60 YEARS AGO/52: FULL STEAM AHEAD, BUT--SEA CHANGE COMING!

On June 5, 1962, the Giants had a game similar to most of those they'd had to date: the offense was plentiful, with all five of their .300+ hitters (Harvey Kuenn, Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Felipe Alou, Jim Davenport) contributing to another eventual rout. It took until the eighth inning, after starter Billy O'Dell had given back most of their early 5-1 lead, for them to knock out Cubs' starter Bob Buhl, but they did so convincingly, easily overcoming a double play turned against them in the inning and taking advantage of a crucially-timed error to score four unearned runs. Their season record was now 40-15 Final score: Giants 11, Cubs 4. 

But that was about to change...for a period of seventeen days, San Francisco would be mostly helpless: they'd lose 12 of 16 and fall into second place. It wasn't unexpected; it seemed to have become part of the team's innate makeup. Since moving from New York, the team had established a pattern of starting strongly, being at or very near the top of the standings through May, and then stumbling in June, followed by a protracted period of inconsistent play that left them as bridesmaids in October.

As the chart at left shows, it wasn't quite an article of natural law that the Giants would "swoon" in June, but it took root in the hearts of Giants' rooters during their first years in San Francisco because the Giants seem to keep doing it. In five of the six years since moving, they would have a protracted period of poor play in June: over the course of those five years, June would be the month in which the Giants had their worst overall record (69-75). In the only year they avoided a "June swoon"--1959--they merely postponed it to the end of the year, falling out of the pennant race in the last two weeks with a thud.

Of course, it eventually dissipated, but the term lingered for years, until the Giants went through a rough patch from the mid-1970s until the late-1980s and a "swoon" had become more akin to an entire season.

The normal characteristic of a "swoon" was not a hitting drought, but more frequently a pitching meltdown. That's what we'll see is the case with the Giants' 1962 version, as charted in the statistical summary of their pitching from June 6th to June 22nd (data at right). As you can see, Giants' pitchers combined for an unsightly ERA of 6.01 during this stretch--a figure that may seem more familiar when encountered in team summaries from clubs at the other end of the standings (e.g. the Mets and the Phillies, which we saw earlier.) The obvious problem is that only one starting pitcher (Juan Marichal) had an ERA under four over this stretch. But possibly more catastrophic was the meltdown in San Francisco's bullpen--specifically Stu Miller, the pivotal member of the relief corps on which most every serious late-inning scenario depended. 

In the data we've borrowed a statistic developed by David Pinto called "Cy Young Points" (CYP), which gives us an opportunity to summarize performance in a form that mimics the often-troublesome concept of "replacement level." While the measure has its limitations, the fact that it works reasonably well for both starters and relievers is particularly useful--and especially so for a year like 1962, when a considerable amount of "mixed usage" for pitchers was still quite common. We like showing the "Cy Young points" within smaller snapshots, as we do here, because it gives us a closer look at the "health" of a pitching staff and which pitchers are contributing something positive. When we look at "Cy Young points" as a rate stat (per nine innings, the column marked "Cy/9"), we can see roughly where the ERA/WHIP breakpoints are in terms of the "Cy Young points" stat--which, like WAR but without the level of calculation distortion in that measure, can go negative. 

What we get from that in a snapshot such as this is a breakout showing us how many of the innings pitched during a particular time frame were contributed by pitchers whose CYP and Cy/9 are positive. In the case of the Giants, they are underwater, with only 39% of their IP coming from hurlers whose performance is above "replacement level." We cluster the data into two categories, pitchers whose ERA for the frame is below 4, and those who are above it. (We'll see a different configuration when we look at the performance of the Dodgers' pitchers a bit later.)

SO let's get back into the other relevant events on June 5, 1962. The Dodgers were back in Pittsburgh, where they played a doubleheader (Game Two being a make-up for the washed-out game scheduled for May 6th). In game one, the Pirates did Stan Williams a big favor and mostly swung at his deliveries that were early in the count--thus making it less likely that the erratic righty would against manifest the control problems that had beset him thus far in '62. The pesky Pirates made a lot of hits off Stan, but they were all singles--and in the sixth, Bill Mazeroski swung at a pitch outside the strike zone--low and away--on an 0-1 count that took one big hop and landed in Williams' glove. Stan's throw to second was true, and Maury Wills' relay to first was as well--double play, inning over.

The Dodgers' offense came mostly from Willie Davis, who homered in the first, doubled home Wills in the sixth, and then scored on a single by Tommy Davis. Three runs were just enough: Alston got Stan out of the game in the seventh when he allowed two hits and a run, and Larry Sherry rode in for 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief to clinch the game for the Dodgers. Final score: Dodgers 3, Pirates 2 (first game).

Game two was tied 2-2 through six innings, but the Dodgers broke through in the seventh when Wills (who had four hits in this game and seven in the doubleheader) singled, stole a base, and scored on another RBI single from Tommy Davis. Pirates reliever Diomodes (Methuselah) Olivo, a 43-year-old rookie, made a gargantuan throwing error later in the inning, permitting the Dodgers to score two more unearned runs.

In the eighth, Dodgers' starter Don Drysdale was thrown out at the plate trying to score on Wills' double, but LA just kept slapping hits off Olivo, and eventually scored two more runs. All of this action had pushed the game to the point of curfew in Pittsburgh, and the game was actually suspended in the top of the ninth with the Dodgers ahead, 7-3. The following day, before the regularly scheduled game, Alston sent Sandy Koufax to the mound after the Dodgers had scored another run in the ninth; it was Sandy's day to throw in the bullpen, so Alston figured he could get his work in by pitching in an actual game. Sandy and his bluish finger came in and retired the Pirates in order, striking out two. Final score: Dodgers 8, Pirates 3.

BUT somewhat like the Giants, LA was getting ready for a bit of a slump. It wasn't anything like the Giants' swoon, but the bats drooped a bit, Johnny Podres slumped, and Stan Williams reverted to his wild man of Borneo form. The Dodgers would tread water during the Giants' period of desperate struggle, playing .500 ball (8-8). A look at their pitching performance using the same data and stats from David Pinto's Baseball Musings site shows us that Koufax was utterly brilliant in this phase (but you already knew that); Drysdale was very good; and two of the Dodgers' relievers, Larry Sherry and Ron Perranoski, were very strong throughout the period. Teenage monster Joe Moeller was considerably less effective but managed to win a couple of games anyway. 

Thanks to Koufax, the Dodgers' Cy Young points were a net positive, though their ERA during the 6/6-6/22 stretch was mediocre (4.01). They were a net positive in Cy/9, and the number of innings pitched by hurlers making positive contributions to the team in this time frame totaled 55% of all their IP in these games--not great, but significantly better than the Giants. 

So the sea-change is coming--our two teams will struggle, but they'll still be the two teams at the top of the league when we get into the last week of June. 

SEASON RECORDS: SFG 40-15, LAD 39-17, CIN 29-19, PIT 28-22, STL 25-24, MIL 24-28, HOU 22-29, PHI 19-31, CHC 16-35, NMY 12-34