Great Pitching Duos:

Foutz and Caruthers, and no need for others

In a recent discussion of the "best pitchers ever," Kenneth Shouler contended that, rather than wading through the dozens of statistics available, one should focus on three: winning percentage, earned run average, and a comparison of the pitcher's record to the record of his team. Shouler then proceeded to discredit his own method by choosing five pitchers, three of whom are not all that impressive in winning percentage and earned run average while leaving out two candidates who easily fit into the top of his selected group -- Lefty Grove and Cy Young. His advice may be good, despite his inability to follow it.

So take a look first at the Career Winning Percentage list. Only a handful of pitchers with a significant number of decisions won twice as many as they lost:

Rank	Name	Won	Lost	Percent	Career
1.	Dave Foutz	147	66	.69014	1884-94 (played through 1896)
2.	Whitey Ford	236	106	.69006	1950, 53-67
3.	Bob Caruthers	218	99	.688	1884-92 (played through 1893)
4.	Lefty Grove	300	141	.680	1925-41
5.	Vic Raschi	132	66	.667	1946-55

Of these five, only Ford and Grove are in the Hall of Fame. Ford and Raschi both played in 1950 and 1953-55, and were teammates on the Yankees in 1950 and 1953. Now look at #1 Dave Foutz and #3 Bob Caruthers. Not only were they absolute contemporaries (unlike Ford and Raschi, who merely overlapped), but were teammates from 1884 through 1891. This brings us to the third criterion, comparing a pitcher's record to the record of his team. This means that you are comparing Foutz (a 69% winner) to a team that includes Caruthers (a 69% winner) -- and vice versa. For 1885 this comparison to team is explicitly a comparison between Foutz and Caruthers (Foutz went 33-14, Caruthers 40-13, leaving the rest of the pitching staff -- Jumbo McGinnis -- with a 6-6 record).

Foutz and Caruthers played together on good teams: a composite winning percentage of .639 -- .667 when both were regular pitchers. The thing to do, then, is to compare Foutz and Caruthers (individually and together) to the record of the team without either of them.

	Foutz			Caruthers			Both			Team			Others
Year	w	l	%	w	l	%	w	l	%	w	l	%	w	l	%
1884	15	6	.714	7	2	.778	22	8	.733	67	40	.626	45	32	.584
1885	33	14	.702	40	13	.755	73	27	.730	79	33	.705	6	6	.500
1886	41	16	.719	30	14	.682	71	30	.703	93	46	.669	22	16	.579
1887	25	12	.676	29	9	.763	54	21	.720	95	40	.704	41	19	.683
1888	12	7	.632	29	15	.659	41	22	.651	88	52	.629	47	30	.610

with St. Louis	126	55	.696	135	53	.718	261	108	.707	422	211	.667	161	103	.610

1889	3	0	1.000	40	11	.784	43	11	.796	93	44	.679	50	33	.602
1890	2	1	.667	23	11	.677	25	12	.676	86	43	.667	61	31	.663
1891	3	2	.600	18	14	.563	21	16	.568	61	76	.445	40	60	.400

with Brooklyn	8	3	.727	81	36	.692	89	39	.695	240	163	.596	151	124	.549

As Teammates	134	58	.698	216	89	.708	350	147	.704	662	374	.639	312	227	.579

Parisian Bob Caruthers When both were starting pitchers, Foutz and Caruthers won about 71% of the time, while other pitchers on their teams won about 61% of the time, leaving the team as a whole winning 2 out of three games. One important thing to note here is that the difference between 61% and 71% in this context is much greater than that between 41% and 51%. This is one reason that these comparisons tend to overvalue the contribution of a good pitcher on a bad team, and undervalue that of a good pitcher on a good team. Because Foutz and Caruthers won about 10% more often than their fellow pitchers, does that mean they were 10% better than average? No, because the other fellows weren't average, either. They were, by definition, good, and Foutz and Caruthers were 10% better.

They played on only one bad team (Brooklyn, 1891), and together went 21-16 for a team that finished 15 games under .500. Their combined winning percentage that year was the lowest of their careers, but still 17% above that of their pitching mates. In 1889, 1890, and 1891, Foutz was mostly a first baseman, so their combined pitching stats for those years are primarily Caruthers's. In his only year pitching without Foutz on the team, Caruthers went 2-10, dropping his career winning percentage under 70 and out of first place.

Just on their pitching numbers they were great, and both were ferocious hitters as well. In 1887, when he was 25-12 as a pitcher, Foutz hit .357 and drove in 108 runs in 102 games; Caruthers, 29-9 on the mound, matched Foutz's .357 average, drove in 73, and scored 102. Foutz hit .276 for his career, Caruthers .282.

Neither Foutz nor Caruthers will likely ever be inducted into the Hall of Fame. Foutz simply doesn't have enough decisions. Caruthers is probably the best pitcher eligible who is not in the Hall, but as Bill James has said, what would enshrining him at this late date accomplish? Still, they deserve to be recognized as probably the greatest pitching tandem in history.

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