50 percent higher at 1.38; and his control was so good that he allowed only 1.4 walks per 9 innings compared to the league average of 3.3 per 9, and 15 percent of the walks he gave up were intentional.

Tom Glavine was nearly the equal of Maddux as a master of his craft. With back-to-back 20-win seasons in 1991 and 1992, Glavine had already established himself as one of baseball's elite pitchers by the time Maddux became his teammate in '93. He was not as stingy in giving up hits, walks and runs as Mad Dog and his strikeouts-to-innings ratio was typically even less impressive than Maddux, but Glavine won at least 20 games to lead the league five times in his Brave years. Maddux had only two 20-win seasons--in his last year in Chicago and his first in Atlanta--but almost certainly would have had four in a row were it not for the collective bargaining dispute that cost a total of 66 games in the 1994 and 1995 seasons. Maddux won 19 games for the Braves on four separate occasions, including a 19-2 record in 1995, a season shortened by 18 games because of the strike.

Bobby Cox led the Braves to an unprecedented and unsurpassed 14 consecutive division titles between 1991 and 2005, with the hiccup of there being no division title awarded in 1994 when the season was suspended with the Braves in second place in their first year in the realigned National League's Eastern Division. With 48 games left on the schedule, however, there was still plenty of time to close a much smaller gap than had to be overcome in 1993. Cox's most formidable Brave teams were when Maddux, Glavine and Smoltz anchored the starting rotation and his best managerial performances were likely in 1991 and 1993 when he led the Braves to division titles from far behind in the mid-summer standings. But a strong argument can be made that Cox's managerial genius was most on display in the last seven of Atlanta's 14 consecutive division titles because of the high turnover of players that was a reflection of aging, free agent losses and budget mindfulness. Bobby Cox was a master at integrating new players to keep Atlanta's supremacy of the National League East going and going ... at least until 2006 when the Mets finally prevailed.

Maddux. Glavine. And Smoltz: Incomparable Trio

Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, both on the Hall of Fame ballot  for the first time, were two-thirds of probably the best three-man starting front for a major league team in history, along with John Smoltz, whose first year of Cooperstown eligibility won't be till next year. This Baseball Historical Insight poses the question:  were there any other teams in history whose top three starters over a period of at least five years compare favorably with the Atlanta Braves' trio from 1993 to 1999? 

Maddux. Glavine. And Smoltz:  Incomparable Trio

Maddux.  Glavine.  And Smoltz.  From the time Greg Maddux came to Atlanta as a free agent in 1993 until John Smoltz was forced to sit out the 2000 season because of Tommy John surgery (after which the three were not in the same rotation again, Smoltz returning as a closer), the Braves had the most sustained run of pitching excellence in baseball history.  While finishing with the best record in the National League every year except 1994--which was terminated 48-games short in early August because of a catastrophic players' strike--the Braves led both leagues in fewest runs allowed every year from 1993 to 1999, and their adjusted earned run average over those seven years, taking into account their home park and the offensive level at the time, was a major league-best 26 percent better than the average pitching staff. Maddux went 128-51 (.715), won at least 19 games four times, led the league in ERA four times, allowed the fewest runners on base four times, and won the Cy Young Award in each of his first three seasons with Atlanta (giving him four in a row, to go with the one he won with the Cubs in 1992).  Glavine, a southpaw who had established himself among elite pitchers before Maddux's arrival with back-to-back 20-win seasons in 1991 (when he won Cy Young) and 1992, went 114-56 (.671) between 1993 and 1999, leading the league with 22 wins in 1993 and 20 in 1998, was honored with a second Cy Young Award in 1998, and his league-leading 21 victories in 2000 helped ease the Braves' pain of not having Smoltz on the mound.  Smoltz, before blowing out his elbow landed him in surgery, went 100-59 (.629), led the league in winning percentage and innings pitched twice, won 24 and his own Cy Young Award in 1996, and struck out more batters than innings pitched three times.  At 342-166 (.673), Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz won two-thirds of their decisions, had a combined winning percentage 49 percentage points better than Atlanta's overall .625 from 1993 to 1999, and captured five Cy Young Awards when they were in the same rotation.  

Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz are all three likely to be Hall of Fame inductees.  Only two other teams had three Hall of Fame pitchers together in their starting rotation for as many as five years, but neither with the impact at the time that the Braves had with their three.  Back when the American League was still a fledgling, Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics from 1903 to 1907 had the benefit of the services of southpaws Eddie Plank and Rube Waddell together with right-hander Chief Bender.  The three started two-thirds of Philadelphia's games during those years, combining for 299 (72 percent) of the A's 414 wins.  Despite their efforts, however, the Athletics won only one pennant (in 1905) and competed for only one other (in 1907), and only once did the Philadelphia pitching staff they led finish better than fourth in the league in earned run average. Nonetheless, Waddell (107-75, .588) and Plank (116-67, .634) were two of the most dominating pitchers in the league for the entirety of those years, with the eccentric (too often to a fault) Rube dominating the league in strikeouts each year, while Bender (76-54, .585)--whose rookie season was in 1903 at the age of 19--was still coming into his own and was not among his league's five best pitchers in any of those seasons. Mack counted on Waddell and Plank for 300 innings per season; Bender reached 270 innings in his rookie season, but did not throw as many as 250 again until 1909, averaging only 23 starts per year from 1904 to 1907.

With the arrival of Early Wynn in a trade from Washington in 1949 to join up with Bob Feller and Bob Lemon, the Cleveland Indians had a trio of future Hall of Famers in their core rotation for the next five years.  Lemon and Wynn were just entering the peak of their best seasons.  With 20 wins in 1948 to establish himself as one of baseball's best pitchers, Lemon was a 20-game winner in six of the next eight seasons and led the league with 18 wins in one of the two years he did not win 20, and Wynn won 20 for Cleveland four times. Bob Feller, however, was on the downside of his great career; although he was still only 30, Feller had already thrown nearly 2,500 innings in 10 seasons.  He had been a 20-game winner five consecutive seasons and led the league in strikeouts seven straight years (not including three full seasons lost to World War II and a late return to the diamond in 1945), but after 1948, Feller won 20 only once more and never again approached the strikeout totals from earlier in his career.  Bob Feller was actually the fourth-best pitcher in Cleveland from 1949 until the sands of time ran out on his career.

Mike Garcia was the third man joining with Lemon and Wynn from 1949 to 1956 to give Cleveland one of the best starting threesomes in baseball history.  Garcia won 104 games with a .650 winning percentage in his first six years with the Indians before descending toward mediocrity in 1955, had back-to-back 20-win seasons in 1951 and 1952, and led the league in ERA in '49 and '54.  From 1949 to 1954, Lemon (128-68, .653), Wynn (112-63, .640), and Garcia (104-57, .646) were three of the five best pitchers in the American League, based on the WAR metric for pitcher value, and Cleveland led the league in ERA four times.  With a temporarily-rejuvenated Feller, Garcia, and Wynn winning 20 in 1951 and Wynn, Garcia, and Lemon doing so in 1952, the Indians became the first major league team since the New York Giants in 1904 and 1905 to have three 20-game winners in back-to-back seasons.  While competitive virtually every year, Cleveland won only one pennant, in 1954, because the Yankees had an all-around better team during those seasons, including their own imposing trio of top starters in Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, and Ed Lopat.  The Yankees would not have been as successful without those guys, but Lemon, Wynn, Garcia, and a declining-but-still-effective Feller gave the Indians the better pitching staff.

The only team since the '51 and '52 Indians to boast three 20-game winners in back-to-back seasons was the Baltimore Orioles in 1970 and 1971 (when they had four).  The Orioles from 1969 to 1974 are the only team to potentially rival the Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz Braves for having the best-three front line starters.  Jim Palmer (106-54, .650) and lefties Mike Cuellar (125-62, .668) and Dave McNally (111-65, .631) had a combined .654 winning percentage, 44 percentage points better than their team's, during the six years the Orioles won five division titles and three American League pennants.  Palmer, who had four straight 20-win seasons from 1970 to 1973 (before being temporarily sidetracked by arms problems that condemned him to a 7-12 mark in 1974), is the only one of the three in the Hall of Fame.  Although neither Cuellar and McNally was able to sustain their level of excellence for a long enough time to have been serious Hall of Fame candidates, both (along with Palmer) were among the five best pitchers in the league between 1969 and 1972 based on their consistency compared to other pitchers during those years. McNally had his own stretch of four consecutive 20-win seasons beginning in 1968, and Cuellar won 20 four times, including three in a row from 1969 to 1971 when the Orioles dominated the American League by winning the first three pennants in the new division-era, and 18 twice. In their six years together, the trio won 342 games--the same number as Atlanta's threesome in seven seasons, except in an era when complete games were still prevalent.  Palmer, Cuellar, and McNally completed 44 percent of their starts, compared to Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz completing 14 percent of theirs in an age when relief specialization was coming into its own.  The Orioles were the stingiest team in all of major league baseball in the first five years that Palmer, Cuellar, and McNally pitched off the same rubber at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, with a major league-best adjusted ERA 19 percent better than the league average.

