Would you Vote for Pedro?

What if Year 2000 Pedro Martinez had to pitch with Little League Rules?

 

In the year 2000, Pedro Martinez may have had the most dominant pitching seasons of all time, or at least in the modern era.  In 29 starts, he went 18-6, had an ERA of 1.74, and had an all time record low 0.737 WHIP.  He struck out 284 batters vs. 32 walks.  Pretty dominant.

Now, let’s go back in time and imagine that the Red Sox GM was destroyed in a horrendous bunker explosion on December 31, 1999 (no one should have stocked that much gasoline in their bunker).  The new Red Sox GM for the 2000 season was hand picked from the local Little League board, and firmly believed in pitching limits.

Martinez’s 1999 season was nearly as dominate as his 2000 season.  He went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and 0.923 WHIP.  He struck out a career high 313 batters and only walked 37.  In 29 starts, and 31 games overall, he threw 3321 pitches, good for 107 pitches per game.  The horror!  The new GM was obviously concerned for Martinez’s health, since no pitcher should throw more than 60 pitches per game.

The new policy would be implemented for the 2000 season.  In order to keep Martinez happy, they would let him start every four days.  Not games, necessarily, but days.  This was actually the idea that gave me the idea for my blog.  Before reading any further, think about this.  What would happen to his numbers?  The thing that would pretty obviously change would be his win-loss record.  For the most part, a pitcher has to pitch at least 5 innings to get a win.

For this exercise, we’re going to ignore the fact that he could pitch differently with a new set of rules, and

once we get out to 29 starts, we’re going to project the stats out for the rest of the season.  This is all for fun anyway, right?

When we start him every four days, that gives him 43 starts on the season.  Again, a lot of assumptions were made as far as the projections go, but for the “What If” posts, that’s just how we’re going to roll.  Here are the results.

Stats	Original	Limited to 60 Pitches
Pitches	3164	2580
Innings	217	169 1/3
Hits	128	103
Runs	44	36
Earned Runs	42	35
Walks	32	20
Strikeouts	284	214
Home Runs	17	11
Hit Batters	14	12
Wins-Losses	18-6	2-4
ERA	1.74	1.86
WHIP	0.737	0.726
HR/9 Innings	0.71	0.59
K/9 Innings	11.79	11.37
BB/9 Innings	1.33	1.06
K/BB	8.88	10.70

In the actual year 2000, Pedro Martinez was the unanimous winner of the Cy Young Award.  This despite not winning 20 games like second and third place finishers Tim Hudson and David Wells.  The reason that I mention this is that all baseball writers/voters know the best pitcher in the league almost always has the most wins.  And 20 wins is a round number.  Out of all of the pitchers that pitched in the majors in the year 2000, only four had 20 or more wins.

So I ask you – would Pedro Martinez even had a shot at a Cy Young Award had he gone 2-4?  Let’s examine what helped him, and what hurt him, by being limited to 60 pitches per start.

Innings – HURT.  Really?  He can only throw 60 pitches and his innings were hurt?  Yes.  How much?  In real 2000, he averaged 7 ½ innings per start.  In alternate 2000, he only went 3.9.  On the surface, that doesn’t seem that good, but if you dig a little deeper, with a strikeout pitcher like Martinez, that makes some sense.

Hits – HELPED.  Real 2000 Pedro gave up 4.4 hits per start.  Alternate 2000 Pedro gave up 2.4 per start.  Only throwing 60 pitches meant that batters faced him fewer times per game, so that makes sense too.  Real 2000 Pedro gave up nearly another hit per start on average.

Walks – HELPED.  Real 2000 Pedro only issued 1.1 walks per start, which is excellent.  Until you compare to alternate 2000 Pedro who only issued .47 walks per start.  Real 2000 Pedro proceeded with a little more caution after he hit 60 pitches.

Strikeouts – HURT.  Chalk up another one to Captain Obvious.  Real 2000 Pedro struck out 9.8 batters per start.  Under the 60 pitch constraint, Alternate 2000 Pedro only notched about 5 K’s per start.  Real 2000 Pedro was just getting warmed up.

