Pundits like to say that pitching is 75% of baseball, maybe even 80% or 90%.
They always cite a percentage that seems absurdly high, making it easy to dispute their assertion. Except on the many occasions when pitching truly proves to be a dominant factor, as in the National League Central Division in 2021.
The Milwaukee Brewers didn’t have much of an attack last year. Their .233 batting average was the worst in the division, trailing even the .236 for the 101-loss Pittsburgh Pirates. And their total of 194 home runs was next-to-last.
Yet the Brewers breezed to the NL Central title. They held a 10-game lead at the end of August, then coasted to a record of 95-67, enjoying a comfortable five-game margin over the surging St. Louis Cardinals.
How did Milwaukee do it? Pitching, of course. The Brewers’ staff, led by NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes and NL Reliever of the Year Josh Hader, posted a glittering 3.50 ERA. The Cardinals finished far behind at 3.98, and nobody else in the division did better than 4.40.
The result was Milwaukee’s first divisional championship since 2018 — and only its third since 1983. The quality of the Brewers’ performance was demonstrated by their team score (TS), which I calculate on a 100-point scale. TS is based on a club’s winning percentage, its differential between runs scored and allowed per game, its differential between bases per out (BPO) attained by batters and allowed by pitchers, and its postseason success (if any).
The Brewers finished with a TS of 60.272, putting them ahead of 78.8% of all teams since the beginning of the Expansion Era in 1961. Here’s the 2021 breakdown for the entire NL Central, ranked by TS:
1. Milwaukee Brewers (95-67), 60.272 TS
2. St. Louis Cardinals (90-72), 53.496
3. Cincinnati Reds (83-79), 48.109
4. Chicago Cubs (71-91), 32.261
5. Pittsburgh Pirates (61-101), 21.054
I have assessed 2021’s divisional performances by teams and individuals in six categories, which you’ll find below.
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Team batting
The Cincinnati Reds jumped off to a fast start — spending two weeks in first place — and stayed in the pennant race until early August.
They were constructed differently than the Brewers. The Reds relied on their firepower, and they scored more runs per game (4.85) and blasted more home runs (222) than any other team in the division.
They also piled up more bases. I counted all of the bases that each team reached through hits, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices — 3,113 in Cincinnati’s case. My next two steps were to add the outs each club made (4,304 for the Reds) and to multiply those outs by .690, last year’s big-league average for bases per out.
This process told me that a typical team would have attained 2,970 bases in Cincinnati’s circumstances (4,304 times .690 BPO). That leaves the Reds with a surplus of 143, which is known as their base value (BV).
Nobody else in the NL Central did very well in this category. St. Louis essentially broke even in BV, while the other three teams ran deficits:
1. Reds, 143 BV
2. Cardinals, 4
3. Brewers, -23
4. Cubs, -49
5. Pirates, -301
Individual batting (best)
Base value can also be calculated for individual batters, and two in the NL Central finished in triple digits.
The surprise, perhaps, is that a player with the worst team in the division turned out to be the most effective batter. All-Star center fielder Bryan Reynolds reached a total of 384 bases for the Pirates on a very healthy BPO of .946. That means he attained 104 more bases than the typical hitter under the same circumstances. His traditional numbers were also impressive: 24 homers, 90 runs batted in, .302 batting average.
Cincinnati first baseman Joey Votto, who turned 38 during the season, was a step behind Reynolds with a 103 BV. Here’s the divisional top five:
1. Bryan Reynolds, Pirates, 104 BV
2. Joey Votto, Reds, 103
3. Nick Castellanos, Reds, 94
4. Paul Goldschmidt, Cardinals, 92
4. Tyler O'Neill, Cardinals, 92
Individual batting (worst)
Kevin Newman emerged as a budding star in 2019. The Pittsburgh shortstop batted .308 at the age of 26, and it appeared he would be a mainstay of the Pirates’ batting order for years.
But subsequent seasons haven’t been so promising. Newman batted just .226 in 2021, and his BPO was an anemic .487, slightly more than 200 points below the major-league average. He reached 85 fewer bases than the typical batter, giving him the worst BV in the division.
These are the five NL Central hitters who finished the farthest underwater:
1. Kevin Newman, Pirates, -85 BV
2. Jackie Bradley Jr., Brewers, -83
3. Michael Perez, Pirates, -46
4. Erik Gonzalez, Pirates, -44
5. Yadier Molina, Cardinals, -42
Team pitching
Choose whatever measure you want. Nobody in the division came close to Milwaukee’s performance on the mound.
The Brewers’ earned-run average of 3.50 was easily the lowest in the NL Central. Their 19 shutouts were the most, as were their 1,618 strikeouts and 3.01 strikeouts per walk.
The standings were just as lopsided for base value. Milwaukee allowed just .616 bases per out, resulting in an impressive BV of minus-320. (Keep in mind that BV works in reverse for pitchers. They want to push their number as far below zero as possible.)
The Cardinals also surrendered fewer bases than average, but the other NL Central clubs finished with positive numbers in the triple digits:
1. Brewers, -320 BV
2. Cardinals, -152
3. Reds, 124
4. Cubs, 317
5. Pirates, 333
Individual pitching (best)
Nothing better explains Milwaukee’s pitching dominance than this category. Four of the five NL Central pitchers with the best base values in 2021 wore Brewers uniforms.
Atop the list is Burnes, whose 2.43 earned-run average was the best among all major-league pitchers who qualified for the ERA title (162 innings or more). Staffmate Brandon Woodruff was fourth in big-league ERA at 2.56.
They were also the only pitchers in the division with negative BVs in triple digits. Burnes finished at minus-117 with a BPO of .457 — the latter was 233 points below the big-league average — and Woodruff was minus-108 at .492.
Here are the top five pitchers in the NL Central:
1. Corbin Burnes, Brewers, -117 BV
2. Brandon Woodruff, Brewers, -108
3. Adam Wainwright, Cardinals, -90
4. Freddy Peralta, Brewers, -72
5. Josh Hader, Brewers, -51
Individual pitching (worst)
It wasn’t so long ago that Jake Arrieta was a feared pitcher. He won the National League’s Cy Young Award in 2015 with a 22-6 record and a 1.77 ERA for the Cubs.
But the magic had vanished by 2021. Arrieta’s abysmal numbers for Chicago were 5-11, 6.88, when he was released in August. The Padres picked him up, and bad turned to worse. Arrieta went 0-3, 10.95, during his brief stint in San Diego.
The resulting base value of plus-93 was the worst for any pitcher in the National League, broken down to plus-78 with the Cubs and plus-15 for the Padres. The Chicago portion puts Arrieta atop this list of the NL Central’s worst pitching performances, where he is joined by two fellow Cubs:
1. Jake Arrieta, Cubs, 78 BV
2. Zach Davies, Cubs, 74
3. Wil Crowe, Pirates, 61
4. Mitch Keller, Pirates, 59
5. Kyle Hendricks, Cubs, 45