Free The New Ballgame: Understanding Baseball Statistics for the Casual Fan by Glenn Guzzo Page A

Angeles Dodgers through the 2006 season but
had won 20 only twice-and never exceeded 20. However, he won at least 15
games in a record 17 straight seasons until that streak was broken in 2005.
    Warren Spahn, who won more games (363) than any left-handed pitcher
in major league history, had one of the most remarkable careers for longevity.
He did not win his first game until he was 25 years old, but was still winning
them when he was 44. In the year he turned 35-time for many ballplayers to
retire-Spahn started a string of winning 20 or more games for six consecutive seasons.

    The top individual award a pitcher can
win for a single season's work is called the Cy
Young Award, named for the pitcher with the
most wins in Major League history. Awarded
to one pitcher in both the American and National Leagues, the Cy Young Award often
(but not always) goes to the pitcher who won
the most games in his league. Denton True
Young, nicknamed "Cyclone" shortened to
"Cy," won 511 games. Time tends to erase all
of baseball's important records, but this one
has been unchallenged since 1911 and may
be the likeliest of all to remain intact.
Earned run averages (ERA)
    In this statistic, lower is better. Although the serious fan will look beyond ERA
for more revealing information, for more than 100 years it has been the mosttrusted, stand-alone statistic to express how well a pitcher has done his job.
    Standards vary by era, but the targets are these: an ERA below 3.00 for
starting pitchers; elite relievers often achieve ERAs below 2.00.
    Pitchers with the most victories achieve the highest honors. But the pitchers with the dominant ERA and high strikeouts earn the deepest fan adoration.

    Warren Spahn wore
the uniform number
21 for the Boston and
Milwaukee Braves. In
eight different seasons
he won exactly 21
games.
    Ask statistics-minded fans about Hall of Fame pitcher Bob Gibson, and
hardly a one will be able to cite how many games he won. But they will speak
of his overpowering fastball, his then-record 17 strikeouts in a 1968 World
Series game, and his legendary 1.12 ERA that season.

    It's popular knowledge among stat lovers that Bob Gibson's 1.12 ERA in
1968 was the best ever. Except that it's not. In "modern" baseball-the
period since 1901, when the American League debuted and new rules
went into force-two other pitchers have had better ERAs for a season.
Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown, a Hall of Fame pitcher, had a 1.04
ERA for the 1906 Chicago Cubs, winner of a record 116 games. Dutch
Leonard of the 1914 Boston Red Sox compiled the lowest ERA of all.
While statistical sources disagree on how low, it was 1.01, 1.00 or
perhaps even 0.96.
    The Los Angeles Dodgers' Sandy Koufax excelled for only six seasons
and won many fewer games than most other pitchers who are in the Hall of
Fame, yet many fans say he was the best pitcher they ever saw, maybe the
best ever.
    In those six seasons, Koufax became the only pitcher ever to lead his
league in ERA for five consecutive seasons, with such microscopic marks as
1.88, 1.74, 2.04 and 1.73 in his final four seasons. At a time when 200 strikeouts was an excellent season's work, Koufax easily topped that all six seasons,
leading the National League four times and three times topping 300-setting a record with an astonishing 382 in 1965. And he won, too, leading the NL in
wins with 25, 26 and 27 three of those years. Three times, in 1963, 1965 and
1966, Koufax won pitching's informal "Triple Crown"-leading his league
in wins, ERA and strikeouts in the same season.

    Clearly, Koufax was the most dominant pitcher of this time (1962-66).
And he did it all with a badly arthritic elbow in his throwing arm. After totally
dominating in 1966, Koufax became one of the rare professional athletes to
retire while at the top of his game.
Saves (SV)
    With each decade beginning in the 1940s, relief pitching has become more
specialized. Today, almost every team employs a