Billy Pierce

Baseball Player Won-Loss Records
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Billy Pierce

2015 Veterans' Committee HOF Ballot: Billy Pierce

The Baseball Hall of Fame recently announced their 2015 Veterans' ballot. One player on the ballot is Billy Pierce.

The first table below presents Billy Pierce's career as measured by Player won-lost records.

Season	Team	Age	Games	pWins	pLosses	pWin Pct.	pWOPA	pWORL	eWins	eLosses	eWin Pct.	eWOPA	eWORL
Billy Pierce Basic Player Won-Lost Records
												Value Decomposition
1945	DET	18	5	0.1	0.5	0.136	-0.2	-0.2	0.2	0.3	0.381	-0.1	-0.0
1948	DET	21	22	2.3	2.5	0.473	-0.1	0.2	2.1	2.7	0.446	-0.2	0.1
1949	CHA	22	39	10.5	12.3	0.461	-0.6	0.3	11.2	11.7	0.489	0.0	1.0
1950	CHA	23	40	15.2	15.1	0.501	0.5	1.9	15.9	14.3	0.527	1.3	2.7
1951	CHA	24	39	16.9	12.7	0.572	2.5	3.8	15.9	13.7	0.538	1.5	2.8
1952	CHA	25	35	15.5	13.3	0.538	1.6	2.9	16.2	12.5	0.563	2.4	3.6
1953	CHA	26	42	18.3	15.4	0.543	1.9	3.4	18.1	15.7	0.535	1.6	3.1
1954	CHA	27	38	12.5	12.1	0.509	0.6	1.8	11.8	12.8	0.480	-0.1	1.1
1955	CHA	28	34	15.9	10.4	0.605	3.1	4.2	14.7	11.5	0.560	2.0	3.0
1956	CHA	29	39	17.5	14.8	0.542	1.8	3.3	16.9	15.3	0.524	1.3	2.7
1957	CHA	30	41	18.4	14.5	0.560	2.5	3.8	17.8	15.1	0.542	2.0	3.2
1958	CHA	31	35	17.2	14.5	0.542	1.8	3.1	15.9	15.8	0.502	0.6	1.8
1959	CHA	32	34	15.1	13.5	0.528	1.2	2.5	14.4	14.3	0.502	0.5	1.7
1960	CHA	33	31	12.8	10.2	0.557	1.7	2.6	11.5	11.6	0.497	0.3	1.3
1961	CHA	34	39	10.9	9.9	0.524	0.8	1.7	10.4	10.5	0.498	0.2	1.2
1962	SFN	35	30	11.5	8.5	0.575	1.9	2.7	10.4	9.6	0.520	0.8	1.6
1963	SFN	36	38	6.0	7.6	0.440	-0.6	0.1	6.2	7.4	0.458	-0.4	0.3
1964	SFN	37	34	2.1	2.0	0.517	0.1	0.4	2.1	2.0	0.516	0.1	0.4
------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------	------
CAREER (reg. season)			615	218.8	189.8	0.535	20.6	38.4	211.9	196.8	0.518	13.7	31.4
			------	------	------				------	------
PostSeason (career)			5	1.0	0.9	0.534		0.2	1.0	0.9	0.535		0.2
			------	------	------	------		------	------	------	------		------
COMBINED			620	219.8	190.7	0.535		38.5	212.9	197.7	0.518		31.6

The bulk of Billy Pierce's career fell within the 1950's. The next table shows the top 10 pitchers of the 1950's, as measured by Player won-lost records, measured by net pitching wins.

		Top 10 Pitchers of the 1950's: Pitching Only
		eWins	eLosses	eWinPct	Net Wins
1	Warren Spahn	146.6	123.4	0.543	23.3
2	Robin Roberts	159.3	139.9	0.532	19.4
3	Billy Pierce	128.1	111.0	0.536	17.1
4	Bob Rush	110.0	94.2	0.539	15.8
5	E. Mike Garcia	101.5	87.8	0.536	13.7
6	Early Wynn	136.5	124.4	0.523	12.1
7	Curt Simmons	85.4	74.8	0.533	10.6
8	Johnny Antonelli	90.1	80.3	0.529	9.8
9	Whitey Ford	80.0	71.0	0.530	9.0
10	Harvey Haddix	85.0	76.1	0.528	8.9

Billy Pierce looks very good in the above table, fourth place overall, behind two Hall-of-Famers and Mike Garcia of the Cleveland Indians. The next table looks at the top 10 pitchers of the 1950's as measured by overall value over replacement level.

