Sunday, December 9, 2018

“Eight Men Out” 1919 World Series for Statis-Pro Baseball


The 1919 World Series for Statis-Pro Baseball












Overview:
I’m not going to go into the general details of the 1919 World Series gambling scandal.  That story has been handled well by numerous other sources already.  I will say I believe they took the money and they threw the Series, in particular Gandil, Cicotte, Williams, and Risberg, who played terribly on the whole, and Shoeless Joe, who flat out admitted it.  They may have gone back and recanted in later interviews and stated they still played hard, particularly after they thought their original testimonies were lost.  But I have a tendency to believe what is stated in front of Grand Juries, where perjury will cost witnesses their freedom.  Throwing baseball games was not technically illegal in 1919, but perjury then as now was a crime, so I encourage anyone who wants a clear picture to find and download these testimonies, and to draw their own conclusions about Eddie Cicotte, Shoeless Joe Jackson or Buck Weaver. I have other reasons to believe they were probably knee deep in these schemes.  There’s plenty of evidence to support that the Sox were throwing games in 1920, as well; I encourage people to Google this often-overlooked fact of the times.  

Only recently have I suddenly taken an interest in this Series, and as I’ve done more reading I realized that with a little work on the rule set these 1919 teams would be just perfect for the Statis-Pro baseball simulation.  Simulation of this Series is one of the ultimate “What Ifs?”  To make teams in this simulation you must make some mathematical assumptions about the relative strengths of the teams.  There are also some other items I wanted to explore beyond the “Who did What, When?’ questions that still persist even now, almost a hundred years later.  These are:

1) The White Sox were favored, by some modern accounts by as much as 5-1, although I will clarify this position.  It was their poor showing versus these expectations that stimulated contemporary investigations into the gambler’s influence on the Series.  What really were the odds?

2) What was the contemporary view of these teams in their time?  Can we learn from the strengths or biases of these views?  

3) Should Chicago have been favored at all?  Would Cincinnati have won the Series outright even if the White Sox had played clean?

4) What can we learn about these teams from the simulation?  How do you play them, and how do they differ from modern teams?

What were the Odds?

Contrary to popular current belief, and the opinions stated in the movie Eight Men Out, the White Sox were not 5:1 favorites, at least not by anyone who didn’t have a partisan interest.  Actually, a review of contemporary newspaper articles thought the clubs evenly matched.  The Sporting News asked leading members of the press to pick the winner and they were split seven to seven on the outcome. James Gould of the St. Louis Star wrote, “Perhaps there has never been a World Series the winner of which is harder to pick in advance.” 

Even partisan observers had the Sox favored by only 2:1 or 3:1 and picked them to win in seven or eight games of the nine games scheduled.  These observations are in agreement with each other as noted in the tables below:

  
      
A quirk in the probability of any multi- game series means that a 2:1 favorite does not mean that a team should win two-thirds of its games under normal circumstances against the inferior opponent.  If you model a nine game series, and if the Sox were a legitimate 2:1 favorite this means contemporary observers thought they would win 57 /100 games against the Reds, and would win a nine game series by the game count of either 5-2 or 5-3 (each is about a 1 in 6 chance).  If the Sox were a 3:1 favorite they should win roughly 61 / 100 games against the Reds, and the highest probability ‘mode’ (most likely outcome) in nine games would now be five Chicago wins to two wins for the Reds (19%).  (Interestingly enough, if the teams are truly 50-50, an eight game or nine game win for either team are all equally likely, at 13.7% for each mode.)

The question thus becomes- how reasonable was it to surmise, based on the data at hand at the time, that the White Sox were capable of winning 55-60% of their games against a team that had the highest winning percentage in the National League of the decade? 

The Contemporary View of the Teams

There were reasons why the Reds were not considered a 50-50 team with the White Sox prior to the Series.  I’ll explore them one by one:

1) Reds History:  The Reds had won 92 games in 1898 but in 29 NL previous seasons they could do no better than third place, which is where they ended up at the end of the 1918 season.  They’d finished last as recently as 1916.  Chicago had won a World Series in 1917.  They’d finished poorly in 1918 only because many key members of the team had to leave baseball to support the war effort.

2) NL World Series History: The National League had only won one World Series in the last nine dating back to 1910; that being the Miracle Braves sweep in 1914.  The AL had a 32-17 (65%) record in World Series games during that timeframe, and a 179 to 140 difference in runs scored (62% record predicted by the Pythagorean Model). That 65% record is telling; a team that can win 65% of its games would be almost a 5-1 favorite in a nine-game series.
3) Lineup Balance:  The Sox had three Hall of Famers, C Ray Schalk, 2B Eddie 
Collins, and P Red Faber on their roster at points in 1919, but Faber was not available for the World Series.  The Reds had one, Edd Roush, legitimately one of the best players in baseball at his position in centerfield.  But of course the best Sox players are ineligible for the Hall, so that comparison is not entirely valid.  If you go around the horn, the Sox win outright at C, 2B, and two outfield slots, Cincinnati would win at 3B and maybe shortstop, and the two teams would be more or less tied at one OF position, and at 1B.

