Bill James on Doc Gooden 1991

October 17, 2009

By DailySkew

I picked up the Bill James The Baseball Book 1991 at a local Goodwill store Thursday. James wrote a few paragraphs about every player in the 1990 MLB season in this book with predictions for 1991 and beyond. This is a gem to me obviously.

His Doc Gooden entry interested me. James totally ignored Dwight Gooden’s 19-7 record and said Doc was no longer an elite pitcher. He credited the New York Mets offense for Gooden’s win/loss record. The most obvious reason for this- I guess- was Gooden’s 3.83 ERA in 1990, which was below leage average. That being said Doc still gave up the fewest homeruns per 9 innings and struck out 8.6 batters per 9 innings.

Of course the history books show that James was right- Doc never won 15 games for the rest of his career and continued to decline statistically.

Regarding the Hall of Fame James indicated that Doc needed to win another 20 games and have a few more seasons where he is productive (even like the 1990 season).He compared Doc to Ron Guidry at the same age (25) but said it’s too early to guess where Doc will end up because most pitchers have a bad last two years.

Anyway, now that we are on the Doc Gooden history topic, I might as well say it: I watched or listened to the bulk of Doc’s Mets career, and I know that from 1991-1994 his run support sucked, he had poor defense behind him, no hitters, and he played for a horrible organization. His win/loss records and ERA are thus skewed for those years. Doc was a workhorse until 1994, when his arm could never recover from pitching so many 200+ inning seasons.