Of the pitchers listed above, no one stands out as being clearly better
than the rest. Walter Johnson was 23, and probably has the best overall numbers,
winning 25 games with a weak Senators team. Ed Walsh also pitched well, and was
the hardest worker in the league. Vean Gregg had a great rookie season; he
followed it up with two more big seasons, before arm troubles prematurely
ended his career. The Athletics also had some good pitchers, notably Hall Of
Famers Eddie Plank and Chief Bender.
Another Athletic pitcher, Jack Coombs, led
the league with 28 wins, despite a poor ERA. There appears to be a simple
explanation for this; the Athletics scored a boatload of runs, and gave
their pitchers tremendous run support. But there is another oddity in the
stats; the Athletics allowed the fewest runs of any team, by a good margin,
but were only third in the league in team ERA.
The reason for this disparity is also simple:
the Athletics allowed (by far) the fewest unearned runs in the league. The
team committed only 225 errors, whereas the league average was 301. Which means
that other pitchers in the league were allowing more runs than the Philadelphia
pitchers, but compiling lower ERAs. But that's the point, right? We keep track
of earned and unearned runs, so that pitchers are not penalized for defensive
miscues.
I only wonder if ERAs in the deadball era have
been distorted to some extent, because there were
so many errors
committed. Infielders routinely made 50-60 errors per season; 28% of total
runs scored were unearned (in 1991, the average AL team made 116 errors, and
9% of runs scored were unearned). So for the average dead-ball pitcher,
the ERA represents only about 70% of total runs scored. I have no idea what was
considered an "error" in 1911, but there were so many of them, that the
definition must have been applied very broadly.
And it's for this reason that I'm suspicious
about ERAs from this period, and I don't put as much stock in them as I
do in other eras. There's just too much that they don't reveal. And that's
the end of this digression; I have nothing more to say about this year. Walter
Johnson was probably the best pitcher.