Home runs and hit batters were so low to begin with, I’d say it didn’t really hurt or help.  He also only had one balk on the season, so we’re going to go with “rounding error” there.

Let’s take a look at the averages.

ERA – HURT.  Not by much, but it was 6.7% higher.  After 60 pitches, Real 2000 Pedro’s ERA was an astonishing 1.32.  We’ll come back to this again after we look at…

WHIP – HELPED.  HELPED!  Yes, his all time low WHIP of 0.737 went down to 0.726.  That’s a decrease of 1.5%.  Real 2000 Pedro’s WHIP after 60 pitches skyrockets to 0.776.  Which still would have been good enough for best all time.

HR/9 Innings Pitched – HELPED.  Real 2000 Pedro’s HR/9 rate was an excellent 0.71/9.  But Alternate 2000 Pedro’s HR/9 rate laughs at that.  It was 0.59/9, which was a full 17% lower.  After 60 pitches, it jumped to 1.13/9.  Wait, didn’t you say just a while back that his ERA after 60 pitches was 1.32?  Yes I did.  I’m not even sure how to verbalize what all of that means.  Just think about that.  I mean, look at…  So, almost all of those runs were…  Except for a couple of homers, no one could…  Wow.

K/9 Innings Pitched – HURT.  That was a little surprising.  But it wasn’t much of a decline.  Of course, if you know Little League pitching rules, you know there is NO wiggle room.  When you hit 60, you’re coming out, if you want to pitch again in 4 days.  There were several at bats where Real 2000 Pedro was in the middle of a strike out where Alternate 2000 Pedro had to come out of the game.  Real 2000 Pedro’s K/9 ratio was a ridiculous 13.2/9 after 60 pitches.

BB/9 Innings Pitched – HELPED.  And quite a bit too.  That’s a 20% drop.  Real 2000 Pedro walked about 1 1/3 batters per 9 innings.  Alternate 2000 Pedro walked just over 1 batter per 9.  Or as I said earlier, less than half a walk per start.  Real 2000 Pedro walked 2.27 batters per 9 innings after 60 pitches.  I’m guessing that a lot of batters just gave up on trying to hit him, stopped swinging, and hoped for the best.

K/BB – HELPED.  There have only been 13 pitching seasons in major league history where the K/BB ratio was over 8.  FOUR of those seasons occurred in 1884, another in 1883, and one in 1880.  Oddly enough, after 1884, we wouldn’t see another season like that until 110 YEARS LATER when Bret Saberhagen of all people set the all time record of exactly 11 K’s per walk.  Of course, that was the strike shortened season of 1994, when everyone’s numbers were a little inflated.

Real 2000 Pedro’s ratio was 8.88, which is the seventh best season of all time.  So Alternate 2000 Pedro decides to set the bar higher and clocks in at 10.7, which would put him right behind Saberhagen for second all time.  Real 2000 Pedro’s ratio after 60 innings pitched clocks in at 5.83.  Yawn.  That ratio alone would be good for 55^th all time, but still, yawn.

Ha, I just realized that after looking down to see how far that last number ranked, there were TEN MORE pitchers in 1884 that made the top 55 for K/BB ratio.  So that season had a total of FOURTEEN.  That must have been the year they experimented with the three foot tall pitcher’s mound.

We now turn it over to the voters.  Would you vote the man as the Cy Young Award winner?  On one hand, he just had the lowest WHIP in history, the second lowest K/BB ratio in history, had the 14^th highest K/9 ratio in history, and started 43 games (the most since Phil Niekro started 44 in 1979).  On the other hand, you only won two games.  TWO GAMES.  Come on son.  We can’t rightly vote you the Cy Young Award winner having only won two games.

So in alternate 2000, Tim Hudson wins the Cy Young award and the Red Sox fire their GM and vow to never hire a Little League board member again.  Don’t worry though, Alternate 2000 Pedro.  Due to you throwing almost 600 fewer pitches that year, you’d probably still be pitching today at the age of 42.