It's Not Bad, And It's Not Boston

Being broadly interested in OBP Allowed, and working with a database of all American League seasons in the 1970s of 150 or more innings pitched, I happened to sort by percentage of hits allowed that were singles. Framed in the other direction, it is the percentage of hits that are extra-base hits. If a higher rate is good, as it generally is for hitters, extra-base hits are awarded, in other words, and singles punished. And a low batting average is generally a good thing for the statistic, as, of the 13 active hitters with a career percentage of extra-base hits over 48% at the end of 2024 (minimum 1000 at-bats), nine had an average under .250. (That list, from 1st to 13th, was Rhys Hoskins, Max Muncy, Kyle Schwarber, Byron Buxton, Shohei Ohtani, Cal Raleigh, Matt Chapman, Mike Yastrzemski, Shea Langeliers, Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Matt Olson, and Pete Alonso.¹)

My 1970s AL single-season pitchers list was led by Luis Tiant, 1979, at 40.53% XBH, followed by Dennis Eckersley, 1977, at 39.72%.² Seeing those guys and years, don’t you just immediately think “Boston”, and doesn’t it scream “Green Monster”? Knowing the Green Monster’s effect on doubles?

Yet 1979 was the year after Tiant left the Red Sox. He was with the Yankees. And Eckersley wasn’t with the Red Sox in ‘77, either. He and Fred Kendall were traded to Boston right before the ‘78 season in a trade that netted Cleveland four players. So, the statistic flagged two late ‘70s Boston players, and two of the three guys who made 30 starts on that semi-famous ‘78 team,³ but that they top this list is coincidental.

In this alternate reality where Tiant and Eckersley put up those numbers with Boston, the disclaimer I offered would be all the more furious because the #4 pitcher by highest percentage of extra-base hits⁴ was a late ‘70s Boston pitcher, and, like Tiant and Eckersely, I might add, also a famous one, although somehow not a part of that ‘78 team. Fergie Jenkins gave up 38.42% extra-base hits in 1977.

The Boston angle is something of a gimmick. If that was all I had, I probably would have consigned this to Note territory. Fenway and its connection to doubles (and maybe triples; 116 “FanGraphs Park Factor” for them in 2024⁵) were never completely out of my mind, but as I tracked down the facts, I instead became involved in breaking down the statistics of Tiant, Eckersley, and Jenkins for the seasons in question. This statistic of XBH/H is quite subtle, and interpreting it is made more difficult by the increase in extra-base hits that has occurred subsequent to the 1970s, so a good deal of chin scratching was natural. I also amused myself compiling various nuggets about these pitchers. Whether that context was necessary to answer the analytical questions or not, it certainly made the project more interesting for me, and I have a hunch it will for you as well.

There were 458 American League seasons in the decade of 150+ innings pitched, so to be numero uno, you had to be doing something. Despite giving up such a high ratio of extra-base hits, when it came to the bottom line, Tiant was still able to sail along quite nicely. Of course it’s true of everyone in the database that they were at least convincing enough to make it to 150 innings, but he was with the two-time defending World Series champions owned by George Steinbrenner, where there were standards, and still 89 wins that went around, and he made it to 195.2 innings in 30 starts.

Tiant was 13-8 with a 104 ERA+. He gave up 22 home runs, amounting to 1.01-per-9 innings, while the AL per-game average was 0.90.

Many of you are familiar with Isolated Power, which can be defined as Slugging Average - Batting Average, or as (TB - H)/AB. I lean on it here because it is an excellent proxy for power. Unlike percentage of hits that are extra bases, however, it works on an at-bat basis. This means that outs, not just singles, help a pitcher have a low ISO. For its part, Isolated Power differs from Slugging Average not just because it is completely divorced from Batting Average while Slugging Average is not⁶, but because home runs count 3x doubles in ISO instead of twice them, and triples count 2x doubles instead of 1 1/2x them.

