The pitcher who hit two grand slams

By Bill


I've written about this once before (I won't link to it, because why?), but only in passing, and it deserves more than that.

Entering the 1966 season, the newly-moved-to-Atlanta Braves' Tony Cloninger was a promising young pitcher. He was 26. He'd been in the league for five years, and had seen a steady increase in just about everything -- innings, wins, strikeouts and strikeout rate, ERA+ (with the corresponding drop in ERA), etc. In '65, Cloninger finished in the top ten in wins, innings, strikeouts, starts, and homers per nine (while also leading the league in walks, and posting just a 107 ERA+). He wasn't a superstar, yet, but he seemed to be heading in the right direction.

One thing it didn't look like he'd ever become, though, was a hitter. Cloninger was a pretty typical pitcher on that front; he'd finally hit his first home run in 1965, and in his five-year career, he was a .174/.179/.211 hitter in 329 plate appearances. That's a little bit better than the pitcher's norm -- NL pitchers hit .138/.170/.175 as a group in '65 -- but certainly not enough better to get excited about.

Then, 1966 happened.

Steve Carlton's '72, King Felix's '10 and the Myth of Knowing How to Win

By Bill

I suspect that what we're seeing right now in the American League is something we'll see in one or the other of the leagues almost every September for the next mess o' years: one pitcher has the most wins, one has been the best at preventing runs, and there's a heated debate (among, increasingly, fans of the team the wins guy pitches for on the one hand and almost everybody else in the world on the other) over which one deserves the Cy Young Award.

You can guess which side I come down on in the Felix-vs.-C.C. debate, and it's been covered more than adequately elsewhere (including last week's podcast), so I won't discuss it here; I'll just heartily endorse this, and this, and this.

What I do want to address is one line of argument the pro-Sabathia crowd keeps bringing up in this debate. You see it mostly in angry comments to articles like the ones I just linked to, but it's probably phrased most ably by courant.com's Dom Amore (who doesn't ultimately pick C.C., but uses this argument to take Felix out of the equation right away; the bolded emphasis is mine):

Pitching isn't like a golf tournament where the lowest aggregate score wins, it's Match Play - the job of a starting pitcher is to match the other guy on each given time out. This is why a great pitcher can win a ton of games for a bad team, like Steve Carlton in 1972, while others, no matter how talented, seem to find their way to .500 no matter what kind of team they're on, such as A.J. Burnett.

Sounds good, right? Well, not to me, and probably not to you either since you've found your way to this blog, but you can see why it would sound good to a lot of pretty smart people. Most serious baseball fans get the allusion right away: in 1972, the Philadelphia Phillies won just 59 games, and Carlton was credited with the "win" in nearly half of those victories, going 27-10 in his 41 starts. If he can win with a terrible team like that, why is it unfair to expect Felix Hernandez to win with the similarly terrible Mariners?

Seeking Second Cys

Lar, at Wezen-ball, had an interesting exercise going today, looking to find seasons where hall of famers swept the major post-season awards. Lar identified three seasons, all pre-1967 (which is when the writers began awarding the Cy Young in each league), where three Hall of Famers dominated the categories. But that didn't seem fair. After all, the writers only had hit on three awards those years, rather than the four from '67 on. The Common Man was responding on this topic in the comments section of Lar's piece, extrapolating on his idea, and wouldn't you know, it turned into a post in its own right:

I like this exercise a lot, Lar. Going back to your data, I looked at those '57, '59, and '66 seasons where HOFers swept the awards, and thought about awarding a second Cy Young and seeing what would happen.

1957: I gotta think the AL award goes to Jim Bunning, who led the league in IP, tied for the lead in Wins, 2nd in strikeouts, and 3rd in ERA in his first big season. That would give you a clean sweep.

1959: This year probably comes down to one of three guys in the NL. Warren Spahn led the league in IP (292), tied for the lead in wins, and finished 3rd in ERA. But Sad Sam Jones also pitched 270 innings that year, winning the same number, and won the ERA crown outright while finishing 2nd in strikeouts. Finally, Elroy Face won 18 games out of the bullpen, against just 1 loss, and finished 7th in the MVP race. So it's not clear that you'd get a sweep there.

1966: This is, by far, the most interesting (to me anyway), as the AL winner almost certainly would have been Jimmie Kaat of the Twins. Kittie threw 304 innings in 41 starts that year (both led the league), and won 25 games (five more than runner-up Denny McLain). He also was 6th in the AL in ERA. Gary Peters, of the White Sox, finished with an ERA under 2.00, but only won 12 games and pitched a third fewer innings. On its surface, this doesn't seem to get you your sweep; but I've got to wonder if having a Cy Young award in his cabinet would have put Kaat over the top with the voters.

Thoughts? Feel free to vote in the poll at the right.