B-Log: Live From Oroville
Posted: June 19th, 2008 | Filed under: Banny Log | 33 Comments »
In case you are wondering — and I just know that you are — Oroville, Calif., is the home of Gary Nolan, the starting pitcher everyone forgets when they think about the 1975 Cincinnati Reds (Did I mention that I’m writing this book …). In my mind, Gary is one of the most fascinating pitchers in baseball history. He made it to the big leagues when he was 18 years old, and he had one of the best 18-19 seasons in baseball history — 14-8, 2.58 ERA, 206 strikeouts in 226 innings (only Bob Feller and Dwight Gooden struck out more in the 19-year season), he became the first man to strike out Willie Mays four times in a game — and then he got hurt, then he pitched well again (he was almost matching Steve Carlton’s 1972 season through the All-Star break), then he really got hurt, then it looked like his career was over, then in ‘74 at almost exactly the time that Dr. Frank Jobe was performing Tommy John surgery on, you know, Tommy John, Jobe also performed a fairly cutting edge shoulder surgery on Nolan, removing a bone spur. Nolan came back as a whole different pitcher, but he still came back, and he was still really good, in ‘75 he went 15-9 with a 3.16 ERA, and he won the Hutch Award for his fighting spirit. The next year he REALLY messed up his shoulder, and he was soon out of baseball, and he went to Las Vegas and became a pit boss at the Mirage and Caesar’s. Yeah. You’re going to buy this book, people.
Anyway, he’s back in his old hometown of Oroville now, and he’s working at the Gold Country Casino here … so I’m writing this Banny Log with slot machine bells still ringing in my head. This is actually quite a nice little Casino with nice people, but I’ve always said that for me Vegas has a three-day expiration because of the slot machine bells. And since Margo and I were just in Vegas, I wasn’t quite ready to hear them again.
* * *
Start No. 15: Vs. St. Louis Cardinals
Innings: 7
Hits: 9
Earned runs allowed: 2.
Strikeouts: 1
Walks: 0
Homers: 0
Decision: Win (6-6)
Number of pitches: 81
Number of strikes: 58
BABIP: .346 (9 for 26)
Season BABIP: .296
Brian Bannister had what I would like to call the quintessential Banny performance on Wednesday even though he has not really had a performance quite like it all year. Does that make sense? I think maybe it does make sense … I remember a scene in the book Fever Pitch where Nick Hornby was talking with his father about all those dreadful nil-nil draws between Arsenal and some other team, can’t remember which (Aston Villa, maybe? I’m sure a reader will remind) and Hornby went back and found out that there had only been, I think, one nil-nil draw between the two. But that doesn’t really matter because that one nil-nil represented something larger, something more ominpresent about Arsenal of Hornby’s youth and the relationship with his father. It was the quintessential game, even though it hardly ever happened.
Wednesday, Banny pitched seven innings, threw only 85 pitches, gave up nine hits, gave up two runs (one on a botched defensive play by Mark Grudzielanek), walked nobody, struck out one. That, I think, is just about the perfect Banny outing, the outing that represents who he is as a man and a pitcher, When I think of Banny pitching, this is exactly how I see him, as a guy who gives up hits, works out of jams, throws strikes, doesn’t get strikeouts but does get batters to get themselves out.
The question here — and this has been the question all year long: Is this sort of outing repeatable? Can a pitcher semi-consistently strike out few batters, walk nobody, give up hits and still limit runs and win games?
There have been pitchers who have done it, but generally you have to go back a few years. In fact, since 1960, if you want to talk about the pitchers who have won 15 or more games with the fewest strikeouts, they’re pretty much all from the 1970s.
1. Bob Stanley, 1978, 15 wins, 38 Ks.
2. Dale Murray, 1975, 15 wins, 43 Ks.
3. Bob Stanley, 1979, 16 wins, 56 Ks.
4. Steve Kline, 1972, 16 wins, 58 Ks.
5. Jack Billingham, 1978, 15 wins, 59 Ks.
(tie). Bill Lee, 1979, 16 wins, 59 Ks.
And so on. I think of my friend Al Fitzmorris. In 1974, Al went 13-6 with a 2.79 ERA. He more or less repeated this in ’75 and ’76, with slightly higher ERAs. But let’s look at ‘74 — Al stared 27 games that year, he pitched 190 innings, and he struck out 53 batters. FIFTY THREE. Hell, he walked 63. His last two games pretty much represented his season. On Sept. 21 at Texas, he pitched nine innings, struck out one, walked four, gave up five hits and allowed zero earned runs. His next outing, at home against Texas this time, he went TWELVE innings, struck out one, walked six, gave up 10 hits, and allowed two earned runs. He won both games. Not bad.