In any event, ISO should identify seasons where batters victimized pitchers from a power perspective. If the percentage of hits that are extra bases isn’t mostly a quirk, ISO should confirm that Tiant was hit hard.

Tiant allowed a .429 Slugging Average and a .251 Batting Average, which, with rounding removed, came out to .1772 ISO. That was good for 13th of all the seasons, or still putting him in the 97th percentile. The appearance is still of a guy who got knocked around pretty good.

If you noticed that .251 average at all, it was probably just in the sense that it didn’t denote a terrible season. But indeed, with batting averages higher then, and 1979 a particular feel-good experience for hitters, that doesn’t begin to do it credit — the league average was .270.

Focusing on that batting average allowed is wise from two points of view. First, that he was 19 points under league average goes a long way towards explaining Tiant’s 104 ERA+. Second, there is the disparity with his ISO Allowed. Because the extra-base hit statistic penalizes all extra-base hits equally, the Isolated Power/Batting Average ratio isn’t entirely explanatory of Tiant’s XBH/H booby prize, but it’s clearly illustrative.

To the extent that Tiant’s extra-base hit rate stood out just because he didn’t give up many hits generally, then ranking the pitchers with the statistic figured-per-at-bat should show this. But Tiant’s rate only dropped to 3rd of the 458 seasons.⁷ So the explanation is largely to be found elsewhere. It seems that, either, his home run rate deserves more scrutiny, or he must have given up an ungodly number of doubles and triples. Or maybe the statistic indicates both of those things. Or maybe something is very wrong, and I should junk this post altogether.

If you will tolerate parallel stories, I’ll turn now to Eckersley. Stories have narratives, and conveniently, the Eck Man’s win/loss and E.R.A.+ in his season in question look a bit like Tiant’s ‘79. The Indians were a bad club, a 90-loss team⁸, so maybe that explains why Eckersely’s winning percentage wasn’t as good as Tiant’s, but he won 14 games, and had a 112 ERA+. Standing 9-7 at the break, the 22-year-old made the All-Star team, while 1979 Tiant didn’t. Comparisons between the two continue to break down when we see that Eckersley was far from handled with kid gloves, throwing 247.1 innings.

His hit rate was 7.79-per-9 innings, which was very good, 7th in the American League (the league rate was 9.15, exactly 1.00 higher than the 2024 AL). The 31 home runs Eckersley gave up were 3rd most in the league, behind Jerry Garvin (33 in 244.2 IP), and Glenn Abbott (32 in 204.1 IP). So, taking a surface view, if we just figured percentage of home runs from hits, it’s clear this was a season that must rank well above average.

Since he came up with the Phillies, the story isn’t perfectly tidy, but unlike those star players who finished with something like seven teams over their final five years, Fergie Jenkins had clear arcs despite changing teams five times. Because, as you may know, a couple of those changes were returns; Jenkins remained on good terms with his old flames, we might say. He won a Cy Young with the Cubs, and 93 games in all for the Rangers, including 25 in 1974. But 1976 and 1977 in Boston was part of the in-between time for him, the more forgettable time.

Like Tiant and Eckersley in their seasons under review, Jenkins in ‘77 was above average, if not brilliant. Pitching in the same season as Eckersley, his E.R.A. was 0.15 higher, but his ERA+ was better, and 8th in the American League. The Red Sox and their opponent averaged 5.64 runs at Fenway and 4.13 on the road that year, giving an idea of the disadvantage the park posed for a pitcher. The Red Sox were good, winning 97 games, and ahead of the Yankees and Orioles as late as August 22, but Jenkins’ season ended on September 7 with his record just 10-10.⁹ His hit rate didn’t compare to Eckersley’s, but he did give up fewer hits than innings, providing more evidence of his hard luck. He completed 11 of his 28 starts, although four were 8-inning losses.

