Tracking the Orioles' "Hitter Wins" and "Pitcher Wins," by month

[Frobby]

There's been a lot of discussion lately about why the O's have been so mediocre over the last two months or so.  Is it the hitters' fault, or the pitchers?   And some people have pointed out that while the Orioles' run totals are well above average, they've had a lot of games where they haven't performed well.  So, I decided to look at every game and give the credit or blame to the hitters, or the pitchers, or both.

I used the foilowing rubric, which isn't perfect, for reasons I will explain.   The average team scores 4.42 runs per game.   So, any game where the Orioles score 5+ runs, the hitters have done their job and get credit for a win.   If they score 4 or fewer, they don't, and in fact get blame for any loss.   On the pitcher side, if they allow 4 runs or less, they get credit for a win, if they allow 5 or more, they get blame for a loss.   And some games (in fact, nearly half) both the hitters and the pitchers get the credit for the outcome.  So, there are six possible outcomes:

Both Win ("BW"): Offense scores 5+ runs, pitchers allow 4 runs or less

Hitter Win ("HW"): Offense scores 6+, pitchers allow 5+, but the Orioles win

Pitcher Win ("PW"): Offense scores 4 runs or less but the O's win anyway because the pitchers allowed 3 or less

Both Loss ("BL"): Offense scores 4 runs or less, pitchers allow 5+ runs

Hitter Loss ("HL"): Pitchers allow 4 runs  or less but the O's lose because the offense scored 3 or less

Pitcher Loss ("PL"): Offense scores 5+ runs but the O's lose because the pitchers allow 6+ runs

Now, before I go further, I should say that this categorization is slightly skewed in favor of the pitchers, because although the average team scores 4.42 runs per game, the median number of runs scored by a team is 4.   But for current purposes, this categorization is good enough.   Here are the results, by month:

Month	Mar/Apr	May	June	July	Aug	Total
BW	11	9	9	5	3	37
HW	3	2	4	4	3	16
PW	5	6	4	4	2	21
BL	4	4	3	9	5	25
HL	3	5	5	3	2	18
PL	3	0	4	1	2	10

As you can see from the chart:

• In almost half the games (62 of 127 to date), both the hitters and the pitchers get the credit or blame for the outcome.  So far, both get credit for exactly half the wins (37 of 74).   It's slightly less than half the time for the losses (25 of 53).
• In the games where both don't get credit, the pitchers tend to get credit for the wins more often (21 "Pitcher Wins" to 16 "Hitter Wins"), while the hitters get blame for the loss more often (18 "Hitter Losses" to 10 "Pitcher Losses").  In my opinion, that's due to the phenomenon that 4.42 runs/game is the league average but 4 is the median.
• The number of Hitter Wins per month has stayed quite steady between March-June compared to July-August, but the number of Pitcher Wins has declined pretty significantly.   (Note: August isn't over yet so those numbers arent't fully comparable.)
• The number of Hitter Losses and Pitcher Losses has gone down in the second half; in 14 of the 22 losses, both the pitchers and the hitters got the blame.  Conversely, the number of wins where both the pitchers and the hitters got the credit have gone way down in the second half.

So what do I take way from this?   First, there is plenty of blame to go around for the team's mediocre play in July and August.   However, I would definitely say that the decline in well-pitched games is the biggest factor.  In April through June, the pitchers got sole or shared credit for 44 of the team's 52 wins (85%).   Since then, they've only gotten sole or shared credit for 14 of 21 wins (67%).   In April - June, the pitchers got sole or shared blame for 18 of 31 losses (58%).   Since then, they've gotten sole or partial blame for 17 of 22 losses (77%).   By contrast, the hitters got sole or shared credit for 28 of 44 wins in March-June (64%) and 15 of 21 in July-August (71%); and the hitters received sole or shared blame in 24 of 31 losses (77%) in March-June and in 19 of 22 losses (86%) in July-August.

I may have more to say later, but I think this gives a pretty granular picture for discussion.

[kidrock]

The quality of content on this site it very high.  Thanks for pulling this together.

[Aristotelian]

I was thinking of approaching the same question by looking at pitching WAR vs hitting WAR for successful teams. This year, the O's have put up 25.7 WAR by hitters, vs 9.7 WAR by pitchers for a 27.3% share of our total WAR.

For 2023, it was 27.8 vs 16.3, or 37% WAR share.  

We do seem to be built around position players than pitching. 

I don't have time to do a more detailed study, but it would be interesting to see how our WAR share compares to other 100 win and WS championship teams. I wonder what is the lower bound for teams to win based on offense alone. 

The 2023 Rangers split was 34/13 (27.6%) while Arizona's was 24/10 (29.4%).

2022 Astros did 30/23.6 (44%) vs 21/20 for the Phillies (48.7%). 

Appears our model is on the low end but not unprecedentedly low but would be curious to do a more detailed study.

[Aristotelian]

Pitcher WAR shares for a few more teams:

2023 Dodgers 31.8 hitters/13.2 pitchers (29.3%)

2023 Rays 35.5/17.4 (32.9%)

2022 Yankees 36/19.3 (34.9%)

2022 Braves 26.6/22.9 (46.2%)

2021 Braves 21.1/19.5 (48%)

2021 Astros 35.8/14.4 (28.7%)

2021 Rays 35.1/14.2 (28.8%)

2021 Giants 28.7/26.7 (48.1%)

2021 Dodgers 23.7/31.9 (57.3%)

So our current split of 27% appears close to the lower bound of last year's Rangers for a successful team with mediocre pitching.
 

From a WAR standpoint, it is possible to succeed with good, but perhaps not dominant, pitching. 

In general, it appears very rare for a team to source WAR primarily from pitching: the 2021 Dodgers are the only good team in the last three years with a pitching share above 50%. That was a rotation of peak Buehler (7.1) along with Bauer, Scherzer, Kershaw and Urias. (Buehler and Urias were the two controlled guys, along with Kershaw, who by that time was well into FA makng $31M. They had Bauer making $25M, Price $32M, Scherzer $27M, and Jansen $20M. That is over $130M in pitching to get that kind of pitching staff. 

The Braves and Rays have gotten close to 50%, but the average appears to be around 35% or so (similar to our 2023 team). 

Now, it is still possible that you can credit pitching for the majority of wins, since even replacement level pitchers are going to pitch their share of decent games. But in terms of WAR, it is the position players that tend to make the difference. Although we can certainly stand to improve our pitching, I think this at least somewhat validates the Elias strategy of focusing primarily on developing elite hitters.