Tuesday, August 8
By Chris Kahrl
Special to ESPN.com
Editor's note: The team of writers from the Baseball Prospectus (tm) will be writing twice a week for ESPN.com. You can check out more of their work at their website at baseballprospectus.com.
One of the popular topics going into the final two months of the season is the Chicago White Sox and their rookie pitchers, and how this is going to be a handicap for them going into the postseason. Perhaps even more maddening, Jerry Manuel is saying he'd prefer to go into the postseason counting on the pitchers who are going to get him there, instead of hauling in the gun for hire that most writers have been clamoring for over the last two months.
In doing this, Manuel seems to be flying in the face of conventional wisdom. After all, every July, articles are cranked out about the perils of relying on young pitchers and how they invariably break your heart. Strangely enough, those stories usually pop up side by side with cautionary tales that while it's important to avoid putting rookie pitchers on the spot, you don't want to end up on the losing end of a Doyle Alexander-for-John Smoltz swap either. What's a GM to do?
For the purpose of this study, let's focus on starting pitchers. First, remember that the issue is overstated in the case of the White Sox. If Cal Eldred really can't pitch in October, Jerry Manuel will have a choice between Jon Garland or Mark Buehrle or even Kip Wells for the fourth slot behind Mike Sirotka, James Baldwin and Jim Parque. As the fourth starter, whichever rookie Manuel ends up choosing will likely make no more than one start per postseason series.
|  | | If the Cardinals make the postseason, rookie Rick Ankiel will likely be in their rotation. |
Keep in mind that there are several other potential playoff teams who, like the White Sox, are going to have to depend on the performance of rookies in the postseason. If they make it to October, the Oakland Athletics would be pitching Barry Zito or Mark Mulder, although chances are one of them would get bumped from the rotation so that Tim Hudson, Gil Heredia and Kevin Appier can all take their turns. Rookie Rick Ankiel has been one of the Cardinals' best starters. Do you think Tony LaRussa will bump him out of the rotation for both Pat Hentgen and Garrett Stephenson? Should the Reds pull off what only two weeks ago seemed impossible, they'll have done it using rookie Rob Bell in their rotation.
So that's a good number of rookies featured prominently on contending teams. Is that a good thing? To answer that, I went back to 1977 to find out how many rookies have pitched in the postseason and how well they pitched. For the curious, I picked 1977 for the extremely arbitrary reason that it's about as far as far back my useful baseball memories go, and I've got a deadline.
Starting with the 1977 postseason and Ron Guidry's dominant complete-game 6-2 victory against the Royals to tie the ALCS at one apiece, right up through Orlando Hernandez's seven-inning, one-run stint in Game 2 of the 1998 World Series, rookie pitchers started 59 playoff games over 23 years. In those 59 games, they went 28-10 with an ERA of 3.77 and logged 29 quality starts. Teams using a rookie starter in the World Series have won it 10 out of 13 times in the last 23 years.
Now, I know what you're already thinking: with guys like Guidry or El Duque, we're only talking about really great rookies, right? But that's the funny thing about rookies: how are we supposed to know how well they're going to turn out? We know how well Guidry turned out, and we have a pretty good idea that El Duque is one of the league's better starters. But are all rookies making postseason appearances budding All-Stars?
Lets take a look at which rookies were pitching and for whom during this period:
1977: The Yankees' Guidry beats the Royals in Game 2 of the ALCS, gets pulled from Game 5 down 3-1 in the third and beats the Dodgers in Game 4 of the World Series with another two-run complete game. The Yankees win the World Series. (note: Guidry wasn't technically a rookie, although he had pitched only 31 innings in the big leagues before 1977.)
1978: The Yankees do it again, this time with Jim Beattie. Beattie beats the Royals in the first game of the ALCS and beats the Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series, breaking a 2-2 series tie. Again, the Yankees win the World Series.
1979: The Reds start 21-year old-Frank Pastore versus the Pirates in the NLCS, despite his having the highest ERA of any of their regular starters. Pastore rises to the occasion, giving up two runs in seven innings in Game 2, but The Family ends up winning the game in the 10th.
1980: The Phillies call on two rookies, starting Marty Bystrom in the final game of the NLCS against the Astros (he gives up one run in 5.1 IP, and the Phillies go on to win in the 10th), and both Bystrom and Bob Walk against the Royals. Walk beats the Royals in Game 1, and Bystrom pitches into the sixth, giving up three runs as the Phillies win 4-3. The Phillies win the World Series.
1981: It's the strike year, but it's also Fernandomania. Because of the extended playoff format, Fernando Valenzuela starts five games, winning three and seeing a fourth win disappear when Dave Stewart blows the save in the first game against the Astros. He pitches 40.2 postseason innings and posts a 2.21 ERA. And the Dodgers win the World Series, beating the Yankees.
The Yankees wouldn't have gotten to the Series without the efforts of rookie Dave Righetti, who beat both the Brewers and A's before getting an early hook in Game 3 of the World Series. Besides Fernando and Rags, the Royals start rookie Mike Jones against the Billyball A's in the strike-created Division Series and he tosses a great game, allowing only two runs in eight innings, but losing. If you don't remember Jones, don't be surprised. He only started 25 games in his major-league career.
1982: The Cardinals win all three games rookie John Stuper pitches, capped by his complete-game, one-run win in Game 6 of the World Series against the Brewers. Keep in mind, Stuper's Cardinals are down three games to two, and his win makes their seventh-game win possible.