Jenkins’ season stood out for home runs allowed. Since he gave up 30, more than 1 a start, and the AL leader in home runs only gave up 33, it was probably only the premature end to his season, and ironically his low innings total, that saved Jenkins from leading the league. I say this was ironic because heavy workloads played a key role in his leading the league in home runs allowed seven times in his career. (For instance, in his streak from 1971-1973, he didn’t lead in HR-per-9 in any of those seasons). He was also only 0.01 HR-per-9-innings behind Glenn Abbott in ‘77 for the worst rate in the league among qualifiers. Two years later, Jenkins gave up a gaudy 40 home runs, most for an AL pitcher in the ‘70s, but his rate per 9 innings was the same 1.4-per-9 it was in ‘77.

In most cases, the distance between having a high home run rate per batter or per inning, and having a high rate of extra-base hits per hit, is probably not substantial. Obviously, home runs are a significant part of extra-base hits. Then if a pitcher gave up a lot of home runs in not a high number of innings, we know that his hit total was also constrained by that low innings total. And we happen to know that Jenkins gave up fewer hits in his innings than an average pitcher would have. So that he rates high on XBH/H for this season isn’t surprising.

How do the positions of Eckersley and Jenkin change when at-bats are used as the basis for extra-base hits, and not hits? You’ll remember that when I made the change with Tiant, I found that he only advanced from worst to 3rd-worst.

Eckersley, with his excellent hit rate, moves back to 24th. Certainly, 24th and not 2nd is a significant difference, but it also makes clear he was a very high extra-base-hit pitcher, not just a low-hit one. Ranking 24th is still at the 95th percentile.

For his part, with a more middling hit ratio, Jenkins moves back to 7th in extra-base-hits-per-at-bat.

Jenkins and Tiant actually make for a really easy comparison. They gave up the same number of hits, 190. This allows us to see exactly how Tiant was able to make up for Jenkins’ greater number of home runs allowed in the competition for the worst XBH/H rate.

Following are, first, their 2B/3B/HR lines, and then their hit, at-bat, single, and XBH totals.

Jenkins 38/5/30 190H, 740 AB, 117 1B, 73 XBH

Tiant 42/13/22 190H, 756 AB, 113 1B, 77 XBH

The answer is that Tiant gave up 12 more doubles + triples than Jenkins. (Aside from home ballpark and outfield defense, it’s hard to see how a pitcher could truly have a penchant for giving up triples or not giving up triples,¹⁰ so doubles plus triples seem rightly considered together).

When we see that, at least compared to Jenkins, a lot of Tiant’s weakness was just giving up those middle hits, this sounds less sinister than a high overall extra-base-hit rate. It seems more a quirk, and perhaps a statistical one at that. And it is easier to see how pitchers in general who give up a high percentage of doubles could be quite successful anyway, if that is what these seasons of Tiant, Eckersley, and Jenkins signify.

But to know if the doubles really were somewhat innocuous, we should make at least a beginning effort to think of their relative cost. That Jenkins had a worse season than Tiant in terms of the power he allowed, despite giving up fewer extra-base hits, is confirmed by comparing their slugging averages and ISOs. Tiant was 14 points better than Jenkins by SA, 9 points by ISO. On the other hand, with Tiant still having the 13th-worst ISO, it cannot be said that his doubles and triples didn’t show up at all. But we still haven’t precisely broken down what role his home run rate played in his ISO, and what role his doubles and triples did.

In the process of sorting the data on various power-hitting categories, I often had to be extra careful that I was analyzing “Tiant 1979”, and not some other Tiant season. Tiant ‘79 did not represent a personal outlier, in other words. This seems to weaken the case that the doubles and triples he gave up that year were a fluke. To give a random example, only 41 of the 1970s seasons included 10+ triples allowed. But batters hit 10 or more triples against Tiant in four of his eight seasons as a qualifier (this likely speaks more to a broader tendency on Tiant’s part to give up extra-base hits, and not to triples specifically).

So that I could be more definite about the trend, I wrote out Tiant’s numbers for 1972-1979 individually. Here are quite a few of them, with my decisions about what to include motivated by what I thought would help you follow my discussion.