How did he do it? Well, there were probably a few factors, but for me it more or less comes down to one thing: Al threw a hard sinking fastball, and nobody was all that strong in 1974 (only one player in the American League — Dick Allen — managed even 30 homers that year). So Al only gave up eight home runs and 19 doubles all year all year. You don’t want to oversimplify things but … yeah, I think that was it.
It’s very interesting to me … look at this:
In 1974, the American League hit .258/.323/.371.
In 2007, the American League hit .271/.338/.423
So that’s not even close. BUT what was the difference? Well, I looked back, and I ran into a few surprises. For instance: In 1974, batters walked 8.3% of the time, and in 2007 they walked 8.5% of the time … so that’s about the same. That shocked the heck out of me … I thought that with all our knowledge about the value of walks these days that batters would be walking A LOT more now. But they’re not. This is not entirely due to the Kansas City Royals either. If I had to guess, I would say it comes back to this: Walking is not something you can just do because you feel like it. Walking, I still suspect, is a tool.
OK … in 1974, batters struck out quite a bit less … they struck out 14.4% of the time, while batters in 2007 struck out 16.8% of the time. So batters back then did put the ball in play more. Because of this (I think) they hit a higher percentage of singles in 1974 then they did in 2007.
But here’s the difference: In 2007, players hit a much higher percentage of doubles (5.5% of the time players hit doubles in 2007 to 3.9% in 1974) and a higher percentage of home runs (2.9% to 2.1%). Triples, interestingly enough, were about the same.
So that was the difference — more homers, more doubles. That’s pretty much what it comes down to. That’s almost entirely why in 1974, teams averaged 4.1 runs per game, and in 2007 teams averaged 4.9 runs per game. Fly balls were fly balls in 1974. They became doubles and homers once stadiums shrunk, strike zones shrunk, and batters found the weight room.
What does all this mean to Banny? In his Wednesday outing, he gave up nine hits, yes, but only one extra base hit, a double. And he had a terrific outing. In all of his good outings this year he more or less pitched like it was 1974 — he didn’t give up extra base hits. In eight of his 15 starts he gave up two extra base hits or more and his ERA in those games is 7.31. In the other seven starts, when he gave up one or zero extra base hits, his ERA is 2.47.
Maybe that’s obvious … no, definitely that’s obvious. If you give up doubles and homers, you will give up runs. But obvious or not, I think that’s the simplest way to understand how Banny pitched like he did on Wednesday. Is it repeatable? Can he, even without big strikeout numbers, stay away from the home runs and the hard shots into gaps? It’s an open question. Banny Log says yes … or else, why would keep doing this even from California casinos?
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I love the Banny Log.
Jus’ Banny being Banny.
Joe,
Billy Butler is hitting .359 up in Omaha, he’s struckout 3 times in 21 games. He has 28 hits in those 21 games. What are the Royals waiting on now? Maybe they’ve found a little chemistry against the National League, but the idea was to send him down there to get his head straight. A .564 slugging percentage is a pretty straight head in my book. Could you post some thoughts on this while I’m waiting for your next book?
What you said about pitchers winning with low strikeout numbers and brought to mind another the modern-day successor of guys like Al Fitzmorris: Wang Chien-Ming. I did a search for the fewest strikeouts pitchers with 15 wins since 1990, and what do you know, Wang’s 2006 season came out on top. That was the year he went 19-6 despite allowing 233 hits in 218 innings pitched and struck out only 76. Of course, he was pitching for the mighty New York Yankees, but with his 3.63 ERA he could have potentially won 15 games even without the offensive support. There is hope yet for Banny.
I was forced to make many trips (by car!) to Oroville in the summers of my youth to visit my smelly great-grandparents. That place is hell on earth, good luck with your visit, I hope that it is brief.
Not to be an ass or anything, but start 15 was against the Cardinals, not the Rangers.
…I still knew what you meant…
Don’t forget that the umps didn’t change out baseballs in 1974 like they do now. Pitchers knew how to throw a good scuffball. Funny how all the pitchers mentioned had a good sinker.
ajnrules –
Wang throws a hell of a lot more ground balls than Banny does, which allows him to deflate his ERA. I believe he throws that Splitter more than any other pitch.
The reason everyone focuses on Banny is he is a flyball pitcher. To get away with so many hits the pitcher generally has to be a sinkerballer, so as to induce more groundballs.
I always make sure to check in on the Banny blog’s. great stuff Joe. When might the book be out?
