Great Performances - Part 2: Pitching

While individual hitting performances may have not had the transformational effect on the overall weekly score, surely amazing pitching performances would be more important.  After all, we are (in theory) limited to 8 starts and even in this frontier league, it is rare that we get more than 12 starts.  It is reasonable, then, to assume that one of these 8 or so starts being so great would have a heavy influence on the score, right?  Wrong!  For the pitching, I calculated the final score based on the premise that the pitcher had been on the bench that day, but also on the premise that the pitcher had turned in a more pedestrian performance to the tune of 6IP, 3ER, 5K, 4H, 4BB. 

1.  Roy Halladay pitches the 20th perfect game in 123 years of MLB history.

Doc Halladay was dominant against the Peachz over Memorial Day weekend, but his performance only lead to a 1 game swing in the standings.  Perhaps not surprisingly, this swing came from the change in WHIP, but the 9 scoreless innings had no effect on the final standing.  However, even if Doc had scattered 6 hits throughout his 9, the Bernabes still would have had enough of a benefit to take the category.

4.  Josh Johnson strikes out 12 and wishes Vaya Con Dios to Bernabe

Not only did Johnson's 4 baserunners in 9 carry the WHIP category, but his high K total was enough to turn the total K category.  Had Johnson gotten only a single K per inning, which is a nice line to begin with, the category would have resulted in a tie rather than a win for Omar.  In this league that rewards Ks above all else, a dominant K performance is the most important factor in the overall scoring.


5.  Ubaldo Rises to national prominence by no-hitting the braves. 

The no-hitter is, in my mind, the most overrated of fantasy achievements.  Despite giving up 0 hits, Ubaldo gave free passes to 6 batters which, though small in number, was still large enough to add to the W + H total and leave Bernabe a bit behind.  Had Ubaldo given up a single homer in the game rather than walking 6, WHIP would have gone his way that week.  I remember this matchup and, after the no-hitter, Tim was ahead in many pitching categories, but Gavin Floyd's poor pitching the next day erased all good that the no-hitter had done.
The average pitching swing that these great performances had was 0.8 games, less than the 1 full game that a great hitting performance had.  I think that the final line under all of this is that, because there are more easily attainable quantitative hitting categories that are spread over a larger amount of players and opportunities than pitching categories, the great hitting performance ends up mattering more than the great pitching.  Also, bad pitching can be so much worse than bad hitting because of the damage that bad pitching can do; 8 ER in 3 IP is much worse than 0/5.  I also think that it is worth noting that, without fail, the "alt" pitching performance of 6IP, 3ER, 8BR, and 5K is just as good as no pitching performance at all.  Perhaps that will figure into the currently ramping up argument about the 8 starts limit.