After his percentage of hits that were singles (XBH percentage reversed) and the rank of that are 1) 2B/3B/HR 2) the sum of them, for the XBH number 3) at-bats 4) E.R.A.

1972: 78.1% R411.5, 19/2/7, 28, 634 AB, 1.91 ERA

1973: 62.7% R9, 45/4/32, 81, 991 AB, 3.34 ERA

1974: 74.0% R264, 40/12/21, 73, 1166 AB, 2.92 ERA

1975: 67.2% R51, 51/10/25, 86, 992 AB, 4.02 ERA

1976: 71.9% R183, 42/10/25, 77, 1054 AB, 3.06 ERA

1977: 63.3% R13, 44/7/26, 77, 752 AB, 4.53 ERA

1978: 67.0% R45, 34/1/26, 61, 790 AB, 3.31 ERA

1979: 59.5% R1, 42/13/22, 77, 756 AB, 3.91 ERA

I think the record establishes clearly that struggling with extra-base hits was habitual with ‘70s Tiant,¹¹ at least when they are framed within hits. His median rank was 48th, or the 89th percentile.

While I’ve pointed out the incongruity of pitchers rating the very worst on a statistic yet still performing at an above-average level, Tiant’s data does suggest his high extra-base hit rates exacted a toll. In ‘73, Tiant was coming off his second “could do no wrong” season¹². He was thus at the top of his game. And allowing 37.3% extra-base hits in 1973, 9th-worst for the decade in the AL, he still managed to win 20 games. But his E.R.A. of 3.34 ranked just 16th of 39 AL qualifiers, and even his ERA+ in 1973 (adjusting for Fenway) was a mortal man’s 120.

Then, with a much improved 26.0% extra bases in 1974, Tiant went 22-13 with a 2.92 E.R.A., leading the league in shutouts.

While it is both easy and legitimate to focus on the fluctuation in Tiant’s series of ranks, represented by the shifts from 411 to 9 to 264 from 1972 to 1974, I will draw attention to his uniform poor ranks from 1977 to 1979. I will take the liberty of saying this was old Luis Tiant at work.

The “old pitcher” angle is not one that applies to Eckersley in 1977, obviously. As for Jenkins, it would probably be a stretch to define his peak any time past his 25-win season of 1974 with Texas,¹³ but he was 2 years younger than Tiant in absolute terms, and his highest extra-base hit ratio of the decade (1977) came two years before Tiant’s worst season. Jenkins still had 27% of his innings to pitch after 1977; Tiant, just 6% of his after 1979. (However, it is true that my argument about old Tiant includes not just 1979, but 1977-1979.)

A lesson to draw from Tiant’s statistics is the importance of noting just how many at-bats were involved in a particular season. I have to fight being too swayed by the extra-base hit totals. Falling into this trap is natural because there are a group of position players in every season who play nearly every game, and with a limited number of games on the schedule, there is a ceiling effect to playing time. Even batting leadoff and playing every game for a high-scoring team, thirty-five home runs puts your season in a certain category. It rightly defines you and gives you cachet. Pitchers, certainly historically, had varied workloads, both in how many games they pitched and how deep they typically went in their games. Then, too, their “batters faced” are just higher than plate appearances for batters, so the extra-base hit totals aren’t necessarily immediately properly understood, and need context.

That Tiant only pitched about 200 innings a season from ‘77-’79, while from ‘73-’76, he averaged over 280, explains how the extra-base hit totals he gave up in the later seasons can go unappreciated. From ‘74-’79, his home run totals, between 21 and 26 each year, testify falsely to a model of consistency.

