In order to fully grasp Richard's 2-year stretch of dominance, we need to go off on a tangent real quick and talk about FIP. What is FIP? FIP is short for "Fielding Independent Pitching," and it is a statistic designed to judge a pitcher's performance without taking any fielding into account. It's a formula that converts the four outcomes a pitcher has almost complete control of (home runs allowed, walks, hit by pitches, and strikeouts), and computes a number that is on the same scale as ERA. Basically, just like ERA, a mark under 3.00 is really good, over 5.00 is really bad, and so forth. While the league-wide average FIP will always equal the league-wide average ERA, as a constant is calculated to match FIP to ERA, for individual pitchers, the results can really vary. There may no better example of this than Jim Palmer. Palmer pitched in the second Deadball era, but even then, his performance stood out, at least in the traditional stats. He won 20 or more games eight times from 1970-1978, with an average ERA of 2.54 during that stretch. His ERA+ (adjusted for ballpark and run-scoring environment, with above 100 being good) was a fantastic 138, second only to Tom Seaver's 140, and was also second in winning percentage, with a mark of 64.5%. Again, by those traditional stats, Palmer was basically superman. However, in that same timeframe, Palmer's fWAR was "only" 42.8, averaging fewer than 5 WAR per season, which ranks 8th in that same timeframe. The reason for this seemingly odd occurrence goes back to FIP. Since it prioritizes things only a pitcher can control, Palmer suffers in it compared to ERA. Palmer never struck out many guys, being barely above-average during that run, and while he didn't walk a ton of batters, again, he was merely above-average in that category. He was good at preventing home runs, which helps out his FIP, but that was really the only thing he did well in regards to that stat. During those nine years, his FIP was a good, but not great, 3.27, almost 29% worse than his ERA. If you take FIP seriously as a statistic, then a large part of Palmer's success was due to his defense (and Baltimore did have tremendous defenses during his career, especially in his prime).
So, what does the above have to do with JR Richard, you might ask? Well, Richard's case was the exact opposite of Palmer's: during his two-year prime, he was beyond amazing at maintaining a low FIP, but his ERA lagged behind. From '78-79, Richard was 8th in the MLB in ERA with a mark of 2.90, which is good, but considering that he pitched in a pitcher's park during a suppressed run-scoring environment, it's not fantastic. However, what is impressive was his FIP. JR led all pitchers with a 2.35 FIP, almost 10% better than Ron Guidry's second-place mark of 2.58. How did he do it? Well, simply put, Richard was a strikeout legend on par with Nolan Ryan, and obliterated him in those two years. Richard led all pitchers in total strikeouts and strikeouts per nine innings those two seasons, totaling 616 (an incredible 133 more than Ryan in that same period) while averaging 9.77 per 9 innings. After Ryan's 9.51 K/9 mark, the next-closest pitcher was Ron Guidry, with 7.92. For those two years, the only hurler who was anywhere near Richard was the greatest strikeout pitcher ever. What else did Richard excel at in those two seasons? Well, he did a very good job of preventing home runs, which FIP also takes into account. In 1978, he allowed only .39 home runs per 9 innings, and the following year, only gave up .40 per nine. That was good for fourth-best among all pitchers in that stretch, once again, ahead of Nolan Ryan. In terms of how Richard pitched at his peak, compared to his contemporaries, he was as good as any of them. Among all pitchers with at least 162 innings pitched in a season from 1970-1979, Richard's '79 ranks 6th in FIP (out of 851 seasons) and his '78 and '79 season are 7th and 8th in Strikeouts per 9 innings, respectively. Also, his 6.53 hits allowed per nine innings from 1978-1979 are first among all pitchers who threw at least 400 innings during that time. And among all pitchers, his 15.4 fWAR for those two season led everyone, with a high-water mark of 8.9 in 1979. He was just insane, but aside from his fWAR (which is adjusted for each year, so you can adequately compare the figures across eras), his raw total strikeout and strikeout rate numbers aren't *that* impressive when comparing to modern-day pitchers, when in 2019, 11 qualified pitchers in the National League had a K/9 mark of over 10 strikeouts per nine innings. In order to fully appreciate Richard's back-to-back seasons, we need to contextualize his performances, and convert them to a 2019 environment. Let's do it.
