Adjustments to Pitching Stats
Here's something I've always wondered about, but have never been enough of a stat guy to look into: Walter Johnson, for example, pitched most of his career with a very weak hitting team behind him, so for 1/7th of the games during that time, he never got to pitch against those relative weaklings in his league. Conversely, he never got a pass on some of the strongest hitters in his league by having them on his team. I'm sure there are other examples of this disparity among the other pitchers, some going the other way. For his time especially, when teams played each other 22 times a season, i would think this could have a serious impact on a pitcher's numbers, and maybe hitters, too. Think of this: Walter Johnson faced Ty Cobb 365 times in his career. In other words, Cobb had almost 2/3 of a season just against Johnson! If Cobb had been on Johnson's team, he never would have had to hit against him. And think of Lefty Grove: he never had to face three of the best hitters in his league during his prime: Foxx, Simmons, and Cochrane. And they never had to bat against him. Just wondering if any of the SABR type adjustments take this into account.
Hank Thomas
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