When Cliff Lee came back to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2011 as a free agent, the baseball world was quick to anoint the Phillies' front-three starters--Lee, Roy Halladay, and Cole Hamels--as the next coming of Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz. Although both were in their early 30s, Halladay and Lee was each still a top-flight ace.  Hamels, also one of the game's best pitchers, had just entered his prime.  The three combined for a 50-23 (.685) record in 2011 for a team that won 102 games and contributed to the Phillies having by far the best pitching staff in major league baseball, with the lowest ERA and by far the highest collective pitcher value as measured by the WAR metric. Unfortunately, their greatness together was short-lived as Halladay, now in his mid-30s, endured shoulder problems that limited him to only 28 starts in 2012 and 2013 and substantially reduced his effectiveness.  Lee and Hamels remain at the top of their game, but two isn't three.

Finally, it remains to be seen whether some combination of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Gio Gonzalez, and now Doug Fister will give the Washington Nationals--my local team--a compelling threesome for the next four or five years that might someday be spoken of in the same vein as . . .

Maddux.  Glavine.  And Smoltz.


Note:  the following are links to two earlier blogs on Greg Maddux:  http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-greg-maddux-anomaly-part-i-not-k.html and http://brysholm.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-greg-maddux-anomaly-part-ii-maddux.html
    

The Greg Maddux Anomaly, Part II: Maddux at His Best--NL's Best Pitcher in the 20th Century

Notwithstanding his recognized place as one of the greatest pitchers in history, Greg Maddux is not a name one normally associates with being one of the most dominant pitchers in history.  This Baseball Historical Insight makes a case, however, (which I acknowledge is likely a minority viewpoint) for Maddux when he was at his best from 1992 to 1998, without being a dominating power pitcher, being arguably more dominant than any other pitcher in the National League over a minimum of five consecutive years in the 20th century. 

The Greg Maddux Anomaly, Part II:  Maddux at His Best--NL's Best Pitcher in the 20th Century

When talking about the best players in major league history we tend to think in terms of the totality of their careers.  Inherent in those evaluations is what each individual player accomplished when they were in their prime, during their best years, but ultimately the discussion usually comes down to bottom line career numbers--like 3,000 hits or 300 wins. With a lifetime record of 355-227 and the fifth-most victories of any major league pitcher since the beginning of the 20th century, Greg Maddux is a lock to be elected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility next year.  His excellence duly recognized, Maddux, I believe, is nonetheless under-appreciated for the dominating pitcher he was.  My previous post focused on Maddux being unique among the most dominant pitchers in that he alone among them was not dominating in the classical sense of being a power pitcher, or a big strikeout pitcher in the context of his times.  The mild-mannered appearance of Maddux on the mound belied his Mad Dog competitiveness, as though Clark Kent did his super deeds without bothering to change into his Superman tights and cape.

Looking at a pitcher's minimum of five consecutive years when he was at his best using the wins above the average pitcher and wins above replacement metrics and taking account of "adjusted ERA" (also referred to as "ERA+")--which normalizes a pitcher's earned run average for both the context of the time and his team's home park--can be revealing as to which pitchers were the best when they were at their best.  Based on their best years, the pitchers being considered in this analysis are, in order of appearance with their best years in parenthesis:  Walter Johnson (1910-16); Pete Alexander (1911-17); Lefty Grove (1928-33); Bob Feller (1939-47, not including 1942-45 when he was serving in World War II); Sandy Koufax (1961-66); Roger Clemens (1986-92); Maddux (1992-98); Randy Johnson (1997-2004); and Pedro Martinez (1997-2003).  The fact that some of the indisputably greatest pitchers in history (Christy Mathewson, Warren Spahn, Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, and Nolan Ryan, for example) are not considered in this analysis is only because their margins of superiority over the league average pitcher was not as great in some of their best years.  Their absence from this analysis is not in any way to suggest they were not dominant pitchers, perhaps even better for the course of their careers than those being considered here, including Maddux.

Unlike the other pitchers in this analysis, each of who led the league in strikeouts at least twice during their best years and had strikeouts-to-innings pitched ratios much better than the league average, Maddux's K-ratio was typically only marginally better than the league average.  K-Man, Maddux surely was not, but his basic numbers for his best years of 1992 to 1998 are impressive:  127 wins against only 53 losses for a .706 winning percentage, an ERA of 2.15, a walks/hits-per inning pitched (WHIP) ratio under 1.00 at 0.97, and control so good that he allowed only 1.4 walks per nine innings.  And 40 of his 269 walks in 1,675.1 innings during those seven years were intentional, accounting for 15 percent of the total bases on balls he surrendered.  After going 20-11 for the 1992 Cubs, who finished the season with a record six games below .500, and signing with the Braves as a free agent, Maddux won 107 and lost only 42 for a .718 winning percentage and had a 2.15 ERA in his first six years with Atlanta from 1993 to 1998.

