Neyer’s analysis was sharp and fresh, and his writing was clear. He made judgments and told readers why he was making them, often acknowledging the reasons he could be wrong. I’ve long aspired to write about economics, politics and other subjects the way that Neyer writes about baseball.
So I was tickled to see that he picked up on our recent invention of the Matty Score, to rank baseball’s best World Series pitchers — and even more tickled that he offered a friendly critique.
We calculated the Matty Score by adding up a pitcher’s career innings pitched in the World Series and then subtracting three times the number of earned runs he had allowed. There is nothing magical about this calculation. But it feels like a decent way to measure greatness, in both quality and quantity. To rack up Matty points, you need to have an excellent outing — say, by pitching a shutout inning in relief (worth one point) or by throwing six innings and giving up only a single run (worth three).
A Matty Score That Counts Unearned Runs
alternate Matty Score
Christy Mathewson
Madison Bumgarner
Sandy Koufax
Bob Gibson
Eddie Plank
George Earnshaw
Harry Brecheen
Mariano Rivera
Monte Pearson
Orval Overall
Waite Hoyt
20
30
40
50
Neyer took issue not with our back-of-the-envelope arithmetic but with the wordearned. We simply ignored unearned runs, as if pitchers deserved no blame for them. But they generally do deserve some blame. Imagine an inning in which the shortstop drops a ground ball with two outs and the next batter hits a home run. Officially, neither run was earned. Surely, though, the pitcher deserves some responsibility for the home run. A better pitcher might have found a way out of the inning.
As Neyer put it, writing for Fox Sports, where he now works: “Unearned runs don’t count for anything at all? They sure counted on the scoreboard, especially in the old days when a significantly higher percentage of runs were unearned. There are different ways to account for them, but a decent shorthand is giving the pitcher half the blame for unearned runs.”
Here, I’ve recalculated the Matty Scores, using Neyer’s shorthand; an unearned run counts half as much as earned one. The result is to make Madison Bumgarner’s performance look even more remarkable.
In his 36 World Series innings, he gave up only one earned run and not a single unearned run. By comparison, Christy Mathewson — the namesake of the Matty Score — gave up as many unearned runs (11) as earned runs in his incredible 11 World Series starts early in the 20th century. Sandy Koufax, the only other pitcher to rank above Bumgarner in the main Matty Score, gave up four unearned runs and six earned runs.
In the Neyer-inspired revised Matty Score, Bumgarner rises to a tie with Koufax for second place. He’s still behind Mathewson, but the gap is much narrower.
Who is the greatest World Series pitcher of all time? That’s a question statistics can’t fully answer. I’ll still go with Mathewson, but he had the benefit of pitching against less competition than Koufax (who played after integration) and much less than Bumgarner (who faces batters from around the world). There is certainly an argument for Bumgarner. He’s now been stellar in three World Series outings — 2010, 2012 and 2014 — and dominated one of those.
It’s a question fans can ponder over the five long months between now and the next meaningful Major League Baseball game.
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