Quote:
Originally Posted by timn1
I dunno guys, I guess I'm just contrary, and I agree that Johnson was the greatest pitcher of all time, but . . . I don't see the whole "if he hadn't been on such wretched teams" argument.
I figure the Senators' W/L record while he was on the team (August 2, 1907 through 1927) at 1531-1559 - that's .49546.
After that horrible 1907 season, where he was with them for only two months, they had 10 winning and 10 losing seasons during his time there (and 3 of the losing seasons were 76-77, 75-78, and 74-79). From 1908-1927 they finished first twice and last once. They finished 1-4 in the standings 11 times, 5-8 9 times.
Also, the 1-0 games: should we give him wins in all 26 that he lost? How many 1-0 games did he win anyway?
I'm not saying the Senators teams were great but they weren't horrible - just middle-of-the-road. I don't see you get many more wins for Johnson unless you put him on a team that played .600 ball for 20 years (in other words, the Yankees after 1920).
For comparison I looked up the W/L records of Cy Young's teams between 1890-1911 (in partial seasons including the team's record only while he was there) and I got 1582-1426, .526. I figure Pete Alexander's teams at 1470-1314, .528. Definitely better teams but not by a huge margin.
How does this translate to wins?
If you take the 3090 games (1531-1559) the Nats played when Johnson was with them and give them a .525 Winning PCT instead of the real .49546, that would be 1622 wins instead of 1531. That's a "win shortfall" of 91 wins over the 20+ seasons. During his career Johnson won 27% of the team's wins (417 of 1531). 27% of the 91-win shortfall would be 24 or 25 extra wins, just over one game a year. That's not nothing, but doesn't transform his stature (after all, he's already the best ever).
Tim
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Interesting analysis, Tim. The Nationals were only truly wretched his first five years, with two last-place and three seventh-place finishes. After Clark Griffith arrived in 1912, they had scrappy good-defense, good-baserunning, fairly competitive teams before assembling a truly world-class squad for the pennant seasons of 1924-25. Question: if Walter might have won an extra 25 games in his career with better teams, does that mean he would he have also lost 25 fewer games? If so, that would be pretty transformative for his career winning %. Of course, as you say, how much better does he need to be?