Is it just me, or is Brian Bannister basically Paul Byrd? I swear that looks just like one of Byrd’s “good” starts.
Seriously, do you think it’s more impressive to be a pitcher and be able to put out a line like that and be a 3.something ERA pitcher with so few Ks or is it more impressive to be Joba like with a ton of Ks and a 2.something ERA?
The Reds of that era sure had a lot of young hard-throwing pitchers who were completely done by age 30.
Can a pitcher semi-consistently strike out few batters, walk nobody, give up hits and still limit runs and win games?
If he keeps the ball inside the ballpark, then yes. Yes he can.
~
OT: beautiful Balboni – lol.
For a second I thought you were visiting the town known for it’s famous cookies – Oreoville, CA. It’s former mayor was a political big shot in the 1930s and was called Mr. Big Stuff after he helped his slate of candidates win in 1938. I think that’s where the Double Stuff and Oreo Big Stuff got their names from.
http://www.retrojunk.com/details_commercial/3974/
Just looked over the ‘75 Reds roster at baseball-reference.com. Talk about pitching to contact — the only man on the Reds staff who struck out more than 100 batters was Fred Norman.
I’m old enough to remember watching the ‘75 Reds on TV while listening to Marty and Joe, so I’m looking forward to reading “The Machine.”
“There is hope yet for Banny.”
If he goes to the New York Yankees, yes. If he keeps playing for the brutally inept Royals, I don’t think his offense is going to bail him out very often.
Wang puts up great win totals, but every single time I see the guy pitch, he gives up a ton of hits and quite a few runs.
When he’s on his game, he can be incredible. He’ll throw a 1 or 2 hit shutout. But he’s only on his game like once every six starts or so. I keep thinking that it’s going to end sometime soon.
I’m equally mystified that walk rates are the same now as they were 30 years ago.
I don’t know if you’ve touched on this before, since I just started reading the blog, but Bannister — statistically, anyway — reminds me a lot of Chien-Ming Wang, only with more homers allowed. Wang walks a few more hitters, and maybe that’s part of the deal for Bannister — instead of trying to battle back if he falls behind in the count, maybe it’s best for him to not make a mistake and throw a strike for strike’s sake.
Then again, Bannister hasn’t given up a homer on a 3-ball count this year, so what do I know?
If Banny can keep pitching against the Cardinals when they’re missing their HOF first baseman, starting catcher and generally in a woeful offensive slump since Pujols went down, then sure, he can keep it up. He should get another crack at them next week, right?
…and hopefully another win. Thanks for the sweep of the Cardinals!
I was at a sports bar while the game was on, so I was to watch Bannister for the first time since I began reading this blog. He is interesting to watch, but sort of nerve-wracking at the same time. I’d hate to have him on my team and cheer for him to bob and weave and rope-a-dope his way through six innings every five days. I already have to put up with Jason Marquis.
Oh, and I’m certain that no one here could really care less about my constant Cubs comments…but, I actually thought of Joe and his hatred for the intentional walk several times during the game today.
Brian Anderson hit 8th today for the White Sox, just ahead of pitcher John Danks. Danks never hits in the AL and thus should be an easy mark at the plate. At any rate, Anderson came up twice during the game with a runner on 2nd and two outs. The Cubs were trailing 3-1 both times, and both times color announcer Bob Brenly (the former manager who won the 2001 World Series with the Arizona Diamondbacks) mentioned the possibly positive strategy of intentionally walking Anderson to get to Danks. Twice Cubs manager Lou Pinella eschewed that idea and let Ted Lilly pitch to Anderson; twice Lilly struck Anderson out.
Then in the 9th, with the score tied 3-3, left-handed A.J. Pierzynski came to the plate to face Kerry Wood with the go-ahead runner on 2nd and 2 out. Again Brenly mentioned the idea of walking the left-hander to get the the right-handed hitter behind him (this time Carlos Quentin). Again Pinella let his pitcher go after the lefty, and again it paid off when Wood struck out Pierzynski. The Cubs then won the game in the bottom of the 9th.
I’m not sure how much I believe in “baseball karma”, but a small part of me does wonder whether or not the strikeouts were Pinella’s reward from the Baseball Gods for showing faith in his pitchers and not “managing scared”.
Then again, the White Sox are by nature a power-laden-but-strikeout-prone team, so who knows?
I believe Gary Nolan struck out 15 in that game against the Giants, using nothing but a fastball. I hope you got a chance to talk to him about that game. He could have been one of the best ever had he not been injured.
