Is the Pedro Era Over?

No, but I wanted everyone to read this so bear with the awful title.

I wanted to try and gauge how important it will be to find a good hitting pitcher.  To start, I calculated the average "real-life" slash line for ATB eligible pitchers: .181 / .223 / .243.  That's anemic but actually a bit better than I expected.  

From here I thought it would be interesting to group all these pitchers into broad OPS categories to get a better idea of the distribution.  The figures below include a rough adjustment for park, but not era.  Again, real life data only.  It's admittedly a bit arbitrary and non-scientific, but should work for our purposes.

I included only those with 85 or more than 85 AB as rough estimate of starting pitchers:

OPS
 0.5%: .900+
 1.8%: .800 - .899
 6.7%: .700 - .799
13.3%: .600 - .699
21.7%: .500 - .599
26.1%: .400 - .499
 8.2%: .300 - .399
 1.4%: .100 - .199

Their median OPS score was .480.  

One way to judge the impact is to put those lost at bats in terms of a #1 pick.  For instance, most pitchers figure to have about 100 ABs and if you choose a low end option - say Sandy Koufax who went 9 for 118 - you are basically adding an 0 for 100 out of your first your draft pick batter.

Think about that.  Lets say Stan Musial was your 1st round draft pick, if we take away 100 hits with the same distribution of extra base hits that he had in 1948, his OPS plummets from 1.152 all the down to .700.

If instead you choose a higher end option, say Robin Roberts who went 27 for 107, you would effectively drop Musial to 'only; a .790

Repeat this for every starting pitcher on the team and you can quickly see how a good hitting pitching staff can be a real bonus.

Effect of the American League Pitcher
This also got me to wondering how DMB will treat unrated pitchers.  We know most pitchers with a batting line will be awful thanks to an average real life OPS of .480, but what will DMB do to American League Pitchers in the DH era.  Will they hit better than bad hitters?  Or will they be even worse off than 1962 Bob Buhl? (It's worth the click).

Well, it's not quite Buhl but it is a worst case scenario.  Using last years ATB 15 database which is chock full of pitchers with no stats, I simmed a lone season and found pitchers combined to hit .064 / .093 / .077.  

Ouch.

This will undoubtedly impact the draft value of the DH era AL pitchers.  Here are a few of the bigger names that just got knocked down a peg or two:

Name (Career ATB ERA)

• Pedro Martinez (2.68)
• Roy Halladay (3.58)
• Justin Verlander (3.60)
• Roger Clemens (3.75)
• Mike Mussina (3.87)
• Catfish Hunter (4.02)
• Johan Santana (4.04)

In the last three years Pedro has been drafted 2nd twice and 3rd once - will he drop to 4th or even 5th now?

Thanks to Sean who helped with the idea and many of the details for this article.