Major League Baseball Is Not 75% Pitching

One of the more annoying things that’s still repeated with some regularity is that pitching is more important than hitting for a team to win.  The classic statement is winning is 75% pitching and defense.  Of course, this simply isn’t true.  Winning baseball at any level from high school to the major leagues is 50% offense (scoring runs) and 50% defense (preventing the other team from scoring runs).  It always has been. and it always will be.

The 2009 Giants are a perfect example of this simple fact.  Their pitching is great: the Gints are third in the NL in fewest runs allowed with 172 (the Dodgers are first with 158 runs allowed, playing half their games at Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine; even with recent adjustments to limit the amount of foul territory, it’s still one of the best pitchers’ parks in baseball.)  On the other hand, the Gints are 15th in the NL in runs scored at 154, with only the Padres, playing in one of the worst hitters’ parks in baseball, below them at 152.

The Giants’ record is 19-21, right around what you would expect from a team that has scored 154 runs and allowed 172 runs.  If baseball were really 75% or 67% or 60% pitching and defense, then the Giants would have a better record, since their pitching is so good.

The reason that this idea that pitching and defense are somehow more important than offense/hitting is that what correlates most closely to winning percentage over time is not how many more runs a team scores than it allows, but rather the ratio between runs scored and runs allowed.  In other words, over time a team that scores 600 runs and allows 500 runs each year will have a slightly better won-loss record than a team that scores 800 runs and allows 700 runs each year, because although the total run differential is the same (100 runs per year), the former team has a ratio of 6 to 5 runs scored to runs allowed which is slightly higher than the latter team’s ratio of 8 to 7 runs scored to runs allowed.  Thus, teams with great pitching and mediocre offense tend to do better than teams with great offense and lousy pitching.  At the end of the day, however, over time you have to score substantially more runs than you allow if you want to make the post-season consistently.