1978: The Coming Out Party
Richard had a couple decent seasons prior to 1978, striking out 214 batters in both 1976 and 1977 (and also led the NL in fewest hits allowed per nine innings in '76, with a mark of 6.8). Convert that out to the 2019 environment, it comes out to 11.8 K/9 in each year with 317 Ks in '76 and 290 in '77. Those are phenomenal numbers, and he would have placed second and fourth in 2019, respectively. His stuff was fantastic as well, as he had a fastball that touched 100 and a devastating slider. He would have been awesome in the modern-day, with its emphasis on strikeouts and a low FIP for pitchers, and in 1978, he would break out and showcase his talent to its fullest extent. He led the majors in strikeouts with 313; Nolan Ryan was second with 260, over 50 fewer than JR recorded. His 9.9 K/9 figure was second only to Ryan's 10.0 (Ryan pitched 40.1 fewer innings than Richard, so that's why he struck out more per 9 while trailing him in overall Ks), and he led the National League with a 2.51 FIP, second only to Ron Guidry's 2.19 with the Yankees. Where he really stood out, however, is his strikeout rate. His 26.6% rate was actually higher than Ryan's 25.8%, and he led both leagues in that category. He also excelled at preventing hits, only allowing 6.3 per nine, leading the NL. In total, Richard was awesome at efficiently striking out hitters, not allowing hits, keeping a very low FIP, and not allowing home runs. At pretty much everything a pitcher is asked to do, Richard was excellent in, except for one big thing: control. Really, the only reason he didn't have a lower ERA than his 3.11 mark is because he walked so many batters, granting 141 free passes on the season which was worst in the NL. He really lacked control, also leading the majors in wild pitches with 16. It was really a tale of two seasons, just combined into a single year. On the one hand, he was insanely dominant at striking out batters and preventing hard contact. On the other hand, his lack of control harmed his team, and if he couldn't harness it better, his peak would plateau (even though that plateau was extraordinarily high). However, what couldn't be denied was his enormous talent, and his skills were decades ahead of his time, as evidenced by converting his figures to a more strikeout-happy year, like 2019. How would Richard's 1978 fare against the best pitchers of last year? Well, in a word, good, it fares very, very good. Among all pitchers in 2019, Gerrit Cole led the majors in total strikeouts (326), K/9 (13.8), and strikeout percentage (39.9%). Cole actually set the record for highest strikeouts per nine innings and strikeout percentage, so it was a historic year for the righty. Richard's 1978 puts those numbers to shame. Amazingly, that season by JR translates into 427 strikeouts, 17.0! K/9, and a 45.7% strikeout percentage. How is this possible, when the raw numbers Richard actually put up in 1978 are relative modest? Well, it goes back to the environment each pitched in. In 1978, the average strikeout percentage was 13.5%; that paltry figure can't compare to the 23.2% K rate in 2019. And since Richard struck out 26.6% of all hitters he faced, he was nearly 2x better than the average pitcher. Cole's mark of 39.9%, while still extremely impressive, is "only" 1.75x better, so Richard's year was actually materially more impressive than Cole's. And really, no NL pitcher in 2019 is anywhere close to Richard in striking out hitters. Richard's z-score (a metric used to measure how far apart a data point is from the average in a sample or population) is an almost incomprehensible 3.47. That puts him in the 99.4th percentile of every qualified pitching season in National League. The best mark an NL pitcher put up in 2019? Max Scherzer's 1.80, which is awesome, puts him in the 95th percentile. He doesn't come close to Richard in that category. Oh, and did I mention that Richard's 1978 would also have ranked first in hits allowed per nine, a paltry figure of 6.19. Yeah, he was pretty great that season, and would become even better in 1979.
