Quote:
Originally posted by Skipaway
What problems? Can you be more specific?
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What I was thinking of is that 2 of the key statistics DIPS uses are homers allowed and strikeouts. In the deadball era an average pitcher may allow 1 homer every 200 innings pitched so that is really an insignificant stat. Strikeout rates were also a lot lower and there was a lot less difference between the strikeout leaders ration and the average strikeout ratio in most cases. So there wasn't a lot of differentiation between pitchers as far as strikeouts.
That leaves walks and defense and the ever-popular "luck" as well as the usually relatively small difference in strikeout rates.. Obviously control and good defense help a pitcher and probably then more then than now but I just intuitively and logically can't accept that the *only * difference between pitchers was control and defense, it's just too simplistic and illogical an argument. There were a lot of ground balls compared to fly balls then and so a lot more balls were put in play. It seems that those pitchers who regularly gave up less hits per balls in play than their team-mates as well as the rest of the league had to have some ability to prevent or reduce the chance of hits on balls in play which was statistically significant.