Bill James notices that Baseball Reference WAR rates pitchers at the top of the NL and AL in 1961 who do not appear to have been the best pitchers in the game.
BillJamesOnline.com
I’ve been doing some work on pitchers, since Christmas; have a long list of short articles that I am hoping to write based on the work. But in the process of doing that work, I have noticed that, according to Baseball Reference, the leading American League pitcher in WAR for 1961 was. . . .wait for it, wait for it. Jack Kralick. Actually, I am not sure that Jack Kralick is the goofier one; it may be that the goofier one is Don Cardwell. Baseball Reference says that the best pitcher in the National League in 1961, the best pitcher in the majors, even better than Jack Kralick, was Don Cardwell.
One theory put forth in the comments is that really bad defenses behind both raised their ERAs. The 1961 season was also unusual in that two expansion teams were added to the American League, diluting talent a bit. AL teams were traveling the the west coast for the first time, and given there was only one team in California, teams had two long flights in a short time span. There was movement as well, as the old Senators played their first season as the Twins, while the new Senators took over in Washington. I suspect the skewed distribution of talent might have had something to do with it.
James also makes the point that there may be a bug in the calculation, a small one that doesn’t change much. Since 1961 was an odd season, maybe the bug in rearing it’s ugly head. As a software developer, I live by the mantra that there is no bug-free software, only bugs that have not been triggered yet.
from baseballmusings.com http://bit.ly/2F8GJsj
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