Are they his Daddy's?

(Further updated 05/23)

Yahoo's MLB front page currently reads - Yankees still Martinez's daddy - the kind of headline that a casual fan reads and believes, and will no doubt be repeated elsewhere in the mainstream media tonight and tomorrow.

As a Sox fan in a Yankeeland office, one of the most energetic (repeating) debates concerned the Yankees owning Pedro - a position I did not agree with even after Pedro's daddy diatribe.

So part of the reason for this post is to link to David Pinto's incredible Day to Day database which allows you to do very quick and dirty analysis of specific players performance. The second part is to look at Pedro's record against his "daddy's" following the Mets loss to the Yankees in the rubber game of the Subway Series today - was I wrong to ever defend him?

The numbers I am using are from 1997 forward, so there are a few interleague games in there - including today's effort against the Yankees in a Mets uniform, although I have only looked at his performance against the NYY, versus his performance against all other AL teams - my thinking was that the sample from other interleague games would be too small to add anything particularly meaningful. The one thing that is missing are his post-season starts against the Yanks - I think there are 5, one in 1999, and four over the last two seasons, and clearly these last 4 play a large part in the perception that I am interested in - however, to get a feel for his relative performance, these are excluded.

OPP	GS	IP	W	L	ERA	NR%	ERA % + / -
BAL	17	107 2/3	9	4	4.01	23.5%	66%
CLE	16	117	11	1	1.77	25.0%	-27%
CWS	9	60	6	2	1.35	11.1%	-44%
DET	10	66 2/3	6	0	2.56	40.0%	6%
KC	6	43	5	0	2.09	16.7%	-13%
LAA	13	93 1/3	9	1	2.12	23.1%	-12%
MIN	11	80 1/3	5	2	2.46	36.4%	2%
NYY	29	196	10	10	3.17	31.0%	32%
OAK	11	71 1/3	8	2	2.02	9.1%	-16%
SEA	13	97	13	0	1.30	0.00%	-46%
TAM	20	135 2/3	11	4	1.99	25.0%	-17%
TEX	13	85 1/3	9	2	1.90	15.4%	-21%
TOR	20	139	9	4	2.98	35.0%	24%
	188	1292 1/3	111	32	2.41	23.9%

The first thing that stands out - apart from the question, what did Seattle ever do to upset Pedro? - is the fact that 15% of his starts have been against the Yankees. Is this a simple case of familiarity breeding comfort? Even removing the start for the Expos in 1997, and today's start for the Mets, some 14% of his starts have come against the Yankees - the next closest are Division rivals Toronto and Tampa, at 10.6%.

My reason for adding the NR% (No Result % if you didn't guess) was a feeling (and that was the reason for this analysis, my desire to test the feeling that Pedro wasn't owned by the Yanks in any meaningful way) that Pedro suffered a high degree of No Results against the Yanks - that is, he put in a sterling pitching performance, but the bullpen blew it for him - well he wasn't involved in 31% of the decision in games against the Yanks, but that could have worked for him as much as against him. Looking a bit deeper - of his 29 starts, 22 were quality starts by the traditional definition - 6IP, 3 or less ER. In his 9 no decisions, 8 were quality starts, so clearly the bullpen didn't do a lot to help him in those starts - but equally, neither did the hitters - he averaged 3.1 runs of support in these games, and to further show that impact, in 3 of those 9 games, he received an average of 1 run of support.

Additionally, in his 10 losses, 6 qualified as quality starts, and his average run support? A whopping 2 runs per game, although that falls significantly if we exclude a loss in August 2003 - so even in his losses, Pedro has hardly been owned.

The ERA +/-% shows the % above or below the 2.41 AL Opponent Average. AL East opponents clearly have an edge, again supporting the view that familiarity helps - Pedro's ERA against the Yankees is 32% higher than the league 'average', but the Orioles appear to be his true daddy, with his ERA 66% higher than average when those birds are his opponent.

So is there a conclusion to this rambling post - I guess it is, use the numbers to reach your own conclusion - 22 quality starts out of 29, 24 starts where he has given up 3 runs or less, 11.3K per 9IP.... 6 starts without a win against the Yankees (if you include the 2004 postseason), 5 of his last ten starts have not been quality starts.

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Not sure if this is required, but thought I would play safe; The above table was populated using information obtained from David Pinto's Day to Day database. In turn that information was obtained free of charge from, and is copyrighted by, Retrosheet. Interested parties may contact Retrosheet at 20 Sunset Rd., Newark, DE 19711.