Winningest Tigers Pitchers

As we continue to put together the Tigers Hall of Fame over at MotownSports, we are confirming how difficult it is to compare players who played in different environments. For example, it was easier for a pitcher to pitch a lot of innings in the deadball era before 1920 when the league OPS was often lower than .650 than in eras like the 1930s and 199os when the league OPS was sometimes higher than .750. Similarly, a pitcher who receives strong support from his offense will have an easier time winning games than a pitcher who does not and this is true regardless of era.

In order to gain a better understanding of how to rank the all-time best Tigers, I've been looking at some statistics which help to compare players from different eras or otherwise different environments. Today, I'll present data on support neutral wins (SNW) and losses (SNL). SNW is the projected number of wins given league average offensive support and SNL is defined similarly.

Table 1 below lists the top 20 Tigers in SNW between 1901-2006. Most of you have probably heard that Hooks Dauss is the all-time Tigers wins leader with 222. However, the SNW leader is Hal Newhouser with 219. Newhouser had 19 fewer actual wins than SNW which probably means that he received less than average run support in the games that he pitched. Dauss, on the other hand, had 16 more actual wins than SNW which probably indicates he received better than league average support.

One might argue that Dauss "pitched to the score" of the game better than Newhouser but that's difficult to prove. I'm sure that supporters of Newhouser would vehemently deny that he did not "know how to win". At any rate, it's important to consider run support when looking at pitcher wins.

Like actual pitcher wins, the SNW statistic is driven by longevity more than excellence. A fairer measure of performance for pitchers with shorter careers is support neutral winning percentage (SNPCT). The all-time top 20 Tigers with a minimum of 1,000 innings pitched are listed in Table 2 below. John Hiller is the number one pitcher with a SNPCT of .644 but he was mostly a reliever. The best SNPCT for a starter was Newhouser at .629. He was followed by Tommy Bridges (.608) and Dizzy Trout (.605).

Is it better to judge pitchers by longevity or excellence? Pitchers like Newhouser and Bridges who rank well by either criteria are pretty easy to evaluate. Those pitchers should make our Tigers Hall of Fame with little debate. Where things get interesting is when we compare a pitcher like Wild Bill Donovan (130 SNW and .549 SNPCT in 2,137 innings) to Harry Coveleski (69 and .598 in 1,023 innings). Coveleski pitched better when he did pitch but Donovan pitched twice as much. Which one is more deserving of the Tigers Hall of Fame? Most of us agree that both longevity and excellence are important but some place more emphasis on the latter and some on the former. It's an issue which is at the center of many debates as our voting process goes on. Next time, I'll discuss the statistic runs saved above average which tries to combine longevity and excellence

The data for this analysis were extracted from the Lee Sinnis Complete Baseball Encyclopedia.


Table 1: Tigers All-time Support Neutral Wins Leaders

Pitcher	W	SNW
Hal Newhouser	200	219
Hooks Dauss	222	206
Tommy Bridges	194	202
Mickey Lolich	207	200
George Mullin	208	200
Dizzy Trout	161	190
Jack Morris	198	188
Frank Lary	123	132
Earl Whitehill	133	131
Wild Bill Donovan	141	130
Virgil Trucks	114	119
Jim Bunning	118	116
Dan Petry	119	113
John Hiller	87	105
Vic Sorrell	92	100
Denny McLain	117	99
Ed Killian	99	96
Fred Hutchinson	95	94
Schoolboy Rowe	105	92

Table 2: All-Time Tigers Support Neutral Percentage Leaders

Pitcher	IP	SNW	SNL	SNPCT
John Hiller	1242	105	58	.644
Hal Newhouser	2944	219	129	.629
Tommy Bridges	2826	202	130	.608
Dizzy Trout	2592	190	124	.605
Harry Coveleski	1023	67	45	.598
Ed Siever	1036	68	46	.596
Al Benton	1219	80	55	.593
Dave Rozema	1007	61	42	.592
Hank Aguirre	1180	74	54	.578
Virgil Trucks	1802	119	91	.567
Frank Lary	2008	132	101	.567
Fred Hutchinson	1465	94	72	.566
Jim Bunning	1867	116	89	.566
Ed Killian	1536	96	77	.555
Denny McLain	1592	99	80	.553
Schoolboy Rowe	1444	92	75	.551
Wild Bill Donovan	2137	130	107	.549
Jack Morris	3042	188	160	.540
Elden Auker	1084	69	60	.535