		Top 10 Pitchers of the 1950's: Overall Value
		pWins	pLosses	pWinPct	pWORL
1	Warren Spahn	190.4	153.9	0.553	38.5
2	Robin Roberts	197.8	169.5	0.538	35.4
3	Early Wynn	180.9	154.5	0.539	32.8
4	Billy Pierce	162.5	136.2	0.544	30.5
5	Bob Lemon	141.6	120.8	0.540	26.2
6	E. Mike Garcia	132.2	108.9	0.548	25.8
7	Whitey Ford	105.9	81.9	0.564	23.0
8	Don Newcombe	119.7	104.5	0.534	20.9
9	Sal Maglie	106.9	88.8	0.546	20.4
10	Johnny Antonelli	117.4	105.5	0.527	18.9

Pierce is still in fourth place, but now everybody ahead of him is a Hall-of-Famer.

So, how does being one of the best pitchers of the 1950's rate over the longer term? The final table of this article shows the top 50 pitchers in pWins over positional average for whom I have calculated Player won-lost records (completely since 1928, mostly since 1916).

		Top 50 Pitchers (ranked by pWOPA)
		pWins	pLosses	pWinPct	pWOPA
1	Roger Clemens	318.1	228.1	0.582	46.3
2	Lefty Grove	254.8	176.5	0.591	44.7
3	Warren Spahn	353.9	293.4	0.547	40.8
4	Greg Maddux	328.5	271.3	0.548	39.9
5	Tom Seaver	308.9	256.7	0.546	34.4
6	Randy 'Big Unit' Johnson	281.2	220.9	0.560	34.2
7	Mariano Rivera	126.6	60.8	0.676	32.9
8	Bob Gibson	263.9	217.6	0.548	31.7
9	Jim Palmer	242.8	186.0	0.566	31.2
10	Pedro J. Martinez	193.6	137.4	0.585	31.1
11	Juan Marichal	232.1	187.1	0.554	29.7
12	Whitey Ford	210.3	164.3	0.561	29.0
13	Steve Carlton	337.9	303.9	0.526	27.6
14	John Smoltz	239.7	201.1	0.544	26.6
15	Bob Feller	257.0	217.6	0.542	26.1
16	Mike Mussina	224.2	173.1	0.564	25.9
17	Clayton Kershaw	144.7	104.6	0.580	25.0
18	Tom Glavine	279.4	249.5	0.528	24.8
19	Fergie Jenkins	286.7	250.8	0.533	23.6
20	J. Kevin Brown	204.5	164.6	0.554	23.3
21	Curt Schilling	206.9	172.0	0.546	22.7
22	Dennis Eckersley	217.2	174.4	0.555	22.4
23	Bob Lemon	198.3	165.4	0.545	22.3
24	Carl Hubbell	198.9	165.0	0.547	22.1
25	Robin Roberts	296.9	269.7	0.524	22.1
26	Early Wynn	309.2	284.1	0.521	21.9
27	Dazzy Vance	172.2	135.9	0.559	21.8
28	Roy Halladay	171.4	133.1	0.563	20.9
29	Billy Pierce	218.8	189.8	0.535	20.6
30	Don Sutton	320.8	295.3	0.521	20.5
31	Tim Hudson	198.8	167.4	0.543	20.4
32	Gaylord Perry	317.7	289.2	0.523	20.3
33	Tommy John	277.6	247.7	0.529	20.1
34	Andy Pettitte	211.5	174.6	0.548	19.9
35	Nolan Ryan	356.8	328.0	0.521	19.7
36	Wes Ferrell	168.3	138.7	0.548	19.7
37	Sandy Koufax	157.6	126.2	0.555	19.7
38	Hal Newhouser	199.3	170.8	0.538	19.7
39	Trevor Hoffman	100.7	62.3	0.618	19.5
40	Dwight Gooden	184.0	156.0	0.541	19.4
41	Luis Tiant Jr.	225.8	194.9	0.537	18.6
42	Ted Lyons	228.8	204.5	0.528	18.3
43	Bret Saberhagen	154.9	120.6	0.562	18.3
44	David Cone	184.5	153.7	0.546	18.1
45	C.C. Sabathia	213.6	179.2	0.544	18.1
46	Bert Blyleven	291.2	260.0	0.528	18.0
47	Max Scherzer	142.9	112.6	0.559	18.0
48	Jim Bunning	239.1	217.5	0.524	17.7
49	Zack Greinke	174.3	147.0	0.542	17.6
50	E. Mike Garcia	146.3	118.6	0.552	17.5

Measured by career pWOPA, Billy Pierce ranks among the top 30 pitchers of the past 70-some years. Every player above Pierce on the list who was eligible for the Hall of Fame by 2010 has been elected to the Hall of Fame except for Tommy John. That looks like a pretty solid Hall-of-Fame case to me.

All articles are written so that they pull data directly from the most recent version of the Player won-lost database. Hence, any numbers cited within these articles should automatically incorporate the most recent update to Player won-lost records. In some cases, however, the accompanying text may have been written based on previous versions of Player won-lost records. I apologize if this results in non-sensical text in any cases.

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