Sunday, November 15, 2009

All-Time Top Twenty Tigers Pitchers by WAR

Last week, I looked at the all-time top 20 Tigers position players based on Sean Smith's WAR database. This week, I'll present the pitchers based only on their time with the Tigers (Table 1).
Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for pitchers is based mostly on innings pitched, strike outs, walks and home runs.

The Tigers pitchers are less impressive than the batters as the number one hurler, Hal Newhouser (55.3 WAR) would have finished only 8th on the position player list. Newhouser is followed by Tommy Bridges (50.7), Mickey Lolich (44.2), Dizzy Trout (42.2) and Jack Morris (34.5). There is one current Tiger on the list with Justin Verlander coming in 18th at 17.2. Note that I took Verlanders 2009 WAR from FanGraphs as Smith's database only goes up through 2008 at this point.

Table 1: Top Twenty Tigers Pitchers by WAR

Rank

Pitcher

WAR

1

Hal Newhouser

55.3

2

Tommy Bridges

50.7

3

Mickey Lolich

44.2

4

Dizzy Trout

42.2

5

Jack Morris

34.5

6

Frank Lary

28.9

7

Bill Donovan

28.6

8

John Hiller

28.2

9

Jim Bunning

27.9

10

Virgil Trucks

26.7

11

Hooks Dauss

26.7

12

George Mullin

26.0

13

School Boy Rowe

23.3

14

Fred Hutchinson

22.7

15

Ed Killian

19.3

16

Earl Whitehill

19.1

17

Denny McLain

18.9

18

Justin Verlander

17.2

19

Bobo Newsome

17.2

20

Al Benton

16.5

6 comments:

  1. I would like to suggest that when you present these stats that you give a sentence or two about what things like WAR stand for and how it is used.

    is it Wins against Replacements? if so, what does that mean?

    Titus

    ReplyDelete
  2. You're absolutely right Titus and I'm usually good about that. I did explain it a few weeks back and should have linked to it. WAR is Wins Above Replacement. It's the number of wins a player is worth compared to a replacement player (somebody like Armando Galarraga this year)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sweet. I was hoping you were going to do this, Lee. How are you going to handle the OF?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Man, the Tigers just don't really have that great of a pitching history, do they?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Where's Joe Coleman?!? He always seemed to be on the mound in 1974

    ReplyDelete
  6. Joe Coleman was #22 on the list.

    ReplyDelete

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