Strength of Schedule Matters in Baseball, Too

(Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

It was during the 1990 Major League Baseball season that I gained a reputation among friends for my ability to predict the future. And all for what, at least to me, was just plain and simple logic.

A few days before the season got under way, I made a series of predictions as to how the season would turn out, including the final standings, league leaders in various categories, and who would win the major awards.

I did pretty well. I had three of the four divisional winners correct, missing only on the New York Mets, who would have won the NL East if they hadn't underperformed by eight wins relative to their Pythagorean W-L that season.

It didn't matter, because I correctly had the Cincinnati Reds, freed from Pete Rose's chronic mismanagement of his pitching staff, winning the pennant.

I predicted Rickey Henderson's MVP award, that Barry Bonds would have a breakout season, and that Cecil Fielder would, in his return from Japan, live up to the power potential he'd had for years.

All pretty good. But what everyone scoffed at was my predicted winner of the AL Cy Young Award: a 33-year-old righthander named Bob Welch, who entered the season with a career mark of 149-103, but had never won more than 17 games in a season.

Welch, who was set to open 1990 as the Oakland A's No. 3 starter, was best known for two things: that he struck out Reggie Jackson in a famous World Series confrontation as a rookie, and for overcoming a serious bout with alcoholism.

Why Welch? It seemed so obvious to me. He was a good pitcher, good enough to be the No. 1 starter on a lot of teams, pitching for the best team in baseball.

He would spend 1990 as a front-line pitcher facing other teams' third starters, who would not be as good as he was, with teams behind them not as good as Welch's. I figured he was going to pile up victories.

He ended up with as many wins as any pitcher in the last 40 years. And he won the Cy Young Award, simply because the voters couldn't get past that 27-6 record and realize that Welch was only the third-best pitcher on his own team that season.

My prediction should have not come to pass, but it did because no one took quality of opposition into account.

I thought about Welch and his 1990 season again last night, when the subject of Cleveland Indians pitcher Cliff Lee came up in an article and discussion about bad trades.

Lee was part of a "rent-a-player" deal for Bartolo Colon in 2002, years before he was an effective major league pitcher. Last year, Cliff Lee went 22-3 and won the AL Cy Young Award.

Lee also had more than his share of "Bob Welch luck," though. Pitching in a weak division, where 89 wins won the title, Lee dominated weak AL Central competition all season, and only faced the top teams in the AL East four times.

By contrast, runner-up Roy Halladay of Toronto pitched against the Red Sox, Rays and Yankees a whopping 16 times and also faced (and dominated) the hard-hitting Texas Rangers twice.

Lee got 6.13 runs per game support from his offense, Halladay, facing much tougher opposition, got just 4.72. Despite this, his numbers were nearly as good as Lee's.

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