Career Leaders in Wins Above MVP Level (WAM), Pitchers

by adarowski on Mar 17, 2010 12:34 PM EDT

A little while back, I published the career leaders in Wins Above MVP Level (WAM) among position players. Let's take a look at the career leaders for pitchers.

As a reminder, WAM is simply a total of all single season WAR above 6.0 (I'm using Rally's WAR). The reasoning is that 6 WAR is a decent baseline for an "MVP-worthy" season. WAM aims to measure how often and by how much a player exceeded this threshold.

As with most things WAR-related, pitchers are a bit funny. They tend to post a lower career WAR than hitters, but their single-season WAR in MVP seasons seems to hang well with their batting counterparts. For that reason I decided to stick with the 6 WAR baseline (thought I'm open to suggestions). Compiling the career pitching WAM leaders became a bit problematic. In the 1800s, a team would often employ very few pitchers. Some of these pitchers would throw in excess of 400 innings per season (or more!). As a result, we have some anomalies like a guy with two pitching seasons under his belt ranking among the all time leaders (Jim Devlin at #36) and a guy who had a single season that alone would have ranked in the career Top 20 (Old Hoss Radbourn's 19.8 WAR 1884 season).

For that reason, I decided to limit this list to "modern" pitchers. This is defined (for today, by me) as any pitcher who recorded a 6+ WAR season after the turn of the 20th century. So, Cy Young is in because he recorded some post-1900 WAM. John Clarkson is out. To give you an idea, this immediately lops off eight pitchers from the top fourteen.

So, enough about the list. Let's see it:

Career Wins Above MVP Level, Pitchers who recorded at least one 6+ WAR season after 1900
Rank	First Name	Last Name	WAM
1	Cy	Young	37.4
2	Walter	Johnson	31.8
3	Kid	Nichols	28.1
4	Roger	Clemens	20.6
5	Christy	Mathewson	19.3
6	Lefty	Grove	18.2
7	Pete	Alexander	17.5
8	Bob	Gibson	16.3
9	Randy	Johnson	14.0
10	Sandy	Koufax	13.6
11	Ed	Walsh	13.3
12	Gaylord	Perry	12.5
13	Tom	Seaver	11.9
14	Bob	Feller	11.6
15	Juan	Marichal	11.5
16	Steve	Carlton	10.8
17	Pedro	Martinez	10.7
18	Robin	Roberts	10.5
19	Joe	McGinnity	10.1
20	Phil	Niekro	9.8
21	Wilbur	Wood	9.4
22	Greg	Maddux	9.0
23	Fergie	Jenkins	8.6
24	Rube	Waddell	8.0
25	Dazzy	Vance	7.7
26	Jim	Bunning	7.7
27	Warren	Spahn	7.5
28	Carl	Hubbell	7.4
29	Hal	Newhouser	7.3
30	Vic	Willis	6.9
31	Eddie	Cicotte	6.8
32	Red	Faber	5.8
33	Dwight	Gooden	5.7
34	Mordecai	Brown	5.7
35	Lefty	Gomez	5.0
36	Bert	Blyleven	4.9
37	Kevin	Brown	4.8
38	Frank	Tanana	4.7
39	Nolan	Ryan	4.7
40	Jim	Palmer	4.5
41	Russ	Ford	4.5
42	Sam	McDowell	4.5
43	Vida	Blue	4.5
44	Dick	Ellsworth	4.3
45	Bret	Saberhagen	4.3
46	Kevin	Appier	4.2
47	Stan	Covelski	4.2
48	Noodles	Hahn	4.2
49	Dolf	Luque	4.1
50	Don	Drysdale	3.9

Who jumps out at you? I was confident Clemens would rank well (#4), but was a bit surprised by how high Randy Johnson ranks (#9). Johnson is #12 in career pitching WAR, so perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised. Gaylord Perry, who may shock some by ranking 10th all time in career WAR, does very well here ranking #12 all time in pitcher WAM. Wilbur Wood also ranked very well (#21), particularly when compared with his WAR ranking (#98). All of his WAM came from a three year stretch where he was throwing 320+ innings in the 1970s. Nobody really did that anymore, so that was one way to compile value where others didn't.

I can't help but notice that my childhood favorite, Nolan Ryan, drops from #16 in WAR to a tie at #38 in WAM. I also find it interesting that the man he is tied with is Frank Tanana, his Angels teammate from 1973 to 1979. As an aside, Tanana is the best pitcher (by career WAR) to never receive a Hall of Fame vote. I also though Pedro Martinez would rank a bit better than #17. Of course, the difference between Pedro at #17 and Perry at #12 is just 1.8 WAR. I'm guessing the fact that Pedro was "coddled" a bit to keep his innings down had something to do with it.

Beyond the Top 30 or so, we're getting into some fairly low WAM totals. It's really hard to say much about these numbers when they're crammed so close together. Anything else in the table you find interesting?

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Comments

Heh

I thought Pedro would be higher.

That said, WOW @ that list of pitchers.

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by Justin Bopp on Mar 17, 2010 12:44 PM EDT reply actions

Probably because he never pitched that many innings in any given year

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by Brickhaus on Mar 17, 2010 12:58 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah, but there are a good number of people out there

who believe that Pedro’s prime, specifically 1999 through 2003, was arguably the best five-year span for any pitcher, ever.

How the hell do you put up a 1.39 FIP over a full season?

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by Satchel Price on Mar 17, 2010 1:43 PM EDT up reply actions

Also,

Kevin Appier and Brett Saberhagen?

I miss my childhood.

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by Justin Bopp on Mar 17, 2010 12:46 PM EDT reply actions

So is the intent here to show dominance?

How different does this actually look from a list of the top 50 pitchers by WAR or WAE?

Bad Left Hook - The SB Nation boxing blog
"Baseball is played on the field, not on a calculator."

by Brickhaus on Mar 17, 2010 1:00 PM EDT reply actions

Simply looking for MVP-Level Performance

WAR shows all value. WAE (when using Rally’s 3+ WAR baseline) captures peak years (good-to-excellent seasons only counted). WAM only looks for seasons where the player reached and exceeded MVP level performance. Where WAE goes for peak, WAM goes for absolute dominance.

by adarowski on Mar 17, 2010 1:18 PM EDT up reply actions