Well, there’s another 4-run lead…
I’ll just mention Jeff Ballard. Couldn’t strike out anyone and only had the one good season, 1989, when he went 18-8 for the almost-reached-October Orioles. He whiffed 62 that year, in 215.1 IP, both career highs.
Don Mattingly was having his last Donnie Baseball season — his back injury was in 1990 — and he had one of his very best years of not striking out, a mere 30 in 693 PA.
But on one very weird night, 25-August-1989, Ballard notched five K’s against the Yankees (his personal high, and one of four games he did this), and Mattingly was three of them (also his personal high, and one of only five games in which he whiffed three times), all three swinging.
That’s about as unlikely an occurrence on the diamond as can be found.
The Paul Byrd comment was priceless. Banny is like the poor man’s Paul Byrd. Incidentally, Byrd once stepped off the mound during a particularly empty Phillies-Expos weekday doubleheader at Veterans stadium and glared at my friend and I for taunting him with “worst all-star ever” chants. Love that guy.
-Completely Unrelated-
Can’t wait for all of the “Curt Schilling = HOF (??)” collumns and blogs, of which, I’m sure, Joe, you are dilligently in the midst of working on as we speak…
I think Schilling would make his Hall of Fame debut in 2013 since he didn’t play at all in 2008, and that’s going to be a tough year to be on the Hall of Fame ballot. The ballot will also feature Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Julio Franco, and Mike Piazza. And, there’s all the rumors about the world being destroyed in 2012. :p
Worst All-Star ever? That’s not a bad topic either. I nominate Steve Swisher, 1976 (65 OPS+).
I’m guessing that if more hitters were like Banny, then Banny couldn’t get away with it so much, but a lot of them just walk up to the box by the pentagon with a big stick and look for something to hit, and a guy like Banny can work with that.
Oh, and I can’t help but chime in on the “world being destroyed in 2012 rumors.” Have some optimism people. Big things are coming, and we might not all survive, but all in all I think it will be very much for the best. And yeah, it’ll probably be soon.
ascension2000.com
Here’s what I’ve been thinking about BABIP throughout the whole offseason ‘controversy’ that centered around that series of interviews Banny did where he asserted that he could control his own BABIP and the sabremetric community went nuts. I don’t understand why a pitcher couldn’t control his own BABIP. Here’s how it works, and it seems really simple (to me):
BABIP can’t be completely random. If you put a ball in play, its likelihood of being a base hit or being an out depends heavily on how you hit it. If you hit it on the screws, it is much more likely to be a hit. I’d like to see a BABIP statistic for balls-hit-on-the-screws (BHOTS). Sure, Ross Gload snags a few scorching liners that are hit right at him (that would be triples had they been hit a few inches to the right), but the BABIP for scorching line drives has to be somewhere around .400. And I don’t mean just line drives, which can be weak, I mean scorchers. So why is it so hard to believe that a pitcher could pitch to contact, yet the pitch the ball in such a way that he prevents BHOTS? Maybe his fastball, while coming in at 88 mph, has a funny movement on it that prevents hitters from squaring it up (per Trey Hillman). Maybe the unique movement Banny puts on his pitches causes them to be popped up. Is there a physicist in the house? Can some physics professor explain how a baseball might be moving so that it glances off the top of the bat more often than it hits the meat? At any rate, pitching to contact doesn’t have to yield the exact same results over time. People are always talking about the movement of pitches as it relates to strikeouts (i.e., Rivera using his cut fastball to get strikeouts), but the only time I hear people talking about how ball movement effects contact is when they’re referring to “groundball pitchers.” Could ball movement allow a pitcher to be an effective “harmless pop-up pitcher”? Just a few rambling thoughts.
One more vote idea:
Best hitter never to make an All-Star game. My early favorite is Tim Salmon.
“The Reds of that era sure had a lot of young hard-throwing pitchers who were completely done by age 30.”
-Was Dusty Baker managing the Reds that year??
“I’m not sure how much I believe in “baseball karmaâ€, but a small part of me does wonder whether or not the strikeouts were Pinella’s reward from the Baseball Gods for showing faith in his pitchers and not “managing scaredâ€.”
I’d say it was a small sample size
“I don’t understand why a pitcher couldn’t control his own BABIP.”
It’s actually fairly commonly accepted in the sabermetrics establishment that a pitcher can – TO A DEGREE – control his BABIP. But by that, we’re talking about making a difference between your BABIP being .290 against or it being .265 against or so. A pitcher can’t control his BABIP completely, but to be fair to Banny, I don’t think that’s what he meant. He was just saying that he didn’t hold with the once-commonly-held belief that BABIP is completely outside of a pitcher’s control.