After compiling his extra-base numbers in the fashion you have seen, I was still very much of the belief that the catalyst for Tiant’s extra-base hit rankings was his doubles and triples. That comparison of his 1979 to Jenkins 1977 by extra-base-hit type seemed to show that. Then, I had shown clearly that he had a disproportionate number of seasons allowing a high number of triples. And, his ranking in ‘79 with the Yankees aside, it did make sense that largely what his numbers were showing was really the effect of pitching in Fenway, where definitely doubles, and maybe triples, are elevated. That the extra-base hits manifested in doubles and not home runs also made sense from the standpoint that Fenway is famously known among serious statistical analysts for not deserving its reputation as a home run haven.

To satisfy my curiosity on just how Tiant’s mix differed from the average pitcher, I figured the aggregate percentages of the pitchers in my dataset. In other words, I had a record of 26,682 extra-base hits, and broke down the percentage by type. This returned

57.8% 2B

9.4% 3B

32.8% HR

Then I took Tiant over the 1972-1979 period. He allowed 560 extra-base hits, a number you can derive from the data I provided above. His percentages broke down as follows

56.6% 2B

10.5% 3B

32.9% HR

So in fact, the percentage of extra-base hits of Tiant’s that were home runs was higher than for an average pitcher. That he had only one season in the window allowing more than 26 home runs had given me the wrong idea. Practically speaking, of course, his percentages are not different than the American League average (really, they seem remarkably in step with it).

This result, surprising to me, revealed a couple of things. First, not only was I guilty of not putting home runs in context of at-bats, but I had contemporary home run rates on the brain when evaluating Tiant. If I just taken the time to scroll down his Baseball Reference page, I might have noticed that, with just 25 home runs allowed in ‘76, Tiant had still allowed the second most in the league.¹⁴ I would have been well-served to remember that Fergie Jenkins was not normative, and not to allow Tiant’s lack of home run black type (except when he gave up 37 for Cleveland in ‘69) rule me. Furthering the argument, even with his batters faced seriously in check in ‘77 and ‘78, 26 home runs allowed put Tiant 6th and 5th in the league in those seasons.

A second point is really a statistical one. If high extra-base hit pitchers are taken as a group, it seems likely to me that the home run column is where their excessive extra-base hits will generally show up. And Tiant has to be taken as a high extra-base hit pitcher. It may be easier to conceive of a pitcher with a disproportionate number of doubles allowed than a pitcher with a special penchant for giving up triples, but that doesn’t say much about the possible independence of doubles as a category, triples being what they are. To the extent that there are high-doubles-allowed pitchers after adjusting for the effect of their home ballparks, I would guess that this characteristic is in fact mostly derivative of their being high-home runs-allowed pitchers (which is really to say, pitchers giving up lots of fly balls, or lots of hard-hit balls). It is at the least very natural that there is more variation among high-extra-base-hit pitchers in home runs allowed than doubles allowed. So that when a pitcher is high in both, he will tend to be higher in home runs.

It’s a bit like if we were to chart balls hit against pitchers of 340-380 feet, and then balls hit against them of 380+ feet. We would expect the 380+ category to better differentiate the good and the bad. In this analogy, the 340-380 foot balls are the doubles; the 380+ feet ones, the home runs.

This approach probably betrays statistical carelessness and makes for an inherently biased analysis, but I note that if the simple standard deviations of doubles, triples, and home runs of the seasons in the database are apportioned, instead of the means, there is a shift away from doubles and toward home runs.

2B 48.3%

3B¹⁵ 15.0%

HR 36.7%

To get a line on the home run rates in Tiant’s seasons, I found where each of Tiant’s HR Allowed/AB rated among the 458 seasons. Here, I confess, my curiosity was not so much statistical as the more conventional desire to place Luis Tiant — who, after all, is an important historical figure, and one around whom there is much debate about his bona fides for Cooperstown.¹⁶ For that reason, I represented home run percentage in terms of at-bats, so that the percentage would reflect merit, untainted by percentage of hits.

Here were Tiant’s yearly ranks. While a low home run percentage is of course good, I kept the direction the same as with percentage of hits that were singles, so that the dataset’s best home run percentage¹⁷ got a 458, and the worst a 1.

