Runs, hits, and errors: these are summary data points that one sees in box scores all the time--even today, when folks probably peruse box scores on-line rather than in print. These are the basic building blocks of the game, imparting the minimum info needed to know the outcome of a game.
Through massive repetition over a season--and then over a decade (or two) of seasons--this sequence of numbers takes on a kind of "logical expectation" in one's mind. One comes to expect runs, hits and errors to follow a form where hits are greater than runs, and errors are quite often lower than both runs and hits.
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| Maury Wills: banjo hitter, banjo player--and banjo fielder? 36 errors at shortstop in 1962, second only to Dick Groat. |
...and that, of course, is exactly what happened to the Los Angeles Dodgers on July 6 and July 7, 1962--at what was a most inopportune time for them. On those two days, in those two fateful games, where the outcome was double-weighted because they were playing the team with whom they were vying for first place, the numbers at the end of the line score read: 3-5-5.
Such numbers clearly create an ominous portent for the outcome of any game in which they appear. Making that many errors in a game almost always means that the opponent has scored some number of unearned runs, which means that the chances that the game outcome is a loss are high.
One difference between the Giants and Dodgers in 1962 that we've not discussed is defense--specifically errors. The Giants committed 142 errors, which translated into 72 unearned runs; the Dodgers, however, committed 193 errors--second only to the expansion Mets (210)--which contributed to 99 unearned runs. All in all, the NL committed 1555 errors in 1962, which factored into 933 unearned runs. The "unearned runs to error" ratio (UER/E) for the league that year was exactly .6 (or three-fifths of a run for every error, on average).
Of course, that ratio doesn't tell us which errors directly contributed to unearned runs. And in part because such accounting is stubbornly indirect, sabermetrics prefers to avoid cataloguing unearned runs at all.
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| Podres: not usually as poor a fielder as was the case in 1962... |
So it's not surprising to see that on July 7th, with Podres on the mound, one of the five errors committed by the Dodgers came at the hands of Johnny. In fact, it turns out that two of the five errors committed by the Dodgers were by Podres, who fielded a not-so-nifty .854 on the year.
In the July 7 game, Podres' throwing error in the second inning allowed the Giants an extra out, which according to the scoring rules meant that both runs the Giants scored were unearned. The extra error in the inning (throwing error by catcher Roseboro that allowed Jose Pagan to take an extra base) really didn't contribute to the run scoring. Later, in the fifth inning, an error by Larry Burright (yes, he's still around, hitting in the .150 range at this point...) allowed a baserunner (Harvey Kuenn) who wouldn't have been on base otherwise, and a two-out single that scored him meant that this run, too, was unearned.
In the sixth inning (after Podres was removed), the Giants roughed up Larry Sherry for five runs, of which two were scored as unearned--Chuck Hiller's run, due to the fact that Jack Sanford's sacrifice bunt beat him to third base--but Jim Gilliam dropped the throw from Sherry, leaving Hiller on base. The fifth run of the inning scored on a double play--which wouldn't have happened if Hiller had been thrown out, so it, too, is unearned. So Gilliam's error led to two unearned runs in that inning.
So you can see that the accounting process for attaching unearned runs to errors is a bit arduous; when we finish with the process for the July 7 game, we see that four of the five Dodger errors were involved in the five unearned runs scored by the Giants, while the fifth (Podres' second error, a bad pickoff throw that allowed Felipe Alou to take second) had no impact on run scoring (Podres retired the side without Alou scoring).
That type of accounting will, if followed through to its ultimate end, will separate errors into those that contributed to run scoring and those that didn't. Sabermetrics doesn't really want to have to bother with that, however, which is why they rely on measures like Defensive Efficiency Record, which kinda sorta incorporates errors without trying to get overly actuarial about them.
So what remains unresolved is just how useful/reliable a stat like UER/E really is. It suggests that, overall, the Dodgers (99 UER from 193 errors, a .512 ratio) and Giants (72 UER from 142 errors, 507) were less affected by errors as instigators of run scoring than the league as a whole. The teams that seemed to be most affected (the ones with higher UER/E ratios) were the Mets (147 UER from 210 errors, a .7 ratio) and the Cubs (102 UER from 146 errors, .698). Would a full actuarial approach to errors reveal much of anything useful in this regard?
But acquiring that data from current sources is not simple. What we can do, however, is look at games where teams allow two or more unearned runs as part of their overall runs allowed. Collecting that data for the NL in 1962 will give us some sense of the range of number of games and their outcomes. You can see the results of this at right.
The two worst teams in the league (Mets/Cubs) combine for a pretty staggering 4-52 in such games, which leaves the rest of the league with a 56-111 record in such games, or right around .333. (The overall record in these games for '62 NL teams is 60-163, a .269 WPCT.) Interestingly, the Dodgers, with the second highest error total (as you'll recall...), do not have proportionately more games in which they allowed two or more unearned runs than anyone else--only the Mets are an outlier.
Nor do the Dodgers have a won-loss record in this game that is substantially different from the overall average.
So, after all this, we can conclude that the Dodgers simply added to the bizarre texture of their season-long pas de deux with the Giants by having their two most egregious examples of ineptitude occur in back-to-back games against their arch-rivals. And, to boot, they managed to have identical line scores in the games as well...3-5-5.
Oh, yes...the man who did the most damage for the Giants in this game was Harvey Kuenn. He had three hits, two of them doubles, and drove in four runs from the leadoff slot. With the win, SF moved back into first place by a half-game. Final score: Giants 10, Dodgers 3.
SEASON RECORDS: SFG 57-30, LAD 57-31
