four play
st louis will open the season with five reigning 15-game winners in its rotation. . . . well technically not, with morris likely on the shelf until may or later, but just go with it. how rare is such a quniella, and how have such rotations fared?
here’s the answer: it’s unprecedented. i traced it back — as always, through the generous offices of baseball-reference.com — to 1969, the dim pre-dawn (give or take) of the five-man rotation, and i could find nary a comparable instance. i didn’t look at every team every year, just the likely candidates, so it’s possible i missed an instance or two. but it’s pretty clear that if stl’s 2005 staff is not the first five-man rotation of reigning 15-game winners in mlb history, it’s one of the very few.
so nothing to be learned there --- okay, diff’t tack. the 2004 cards became just the 10th team since 1970 to have four 15-game winners in its rotation. how did the previous nine teams fare the year after this rare achievement? here are the nine teams, with their respective mound quartets and win totals:
2003 nyy: pettite (21), clemens (17), mussina (17), wells (15)
2001 sea: moyer (20), garcia (18), abbott (17), sele (15)
1998 atl: glavine (20), maddux (18), millwood (17), smoltz (17), neagle (16)
1993 atl: glavine (22), maddux (20), avery (18), smoltz (15)
1989 oak: stewart (21), storm davis (19), mike moore (19), welch (17)
1986 nym: ojeda (18), gooden (17), fernandez (16), darling (15)
1980 bal: stone (25), mcgregor (20), palmer (16), flanagan (16)
1978 la: hooten (18), john (17), rau (15), sutton (15)
1971 bal: mcnally (21), cuellar (20), palmer (20), dobson (20)
these nine teams won an average of 103 games, with only two (the ’78 dodgers and ’89 a’s) winning fewer than 100. in the year after, they won an average of 94, with only three topping 100 wins. (interestingly, three of the year-after teams played strike-shortened seasons, so i had to extrapolate their win totals out to 162 games.) just four of the nine teams made it back to the playoffs; two won pennants.
94 wins strikes me as a realistic target for the ’05 cardinals — would likely get them back to the playoffs in a weakened division.
here’s the answer: it’s unprecedented. i traced it back — as always, through the generous offices of baseball-reference.com — to 1969, the dim pre-dawn (give or take) of the five-man rotation, and i could find nary a comparable instance. i didn’t look at every team every year, just the likely candidates, so it’s possible i missed an instance or two. but it’s pretty clear that if stl’s 2005 staff is not the first five-man rotation of reigning 15-game winners in mlb history, it’s one of the very few.
so nothing to be learned there --- okay, diff’t tack. the 2004 cards became just the 10th team since 1970 to have four 15-game winners in its rotation. how did the previous nine teams fare the year after this rare achievement? here are the nine teams, with their respective mound quartets and win totals:
2003 nyy: pettite (21), clemens (17), mussina (17), wells (15)
2001 sea: moyer (20), garcia (18), abbott (17), sele (15)
1998 atl: glavine (20), maddux (18), millwood (17), smoltz (17), neagle (16)
1993 atl: glavine (22), maddux (20), avery (18), smoltz (15)
1989 oak: stewart (21), storm davis (19), mike moore (19), welch (17)
1986 nym: ojeda (18), gooden (17), fernandez (16), darling (15)
1980 bal: stone (25), mcgregor (20), palmer (16), flanagan (16)
1978 la: hooten (18), john (17), rau (15), sutton (15)
1971 bal: mcnally (21), cuellar (20), palmer (20), dobson (20)
these nine teams won an average of 103 games, with only two (the ’78 dodgers and ’89 a’s) winning fewer than 100. in the year after, they won an average of 94, with only three topping 100 wins. (interestingly, three of the year-after teams played strike-shortened seasons, so i had to extrapolate their win totals out to 162 games.) just four of the nine teams made it back to the playoffs; two won pennants.
94 wins strikes me as a realistic target for the ’05 cardinals — would likely get them back to the playoffs in a weakened division.
posted by L Boros at 1:32 PM
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