1979: Richard Hits His Peak
In retrospect, JR Richard's 1978 is one of the most historically dominant years any pitcher has ever had when it comes to striking hitters out and preventing hits. However, his terrible walk rate really hurt his otherwise sterling campaign, and it prevented his FIP from being better than it otherwise would have been. How good would he have been if his walk rate improved from all-time awful to merely poor? Well, he answered that hypothetical the following year. In '79, his walks allowed per nine innings was a still bad, but much better, 3.0, a huge improvement from his 4.6 figure the year before. His WAR reflected this newfound efficiency, increasing from a very good 6.4 fWAR to a Cy Young-worthy 8.9 fWAR. The foundation of fWAR is again, FIP, so you would expect that number to improve. It absolutely did. Richard's 2.21 FIP was miles ahead of any other pitcher; it's almost laughable how much better he was in that category than everyone else that season. The next-closest was Ron Guidry's 3.03, 37% worse than JR's! What all did Richard lead the majors in that season? It's a long list, but here it is: fWAR, FIP, ERA, strikeouts, strikeouts percentage, strikeouts per nine innings, fewest hits allowed per nine innings, lowest batting average allowed, lowest slugging percentage allowed, lowest OPS allowed, and lowest OPS+ allowed. If you lost track, that's a remarkable 11 separate categories that Richard led not just his league, but all of baseball. I think it has a legitimate argument as the most underappreciated season a pitcher has ever produced, mainly because its dominance never seems to be recognized. But if you convert those already amazing numbers to the 2019 environment, it becomes nothing short of remarkable, even better than his 1978 season. We'll save the strikeouts for last, because there are plenty of other things that Richard excelled at that need attention. First, his FIP, in which he put up a minute 2.21 figure. However, as some could rightly point out, scoring was a lot more hard to come by in 1979 compared to 2019. How does it really compare to the pitchers from last season? Well, he comes out looking just fine. Max Scherzer led all qualified pitchers in FIP last year, a very impressive 2.30 (I modified the FIP formula to only include each individual league, whereas FanGraphs's version combines the NL and AL). Gerrit Cole's 2.67 and Lance Lynn's 2.83 come in second and third, respectively. Converted to a 2019 environment, Richard's 1979 measures out a great 2.41, second only to Scherzer. On a historic basis, Richard is 30th out of 4,319 NL seasons, the 99.3rd percentile. That's really, really good (and shows how awesome Max was in 2019), yet it's only part of what made his year so special. You see, JR was a workhorse, compiling 292.1 innings pitched in 1979. Now, of course, it was a different game, with pitchers often throwing complete games and pitch totals not really being a thing. However, even in 2019, he would have thrown way more than any other pitcher. Justin Verlander led all hurlers with 223, but if you convert JR's 292.1 to the most recent season, he still musters 246.1, over 23 more than the 2019 leader. For Richard to be that effective for that long of a season, while throwing extremely hard, it's pretty incredible. And now, of course, we get to the strikeouts. Hitters in 2019 would stand no, absolutely no, chance against 1979 JR Richard. In '79, the NL K% was actually lower than it had been the prior season, yet Richard was more efficient that year, striking out 26.64% of hitters he faced compared to the 26.60% mark he mustered in '78. While on the whole it's a negligible difference, when you combine it with the fact that he threw more innings relative to the rest of the league, his totals really stand out. In 2019, '79 Richard posts 454 Ks in total, a 46.2% rate, and 16.6 K/9 (the reason his rate is higher but his K/9 lower than in '78 was because he pitched more innings with fewer batters faced per inning, which results in fewer opportunities to strike out hitters). Historically, he places in the 99.5th percentile in strikeout rate, and his z-score of 3.55 was nearly a full point better than Gerrit Cole's 2.57 in 2019. There is simply no valid comparison to what Richard's numbers look like in and what 2019 pitchers actually produced. He was just way, way, way better than any of them when it comes to striking out hitters.
I can't help but think of JR Richard's career as a tragic tale. He was putting up insanely efficient strikeouts numbers at a time when Ks were very hard to come by, never won a Cy Young award, and was only once elected to the All-Star team, 1980, when his career would sadly be cut short due to a stroke suffered shortly after the break, on July 30th. He was on his way to arguably his best year, with a terrific 1.90 ERA, 174 ERA+, and 1.94 FIP (all career-bests). His 3.8 fWAR pro-rates out to 9.8 had he pitched the same amount of innings as he had in 1979. The stroke robbed Richard of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, and robbed baseball fans of witnessing one of the best strikeout artists in history. He hardly ever gets talked about by baseball fans of today, which is a great shame. He would have been perhaps the best pitcher in the game had he been born in 1990 rather than 1950, but the least we can do is recognize what he did accomplish, and bask in awe at what his numbers look like in the context of 2019.
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