1972: 445 1973: 48 1974: 334 1975: 146 1976: 180 1977: 28: 1978: 42 1979: 78

Median: 112

Six of his ranks are better on this basis than on XBH/H, two are worse. 1979 (improving from last to 78th-worst) and 1975 (improving from 51st-worst to 146th-worst) are dramatically better. Still, however, a ranking of 112 is in the 25th percentile.

Maybe starting with such reverence for Tiant, and because everyone speaks of him so fondly, seemingly in awe of his talent, the discovery of weaknesses weighed upon me more than it should. Of course, Hall of Fame voters can be daft (witness Dick Allen’s only-just-rectified snub), but I am also interested to see the other side of the debate. Just a month ago, I found another mediocre domain for Tiant, which was his length of starts.¹⁸ That he had the success he did with Boston as his home team in the ‘70s, certainly gives him a strong case, to say nothing of the strong start he had to his career in Cleveland, particularly the 1968 brilliance. But with 229 wins, I well understand why one might regard him as borderline.

Something else I was curious about, and this circles back to the first part of the title here, is what to make of our three greats appearing on the high extra-base-hit ledger, if not in their greatest form, then still getting by quite creditably? If I’ve listened to one baseball broadcast when I’ve heard about the true insignificance of Robin Roberts’ solo home runs and Catfish Hunter’s, I’ve heard 100, yet I still feel some inner skepticism about the point. This partly revolves around my thought that giving up home runs, solo or otherwise, cannot be good. Then, too, of course our Muhammad Ali-like showmen who generally pulled this off must have given up some home runs with men on base as well as solo ones, and weren’t perfect. But more than anything else, I’d say, I wonder whether Roberts, Hunter, etc., really were a hitter’s best chance for a gopher ball, or if their reputations and statistics derive from a case of throwing a lot of innings, more than anything else?

In any event, Tiant ‘79 was 3rd-worst of everybody in extra base-hits-per-at bat, and Jenkins ‘77 7th-worst. So I compiled the statistics of the 20 bottom pitchers in extra base-hits-per-at bat to get their typical level of performance.

Across the board, the pattern was that suffering extra-base hits to this extent generally got in the way of good performance. To wit, Jenkins’ 3.68 E.R.A. in ‘77 ranks first in the group of 20. Steve Stone, 1980, was a Cy Young award winner; in 1979, he allowed a .436 slugging average on a .248 average, and had a 3.77 E.R.A. The next best E.R.A. in the group of 20 is Tiant ‘79 (3.91 again). Three pitchers (Phil Huffman, ‘79 Blue Jays, 5.77 E.R.A.; Joe Coleman, ‘75 Tigers, 5.55 E.R.A.; Glenn Abbott, ‘78 Mariners, 5.27 E.R.A.) had a really tough time of it. The median E.R.A. was 4.22. Most striking is that no one in the group had an E.R.A. that matched the median of the 458 pitchers, which was 3.57.¹⁹.

I also observed that the 20 worst extra-base hit pitchers pitched less (194+ innings vs. 226+ for the overall group) and were hit harder (a .272 average, vs. .253 for the overall group). Some of these differences could potentially be attributed to league-average differences within the ‘70s, if more pitchers on this list were from the late than the early ‘70s. (The AL of ‘72, with a .239 average, no DH, and a .343 SA, was certainly not the same league as the AL of ‘79, which had a .270 average and a .408 SA.) That this correspondence between a pitcher’s extra-base hit percentage and his overall hit percentage (or batting average) applied to the whole dataset is reflected in the correlation I found between the two, which was .49.