In 1994, Maddux became the sixth pitcher to win three Cy Young Awards (after Koufax, Seaver, Jim Palmer, Steve Carlton, and Clemens, who would end up with seven for his career) and the first to win the award three straight times.  (Koufax, Denny McLain, Palmer, and Clemens had won back-to-back Cy Youngs before Maddux.)  The next year, Maddux won his fourth straight Cy Young Award, becoming at the same time the first pitcher ever to win the award that often.  (Randy Johnson matched him with four straight when he was pitching for Arizona between 1999 and 2002, which gave The Big Unit five for his career.)  The last two of his Cy Young Awards, Maddux was the unanimous winner.

After winning 20 games back-to-back in 1992 and 1993, Maddux most likely would have had four straight 20-win seasons were it not for the players' strike/owners' lockout that shortchanged the 1994 and 1995 seasons.  He was 16-6, leading the league in both wins and a 1.56 ERA, when the 1994 season was terminated on August 12, only 114 games into the schedule; Maddux would have had at least nine, and possibly ten, more starts had the season been played to completion.  And in 1995, Maddux finished the shortened-to-154-game season with a 19-2 record and a league-leading 1.63 ERA, having missed two starts while the owners and the players union deliberated on ending their standoff.  (Oakland's Dave Stewart was the last major league pitcher to win 20 games four years in a row, from 1987 to 1990, with not nearly the relative dominance of Mad Dog Maddux.)

Aside from the basic numbers, the case for Maddux as arguably the most dominant National League pitcher in the 20th century includes the fact that his adjusted ERA was more than 150 percent better than the average National League pitcher in 1994 and 1995 and close to twice as good two other years.  Maddux had the league's best adjusted ERA every year from 1992 to 1995 and again in 1998.  Among the NL pitchers being considered in this analysis, Pete Alexander had an adjusted ERA more than 50 percent better than the league average only three times--in each of his 30-win seasons from 1915 to 1917--and Koufax's adjusted ERA was more than 50 percent better than the league average only in his last four years before crippling pain in his arthritic left elbow forced his retirement.  Both had the league's best adjusted ERA only twice during their best years.  Randy Johnson alone is in the argument about whether he or Maddux was the most dominant pitcher in NL history since 1901 based on their "best years," but his best years in the National League straddled the 20th and this century, and while his adjusted ERA was the best in the league every year between 1999 and 2004, except for when injury limited him to only 18 starts and 114 innings in 2003, he never doubled the league average.

Among the American League pitchers being considered in this analysis, Lefty Grove--who had the AL's best adjusted ERA four years running at 50 percent better than the league average from 1929 to 1932--and Roger Clemens, who led the league three times between 1986 and 1992, both had only one year in which their adjusted ERA was more than double the league average.  Bob Feller in his best years never led the league in adjusted ERA, probably done in by his wildness.  Walter Johnson's seven best years from 1910 to 1916 were probably the best of any major league pitcher in the 20th century; his adjusted ERAs relative to the league average over his best years were marginally superior to Maddux's, and his basic numbers much better.  Johnson, however, pitched in the very different  dead ball era, whereas Maddux's best years encompassed the first half of the so-called "steroids" era when, as he and Atlanta pitching sidekick Tom Glavine commiserated in a commercial at the time, "chicks dig the long ball."

Pedro Martinez has the strongest case for best years that were the most dominant in baseball history, for his between 1997 (his last year with Montreal before traded on the cusp of his free agency to Boston) and 2003.  In five separate seasons, Martinez's adjusted ERA was more than double the league average--and in 2000, nearly triple.  Martinez, however, did not have the durability of Greg Maddux who, rarely missing a start, led the league in innings pitched four straight years from 1992 to 1995 and was in the top three two other times.  Excluding the two strike-shortened seasons, Maddux always started at least 33 games, and he averaged 7.4 innings per start.  Martinez made as many as 33 starts only once in his best years (in 1998) and averaged fewer than seven innings per start in the last three of his best years, the first of which he made only 18 starts because of rotator cuff problems.

A final word on Greg Maddux.  In 1993, his first season in Atlanta (still in the NL's Western Division), the Braves won 41 of their last 56 games to dramatically overcome the 7-1/2 game lead the Giants enjoyed at the end of July to beat out San Francisco for the division title with 104 wins by only one game in the last true pennant race before the wild card format would have put both teams in the post-season.  Maddux, who went into the month of August with a 12-8 record and a 2.83 ERA, was brilliant down the stretch: 8-2 in 12 starts with an ERA of 1.46 in 92.1 innings.  And in 1994, when the Braves (now in the NL East) were only 20-18 from July 1 till the season was suspended (and ultimately ended) on August 12, slipping to six games behind the Expos, Maddux in eight starts during that dismal Atlanta stretch won six, lost two, and had a sub-one ERA at 0.93.  





I

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.