FanPost

The Condor's first 100 starts

Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

Chris Sale is currently in the midst of an historic run right now, but what has been lost in this run is the fact that yesterday was only his 100th career start. He’s becoming the best pitcher of his generation and he’s drawing comparisons of some of the all-time greats. I decided to take a look at where his start amongst some of the best of the previous generation's first 100.

For this thought experiment I picked out five pitchers that either was thought of as the best pitchers or their generation (Maddux, Clemens), ones who Sale has been mentioned with (Pedro, Randy Johnson), or was just a fun name to take a look at (Buehrle).

To compile the stats I used Baseball-Reference’s Pitching game finder and searched only for games they started. Every pitcher I picked had at least 1 relief appearance in their first 100 games. For some it them it took 150+ games to compile 100 starts (Sale-180, Pedro-165). Clemens was the quickest to 100 at 101 games.

The first thing I noticed was the disparity in innings pitched. Randy Johnson only put up 621.1 innings in his 100 first starts while Rocket posted 729.1. So the raw totals were thrown out and I figured I’d only look at rate stats. Before I threw out the totals though I did notice Sale’s 766 strikeouts were over 100 more than Clemens’. That will definitely look significant when looking at K/9.

The first stat I decide to look at was the six players triple slash line allowed. Buehrle gave up the most home runs with 71 (surprise, look at the era and park he was in), but Sale wasn’t far behind him allowing 63. Maddux of course made the rest look bad with only 44 tossed. Would that put him as leader of the pack in triple slash line?

Triple-Slash

Well I don’t know how much surprise should be here. Condor leads all 3 categories. Buehrle got slugged around the most, Maddux got hit around but not super hard and the Big Unit gave up a ton of free passes. That goes in line with their early career profiles. The fact that Rocket’s slugging % is pretty close is impressive for him, but the free passes also bit him some.

For the next stat line I decided to look at their ERAs and and WHIP. Since ERA comparisons don’t carry over decade to decade or even year to year I figured out what each pitchers "era" average ERA was for the years their 100 starts came in and figured out their ERA+ that way. I’m not smart enough to figure in park factors or any of that I'm also not ambitious enough to figure out what their FIP would be. If someone wants to get me a year by year league average of HRs, BBs, HBPs, Ks and IPs for 1984 to today, then I will be more than happy to figure out their FIPs.

ERA-and-WHIP

The shocking part for me in these numbers is Randy Johnson entered in a "dead" period, I thought it was a run friendly environment when he started. Pedro’s numbers come from the heart of the HR resurgence and Buehrle wasn’t far behind Pedro for when they started to start games. The era Clemens and Maddux entered the league was somewhat similar to this current era in terms of scoring.

Finally I decided to take a look at how Condor stacked up against arguably the best strikeout artists and the best command experts of the last two decades. Maddux and Buehrle weren’t the big K guys when they entered the league but they had command of the zone like no other. On the opposite end of the spectrum was Randy and Pedro who while walking a considerable number of guys also racked up the swing and misses. In the middle, at least in my mind was Rocket who had decent command, got a lot of Ks. What would our Condor do when compared to these greats?

K-and-BB-per-9

Yeah. He’s head and shoulders above all of them. No shock that Burls is on the bottom of the Ks ad second best in walks. That was and still is his bread and butter. Also not surprising is the Unit’s walk numbers. He’s even said that if he had Sale’s control at Sale’s age he would have been a much better pitcher. Sale is just dominate among these greats.

Does this mean Sale is destined for the greatness that found these pitchers? Time will tell, but what we witnessing one of the best starts of a career ever and it’s been fun to cheer for so far.

A few fun notes from this research thought experiment:

-Mark Buehrle’s first 100 starts look VERY similar to Greg Maddux’s in a much lively era for scoring. I think the difference is in the second 100 starts though, when Maddog really starts to crank it up.

-Clemens had 32 CGs and 8 shutouts in his first 100 starts and racked up 2 Cy Youngs and an MVP. He was also 56-22 on a team that made the playoffs after his 100 starts was over. The win is a terrible stat but that’s an impressive beginning to a career. He’s the only one with 50+ wins in his first 100 from this group. If only there weren’t PEDs later on…

-Randy was kind of a mediocre pitcher early on. He had 26 wild pitches, which was lower than I expected.

-Crazy high stat alert that made me look twice. Maddux intentionally walked 43 guys in his first 100 starts. Compared to 11 for Buehrle who is second highest I thought "that’s odd". Then I remembered the NL is different. He walked Tony Gwinn 4 times in his first 100 starts, including twice in a single game. Barry Bonds got the IBB twice from him.

-Maddux’s first start was a CG. His 100th start was a CG. Neither were a "Maddux" and he didn’t have a signature "Maddux" until 1990.

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