However, more interestingly, the correlation between XBH/H and BA was .00. In other words, you can tell me the batting average that a pitcher allowed, but you’re not telling me anything about whether the hits were disproportionately singles or extra-base hits. The absence of correlation doesn’t signal that the Fergie Jenkins of the world generally outperformed their peers when it came to batting average allowed, when the extra-base hits were set aside. But it does say that they weren’t more vulnerable to getting hit, and that the two things, preventing hits and preventing extra-base hits, are separate skills.²⁰

Or more precisely, I should say, preventing singles and preventing extra-base hits seem to be separate skills. But when I created variables for each (which is to say, a batting average on the one hand without extra-base hits, and another batting average without singles), and ran their correlation, I got a correlation between the variables, r = .18. So something is a bit off in the way I am thinking about this.

Considering that there is no correlation between XBH/H and BA, the .49 r between XBH/AB and BA seems awfully large. Granting this, I still figured that the correlation between XBH/AB and BA must work through strikeouts, and trace entirely to differences between pitchers in that aspect of performance. But the correlation between strikeout percentage (as figured from AB) and XBH/AB was of smaller absolute value, -.23. So it would seem that there were some BAbip differences as well explaining extra-base hit differences, which I guess makes sense. Good defense or good luck plays a role in preventing doubles and triples.

Completing the picture, and providing a comparison point, the correlation between strikeout percentage and batting average was -.66.

1. It’s a list with exceptionally narrow range, Hoskins at just 50.29%. Per 200 hits in his career, he only has 4.56 more hits that are extra bases than the #13 guy, Alonso. Yet, the gap in percentage between Hoskins and #2 Muncy is the greatest there is between any two guys on the list. The #7 guy, Chapman, has 96.65 extra-base hits per 200, only 0.62 more than Alonso. What this means, I’m not sure, but it does seem that for hitters, 48% or 50% seems to represent something of a glass ceiling.

2. Yes, the numbers here are a lot lower than for current hitters. Pitchers versus hitters, 1970s versus today, are the factors. And the fact that I was looking at just single seasons for the 1970s pitchers would have theoretically raised the percentages.

3. Has Joe Posnanski done a list of the 100 most famous baseball teams of all time? If he hasn’t, he should; it would come in handy. Then I could refer to the ‘78 Red Sox by their ranking, if they would indeed be on it.

4. #3 is Chris Knapp of the 1978 Angels. Check out that trade he was a part of before the 1978 season. Knapp, Brian Downing, and Dave Frost from the White Sox for Bobby Bonds, Thad Bosley, and Richard Dotson. I don’t think we do trades like they used to, and that may be why the “Hot Stove” has cooled.

5. Just 99 in 1979, and 104 in 1974, however.

6. Batting Average serves as the base for Slugging Average. A player can’t have a lower Slugging Average than Batting Average, meaning that a hitter who hit all singles could theoretically lead the league in slugging average, since no one has ever slugged 1.000 in a season.

7. Behind Glenn Abbott in 1978 (10th in XBH/H, and a .303 AVG Allowed), and Tiant himself in 1977 (13th in XBH/H, and a .279 AVG Allowed).

8. Trivia: they were managed by Frank Robinson and then Jeff Torborg. Both had a lot of managing to go, so I wondered how old they were at that time. Robinson had retired as a player-manager the year before, but was just 41. Torborg was 35.

9. A September 29 article in the Toronto Star says that Jenkins stopped pitching because he was moved to the bullpen in favor of a rotation of Tiant, Reggie Cleveland, Bill Lee, Don Aase, and Mike Paxton. Manager Don Zimmer said it just hadn’t work out to give Jenkins any of the long relief work for which he was theoretically available. Citing some of the same data I do in this post, the author remarks, “Jenkins statistics indicate that he should have been pitching down the stretch.”

10. That said, the hero of the Triple Loathing Fanclub (you didn’t know such existed?) is Rudy May. From ‘71 to ‘73, while with the Angels, the left-hander had three of the decade’s 22 “0” or “1” triple-allowed seasons of 150+ innings. The Angels had a pretty dominant pitching staff, with Ryan coming in ‘72, and did not give up a lot of triples generally, although they did not seem to have a home-field advantage when it came to limiting them. To be honest, May was basically only an average pitcher, although he does have his points, like giving up the league’s second-lowest slugging average behind Vida Blue in the latter’s MVP season. He is less random as the exemplar because the early ‘70s were a time of depressed offense, and we are doing decade-long comparisons. Then, May topped out at 208.2 innings in these three seasons, limiting his risk.

