I have friends who are complete non-baseball fans, but big-time math-science geeks, i.e., they’re folks who understand the normal distribution of natural phenomena and can appreciate exceptions. I have entertained them greatly by reading the leader boards from those two years in descending order. Especially 2000, where the 2-5 finisher in most stat categories were tightly clustered.
Let’s play “what’s the next term in this sequence?”!
ERA: 4.17, 4.14, 4.13, 4.12, 4.11, 3.88, 3.79, 3.79, 3.70 . . .
How many people had 1.74?
WHIP: 11.52, 11.48, 11.18, 10.79 …. 7.22
Opposition OBP: .306, .303, .298, .291 … .213.
Opposition SLG: .392, .384, .374, .371 … .259.
This (as well as 1999, of course) is an essentially superhuman performance. If there had been a league as much better than MLB as MLB was to AAA, and then another league with the same performance differential, Pedro would have still been the best pitcher of that league.
Bill Giddins
Eric M. Van
Sam Giddins
tomhantheman
one of my favorite stats: AL ERA leaders on the morning of 13 Jun 2000
Heredia 3.64
Wells.. 3.48
Baldwin 3.28
Pedro!! 0.95
I’d bet that no one has Ever. Come. Close. to having a lead in ERA of 2.33 (!) over all competitors at any other point in any other season.
That’s tremendous, Tom.
Well, I just got a subscription to BP, so I’m going to see if they have the splits like that for more SABR-esque stats.