C:  Chicago’s Ray Schalk would be considered a better defender than Ivey Wingo and a better hitter than Bill Rariden;

1B:  Chicago’s Chick Gandil, playing on the square, would be a slightly better defender than Jake Daubert at 35 years old.  At the plate they are probably even in their offensive contexts;

2B:  Chicago’s Eddie Collins, at 2B was considered one of the best players of his generation, while the Reds’ Morrie Rath had a great year but was not considered in Collins’ class.  Rath actually outplayed Collins in the series;

3B:  Cincinnati’s Heinie Groh was one of the best 3B in the National League, while Sox 3B Buck Weaver was more of a defense-first type of player who had a good offensive year in 1919;  

SS: Both Chicago’s Swede Risberg and the Reds’ Larry Kopf were considered scrappers who were the weak links in their lineups.  Risberg had some sock for a seventh hitter with 27 extra base-hits, while Kopf sometimes batted fifth for the Reds and totaled 58 RBI. Slight edge to the Reds, even if the Swede was playing on the level;

OF:  Matching up by talent level, Sox LF Shoeless Joe Jackson was probably the equal of the Reds’ Edd Roush, both superb all around players.  But Sox CF Happy Felsch would far outdistance Cincinnati RF Greasy Neale, and Sox RFs Nemo Leibold and Shano Collins would look better on paper than the Reds’ LFs Pat Duncan and Sherry Mcgee.  

(During the Series probably the biggest surprise was the failure of the Chicago leadoff tandem of Shano Collins and Nemo Leibold.  Members of the Clean Sox, nonetheless together they were 5 for 34 with two walks. Leibold alone hit .300 and drew 72 walks in the 1919 regular season. He was on base over 40 percent of the time, but he failed completely against Reds pitching.  He was 1 for 18.)
     
It’s not just this overall balance that favored the White Sox; it was also the impression that they were money players.  Of course they were, but not on the side their fans were hoping for.  Some of the Reds real skills in comparison were lost in the low run context of the National League.  They were very good at manufacturing runs in ways that may not have been obvious to those reading just the box scores. They led their league in walks and triples while finishing second in runs per game, and some of their pitchers were excellent hitters, something the Sox would learn to their everlasting regret once the Series began.

But Chicago countered with a legitimate, historic, run scoring powerhouse.  They possessed five of the top fifteen players in the AL at the dish in 1919, and they averaged 4.77 runs per game while scoring 668 runs in 140 games, numbers that had not been seen since Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics lineups in the earlier part of the decade.  Their .287 batting average was the highest in the A.L. since 1911.
4) Pitching:  You are thinking, how could the Sox have a perceived pitching edge? The Reds clearly had a deep and balanced staff, and they won 96 games by slamming the door on their NL opposition.  If you look at the Series starting pitching situation White Sox manager Kid Gleason faced through a modern lens, you might think without a healthy Faber, and forced to start his aces three times in nine games Gleason was at a distinct disadvantage.  Some contemporary analysts actually saw it that way, which is why they warned Cincinnati might prove more dangerous than most people thought, especially as the Series wore on.  
Modern analysts have the advantage of hindsight, to them, the sabermetrics are clear, the records are in black and white, and any context that might surround the careers of the men in question or the strengths of the relative leagues is now just noise.  But if you look at Sox pitching, alongside Faber’s 20 sub-par 1919 starts there are another 10 starts made by lousy pitchers like Dave Danforth and Frank Schellenback that are not going to be included on any post season roster.  They will have zero effect on the World Series.  
But starters Cicotte, Williams, and Kerr are second, sixth and fourteenth in the American League in pitching WAR.  Cicotte was 44 games over .500 in his seasons with the White Sox from 1912 to 1919 and he completed 30 games in 1919 while winning 29 contests. Williams was 59-30 from 1916 on and completed 27 while winning 23; and Dickey Kerr was a rookie swingman with 13 wins.  Their combined success was no fluke.  All three Sox hurlers who started games in the 1919 World Series would follow with 20 win seasons in 1920.  Cicotte and Williams were considered top-tier pitchers in the AL and Kerr was considered a very solid second line pitcher. 
Meanwhile, on the Reds side;
At the beginning of the Series, Slim Sallee was probably the ace of the staff in terms of his overall career.  He averaged 16 wins a year from 1913 to 1919 and was the Reds only 20 game winner in 1919. In his personal-best season, he was 11th in the National League in pitching WAR.  Sallee was a bright star about to flame out, as he would only win another 12 games in the Majors after 1919.
Hod Eller was the one pitcher that threw hard enough and well enough to cause concern from the Chicago camp. They were well aware that when he was on his game he could dominate. His career ended suddenly in 1921 with the outlawing of the shine ball.  
Dutch Reuther is instructive as a comparison because he played in both leagues.  This was his first full year and it was a breakout year at age 25, his last season would come as a third tier starter on the 1927 Yankees. In between he was an average pitcher with a 3.79 ERA, winning 21 for Brooklyn in the NL in 1921 and 18 for the Senators in the AL in 1925.  He was the kind of pitcher who could do well on a great team with decent run support.  On paper in 1919 he’s excellent, 10th in the NL in WAR, with a 1.82 ERA and 20 CG in 29 starts, but back then nobody thought of him as the equal to Eddie Cicotte. Even Pat Moran, his manager, thought that if he could get just one win out of Reuther in the Series it would be a huge plus.
Ray Fisher is another pitcher who can be used as a comparison.  He was a decent pitcher for the Yankees in the AL for 8 years before he came to the National League, with a record of 76-78 while averaging a 2.91 ERA and a 103 ERA plus.  In Cincinnati, finished 24-16 and he posted a 2.47 ERA and a 119 ERA plus.  Some of that improvement might be the team he was on or the role that he played, but he would not have been considered a top of the roster front line AL pitcher. 
As for the rest – Jimmy Ring had his best year in 1919, but he was wild before that year and really wild after it, walking nearly four men per inning.  Reds bullpen men Dolf Luque and Rube Bressler were probably better than the Sox team of Grover Lowdermilk and the untested Roy Wilkinson, but nobody really thought the bullpens would swing the Series. 
           
