Quick Hitter: Looking Back at a Twins Pitcher's Unprecedented 2005 Season

[Matthew Lenz]

Consider this pitching line: 12-5, 2.71 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, 79.2 IP, and two RoY votes. You might think, ”this sounds an awful lot like Francisco Liriano’s rookie year but wasn’t that 2006? Weren’t his numbers better than that?” And you’d be right, this piece isn’t about Liriano. Or a starting pitcher.On Monday, Zone Coverage writer Brandon Warne posted the following tweet:

 

Anyway, I bit on Brandon’s bait and looked up his strikeout rate and was truly shocked by what I found. 7.7-percent. Seven point seven. By FanGraphs standards, or any standards, that is well below the “awful” threshold. For another reference point, he had a K/9 of 2.8...wow. The ultimate Twins pitcher of the early 2000’s, right? With an 88.1-percent contact rate, you bet he was. Okay, so where does this get historic?

 

I used Baseball Reference’s Play Index to play around with some stats and found all seasons under the following parameters:

• Zero games started and at least 50 innings pitched
• K/9 less than or equal to three
• ERA less than or equal to three
• WHIP greater than or equal to 1.1
• At least 12 wins

Jesse Crain is the only pitcher in Major League history to ever provide such a stat line. How do you have such a solid ERA and so many wins despite such poor underlying metrics? Huh, maybe these analytics people are on to something here.

 

Here’s what doesn’t make sense...

• He earned 12 wins despite not starting any games? He is one of two pitchers to accomplish this in under 80 innings pitched. By the way, the other was Joe Nathan the year before he was traded to the Twins.
• He posted an ERA under three despite an almost “awful” walk rate (8.9 - percent) and “awful” strikeout rate? He is the only pitcher since 1992 to accomplish this feat of pitchers who pitched at least 50 innings. With the way that today’s game is played he might be the last.

Here’s what does make sense…

• Of pitchers who pitched between 50 and 99.2 innings with an ERA under 3.00 Jesse Crain’s FIP of 4.65 is 14th highest in Major League history.
• Of pitchers who pitched btween 50 and 99.2 innings with a FIP of at least 4.50 and strike out rate less than or equal to eight percent Jesse Crain’s BAbip of .219 is 20th lowest in Major League history.

The final verdict on Jesse Crain’s unprecedented 2005 season is that it was largely based on skill. But not his skill. Per Fangraphs, the 2005 Twins had the AL’s best defense in the fourth best defense in all of baseball. In fact the Twins pitching staff as a whole benefited from the seventh lowest BABIP in the Majors. I mean, we were talking about the ultimate Twins pitching prototype and the prototype actually fit the team in the mid-2000’s.

 

Once I saw his strikeout rate, wins, and ERA I knew I had to do a deeper dive and figured I might as well write about it. Thanks, Brandon ... I needed something to do while my wife watched Listen To Your Heart on ABC.

 

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[theBOMisthebomb]

Pitch to contact was brilliant.

[Matthew Lenz]

Pitch to contact was brilliant.

 

But at the same time he walked a lot of guys. Pitch-to-contact + walking guys leads to 12 wins and a 2.71 ERA? Mind blown.

[Nine of twelve]

Statistically speaking, every now and then there will be an statistical outlier.

[Matthew Taylor]

This was a lot of fun. Nice job, Matt!

[Trov]

This is the exact illustration I like point to when I hear people tout FIP all day long about real stat on how well a pitcher will do.  Just as any other stat, FIP is only a piece.  It points to absent fielding how good a pitcher should be, but they play defense in baseball so why would we say FIP is so great to determine how good a pitcher was, and just got lucky with good defense.  FIP only measures non defense outcomes, which yes if you can strike out a lot walk few and give up very few HR you should do well, but if your defense is terrible and allows tons of hits and errors because they are all terrible, no pitcher will do well.  On other hand, if pitcher can get weak contact and have great defense even if his FIP is high he will still have a good season.  

 

That all being said, that is crazy low strike out rate for any pitcher.  That team had great defense though, only weak spot was Cuddy.  Punto and Bartlett up the middle with the soul patrol in the outfield.  

[terrydactyls]

12 wins in under 80 innings. Amazing but how about Elroy Face going 18-1 while pitching under 100 innings (no starts). That was an amazing year.

[ashbury]

12 wins in under 80 innings. Amazing but how about Elroy Face going 18-1 while pitching under 100 innings (no starts). That was an amazing year.

93.1 innings for Face. To find anyone in major league history with just one more win, you have to go all the way up to 169.1 innings, to get Storm Davis in 1989. Increase the innings to 180.2 and you get the 2017 edition of Blake Snell, who leapfrogged 20 and went directly to 21 wins. (The fewest innings with exactly 20 wins is 188.2 by Jered Weaver in 2012.) Weird way of looking at it, but it brings back some good names. And it points up just how much of an anomaly Face's 1959 season was.

 

Andrew Bailey needed just 4 innings in 2017 to achieve 2 wins, setting a new major league mark.

 

[Matthew Lenz]

12 wins in under 80 innings. Amazing but how about Elroy Face going 18-1 while pitching under 100 innings (no starts). That was an amazing year.

 

Interesting...based on my research and your research he must have gotten 7 wins (since Crain and Nathan were only two with at least 12 in under 80 IP) in like 14 innings??