11. While his 1979 season I have featured came with the Yankees, it might be defensible to speak of his Red Sox years versus his Indians years instead, with his “Red Sox years” used in place of “his ‘70s years.” Certainly, it is artificial to stop studying him only through 1979, and not at the proper end of his career, which came on September 4, 1982. However, that Tiant allowed 35.3% extra-base hits for the Yankees in 1980, a season which would have ranked 21st in the 1970s dataset, suggests that the proper division is one of time, rather than of team and home ballpark. As Tiant didn’t reach 100 innings combined over ‘81 and ‘82, those seasons don’t give us much in the way of additional data points.

By the way, although he had a 5.76 E.R.A. for the division-winning Angels in ‘82, did you check out those strikeout and walk numbers of his? 30 SO and 8 BB in 29.2 innings! That was his first season with more strikeouts than innings since 1968. Tiant’s E.R.A. actually sat at 3.22 through his first four starts of his delayed 1982, and included in his record was an 8-inning, 2-run, 8 k game against the Red Sox on August 17.

12. The first was his 1.60 E.R.A., 264 k, 152 hits allowed, 1968. Numbers every child should be required to memorize. Should exempt him or her from having to recite a poem.

13. Jenkins was only 15 points away (with Catfish Hunter garnering 90) of allowing us to call him the Cy Young award winner of 1974, and not just a 25-game winner. He and Hunter produced identical 25-12 records. Catfish got 12 first-place votes, Jenkins 10.

By the way, today, if you are referring to a ballplayer named Hunter, you’re calling him by his first name. Hunter Greene, Hunter Brown, Hunter Gaddis, Hunter Goodman, Hunter Renfroe, etc. While since 2020, the only player with last name of Hunter was Tommy Hunter, the big pitcher who spent time with Baltimore, among other teams.

The Hunter caboose seems to be flourishing more in other sports, where Travis is poised to do his things in the NFL, and De’Andre was a pickup of the Cavs at mid-season

14. In fairness, that was an atypical season for the era, and has had me more than once marveling over the meager power achievements on the offensive side. Graig Nettles was the lone 30+ home run hitter, and only 10 batters in a 12-team league could reach 20 home runs.

15. With triples increasing its share from 9% to 15% and likely being the least significant of the three extra-base hits in terms of revealing anything about a pitcher’s true proclivities, a case in point about the problems with the whole approach. But I still thought I would share the idea.

16. On the most recent Classic Baseball Era ballot, he was a finalist.

17. That was Reggie Cleveland in 1976, who have up just 3 home runs in 645 AB and 170 innings. Cleveland was with the Red Sox, so he was a teammate of Tiant’s and Jenkins’.

18. 4/6 N12

19. You might be puzzled at this, since all three pitchers I feature had ERA+s over 100. Keep in mind that the E.R.A.s in the dataset are probably lower than league, with the requirement of at least 150 innings (and, in fact, the median ERA+ was 106). ERA+s are also relative to park, and probably more importantly, individual year. Part of the discrepancy between the three pitchers’ overall extra-base hit rank and their indexed numbers is that their extra-base hits weren’t indexed. If they were, they wouldn’t rate as poorly.

20. Don’t confuse this zero correlation with the general zero correlation of BAbip with meaningful categories, and with itself from year to year. To say that there is no relation between a pitcher’s ability and whether the balls he allows in play go for hits is a very different thing than to say that there is no relation between a pitcher’s ability and whether the hits that he gives up are of particular types. One refers to balls in play, the other hits. And, unlike the argument about the randomness of BAbip, I am not saying that XBH vs. non-XBH is luck, but that that it is unrelated to a good strikeout rate, or a good hit-prevention skill generally (if one exists).