1983: Orioles rookie Mike Boddicker tosses two complete-game victories, allowing just one unearned run. The Phillies also rely on a rookie starter, Charlie Hudson. Hudson beats the Dodgers in the NLCS with a two-run complete game to give them a 2-1 advantage, but the Orioles beat him twice en route to a World Series win. Boddicker beats Hudson in their head-to-head matchup in Game 2.
1984: The Royals try to fend off the Tigers with rookie Bret Saberhagen. Saberhagen tosses a great game, allowing three runs in eight innings in the second game of the ALCS, but Dan Quisenberry loses it in the 11th.
1987: Joe Magrane was famous for his wit, but not for his rookie postseason performance for the Cardinals. He doesn't get an out in the fifth inning of any of his three starts, losing twice in the Metrodome against the Twins. The Twins' Les Straker doesn't do much better, getting hammered against both the Tigers in Game 3 of the ALCS (with the Twins up 2-0 in the series) and the Cardinals in Game 6 of the World Series. But Straker also has one of the best games of his two-year big-league career in Game 3 of the World Series, tossing six shutout innings before the Cardinals rallied to win the game in the seventh.
1988: The Dodgers' Tim Belcher beats the favored Mets twice in the NLCS, gets a no-decision in the famous Kirk Gibson home run game, and beats the Athletics in Game 4.
1990: The Red Sox call on the immortal Dana Kiecker, who like Straker had a brief two-year career. Kiecker does a pretty good job, allowing only one run in 5.2 IP against the A's, before Larry Andersen and Jeff Reardon blow the game in the late innings.
1991: Toronto calls on Juan Guzman in Game 2 of the ALCS against the Twins. He wins, giving up two runs in 5.2 IP and tying the series.
1992: Pittsburgh manages to stretch the NLCS against the Braves out to seven games thanks to Tim Wakefield. Wakefield wins Game 3 with the Bucs down 0-2 in the series, and Game 6 to tie the series. Both starts are complete games.
1993: The White Sox use Jason Bere as their fourth starter against the Blue Jays. While you may remember Jack McDowell's miserable pitching, Bere doesn't help much either, allowing three runs in 2.1 IP in a game the Sox rally to win 7-4, tying the series at two games apiece.
1995: This year features four different rookies making postseason starts. Andy Pettitte gets left out too long in Game 2 against the Mariners, who tie the game 4-4 with two runs off Pettitte in the seventh; this was the game that ended in a pyrrhic 15th-inning win for the Yankees. In part because of that game, we later get Bob Wolcott's famed Game 1 ALCS win for the Mariners against the Indians. The Dodgers call on rookies Hideo Nomo and Ismael Valdes against the Reds. Valdes allows two unearned runs in seven innings for a no-decision (the pen loses the game in the 8th), while Nomo gets shelled in the third game.
1996: Two teams use rookies as their fourth starters in the LCS. Alan Benes loses a tough Game 6 for the Cardinals against the Braves, allowing two runs in five innings. The Orioles call on Rocky Coppinger, and the Yankees bruise him for five runs in 5.1 IP.
1997: The year of Jaret Wright, Yankee-killer (two wins in the Division Series), and Livan Hernandez and, of course, Eric Gregg. Let's not forget a pretty good start by the Marlins' Tony Saunders in the NLCS against the Braves (five innings, two runs). He got blown out by the Indians in Game 4 of the World Series. Keep in mind that Hernandez and Saunders got used more than expected because of Kevin Brown's bout with the stomach flu and Alex Fernandez's torn rotator cuff in Game 2 of the NLCS.
1998: El Duque wins his starts against the Indians and the Padres, while in desperation the Cubs call on an injured Kerry Wood to try and avoid a three-game sweep at the hands of the Braves. While Wood allows only one run in five, he takes the loss.
All in all, it's an interesting collection of stories, and while some people may take issue with making all of these rookies equal when we're comparing someone with as much pro experience as Nomo or Hernandez to youngsters like Saberhagen or Valenzuela, or no-namers like Dana Kiecker or Les Straker, that's kind of the point. All of these pitchers came into their rookie postseasons facing the spotlight of playoff pressure.
While we all want to make distinctions between the World Series and the College World Series and the Olympics and pitching for Fidel Castro and winning your high school championship game, they're all potentially high-pressure situations. We can't know how much pressure the pitcher puts on himself. What we can judge are the results, and the track record of rookie pitchers in the postseason is pretty strong. Even if we only consider rookie postseason pitching performances since the new playoff format came into being in 1995, rookies have gone 8-5 with a 4.08 ERA, posting seven quality starts out of 17.
Maybe there's something that makes us love the image of the mysterious gunslinger being brought in to save the town. So sportswriters conjure up images of David Cone or even Tim Belcher as guns for hire, and we eat that stuff up. Unfortunately for that kind of mythmaking, the performance of rookie pitchers in the postseason should be enough to make people set aside the romance, because it looks like Jerry Manuel has a point when it comes to sticking with the pitchers who got you there.
Chris Kahrl writes for the Baseball Prospectus, the annual book by the same name, covering over 1500 players with in-depth statistical analysis and hard-hitting commentary. Chris may be reached at ckahrl@baseballprospectus.com.
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Cone's collapse for the ages
