Tom Brennan: IS JAKE AS GOOD A PITCHER AS SANDY KOUFAX WAS?

I think that as a follow up to my article yesterday, where I attempted to show that the great Sandy Koufax did have the competitive advantage of playing for an excellent Los Angeles Dodger team, and what it might’ve looked like if he had pitched for the horrid New York Mets back in the early 60s instead:

I wanted today to take a quick look at whether Jake deGrom might be as good as Dandy Sandy.

In order to do that, you’d have to take into account and adjust for the offensive production of the era that each pitcher pitched in. 

Sandy Koufax from 1962 to 1966, had a sparkling earned run average of 1.94, in part due to the fact that two of the nine teams he was facing were the terrible expansion Mets and Astros. His ERA without facing those teams was a still-stellar 2.03. He of course never had to face his own team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of the better offensive teams in the league. 

Jake’s ERA from 2015 to 2019 (to pick five full seasons for comparison purposes), was 2.61.   Same as his career ERA.

The National League in Sandy Koufax’s time averaged 131 HRs and an earned run average of 3.48. Jake deGrom in 2015 through 2019 faced a National League where the average HRs were 183 per team per season and the average earned run average was 4.16, both substantially higher than Koufax faced.  Latter day hitters are clearly more productive, much of it due to the long ball and, I imagine, mound height. 

Thus, the NL's earned run average in Jake’s era was 0.68 higher, and the hitters in Jake’s era are far more muscular, averaging 40% more HRs per team. 

In Jake’s era, of course, he also faces AL DH teams, which exacerbates the difference, despite the fact that there are only 20 out of 162 games each year played against the DH-using American League teams.  Jake in his career in 24 starts against the AL is 8-9, 2.97, accounting for 13.5% of his innings, including 6 starts against the slugging Yanks in which his ERA is 3.51.   Strip the NL portion out and his career ERA is 2.55.

Back to muscularity: Koufax allowed 204 HRs in his 2,324 career innings, about the same rate as the league at the time.  I wonder how he would have reacted in a league like the current NL where 40% more HRs are hit.

Last factor: workload.  Sandy threw (regular season and playoffs) an average of 345 innings in the last two of those seasons.   And as he completed tons of games, 413 of his 2,324 career innings were in the 8th inning and beyond, where his career ERA was 3.23.  Had he been used every 5th day, and more typical of today's game, just 7 innings most starts, what on earth would his numbers have been?  One can only imagine.

All of that said, Jake’s ERA for his five years was 34% higher than Koufax, while the ERA of the National League in Jake’s era was only 20% higher than that in Koufax’s era. 

Of course, Jake didn’t face 2 crappy expansion teams, nor were the Mets’ teams of 2015-19 nearly as dominant in their era as the 1962-66 Dodgers were in theirs.

All in all, at this point I would conclude that Jake is either the equal of, or perhaps not quite as good as, Sandy Koufax was in those prime time years for Sandy.  

If I had to pick one guy, I'd have to pick Koufax.

Sandy clearly had a big edge on win/loss % but that was again due to pitching for a better team, facing overmatched expansion teams in 22% of his games, and being a rare very high velocity pitcher in his ERA, whereas Jake’s era has so many hard throwers, his incredible velocity is probably somewhat less of a weapon than it was for Sandy.

That’s my take.  What is your opinion?