Should Chicago Have Been Favored?  
What Can We Learn From the Statis-Pro Simulation?
I think Chicago should have been favored, but not by a lot.  That’s pretty much my take from this carding, as well.  The pitching analysis comes down to whether or not you believe statistics alone can pitch or whether you look at a hurler through the actual lens of what he is capable of accomplishing.  There were some seasons (1995) where Tim Wakefield had better stats than Roger Clemens, this was during Clemens’ Blue Period in Boston.  In a simulation, a game such as Statis-Pro Baseball, he would have the better card, but if you had to play a real Seventh Game who would you hand the ball to?  It may be unfair to think of the 1919 Cincinnati staff this way, but their contemporaries did. I’ve carded them to the NL distribution, where you need a lower ERA to get a better PB.  This seems to card their depth and quality level well in equal measure.  
Likewise the Cincinnati lineup, while pesky, has some obvious holes, while Chicago only has the Swede as a weakness.  It seems reasonable to me that people would consider Chicago to be the likely winner.  But Cincinnati’s overall pitching depth- as carded- will not make this easy on the Chicago lineup.  If the games go to extra innings and the Chicago starters have to exit the Red’s bullpen strength will likely win out.   The way I’ve carded it the matches are close to a toss-up; if Cicotte and Williams are on their games they can win four games between them, and that means you only need one from Dickie Kerr.  If Cincy can extend the Chicago aces they can win the close ones.
One change I’ve made to my rules is to add the possibility of errors to the hit and run chart.  For example, if you fly out to LF on the Hit and Run chart, now you still check for errors by flipping the next card and checking the error number, rating and type. You do the same with the groundouts.  On the hit and run singles, you first check if the PB result would have placed the result on the pitcher’s card, and if not, then you check for centerfield errors (just like any base hit). You can have ten or twelve Hit and Run chart plays per game with these teams and you will see too few errors without this rule.  Cincinnati makes slightly fewer errors at key positions, so this rule will slightly favor them if they can get men on base.
Both lineups become much more threatening with men on, their speed putting additional pressure on pitchers and defenses.  I think Statis-Pro Baseball really captures the spirit of dead ball baseball. This is a much more entertaining Series to replay, in my opinion, than it was in real life.  You want to hit and run a lot, steal a lot, and bunt guys over a lot.  Because of the arms in the outfield expect a lot of guys thrown out at the plate. Expect a lot of one run games settled by odd plays – bloop doubles off the Z charts, runs scoring on doubles and errors in the outfield, etc.  The teams will make about two errors a game, and they can be costly, especially in the outfield.  For Chicago to win you probably need four wins from Cicotte and Willams, if Cincinnati can run them both at one point early, as they did in real life, the odds start to look bad for the White Sox.

Enjoy the teams!
         
Fred J. Bobberts
February 14, 2018
Chandler, Arizona
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