Could '76 Reds win with '05 arms?

[missionhockey21]

Could '76 Reds win with '05 arms?
Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler

Simulation is not a perfect science, but it could, I figured, place the Reds' pitching staff in some kind of perspective.

In half of the current season, it has submerged a patently flawed team that manages, in spite of its considerable failings, to score a good number of runs. But does the wretchedness accrue to bad pitching alone? Is the staff sorry enough to sabotage, say, the best everyday lineup that Cincinnati - and perhaps baseball - has ever seen?

We're talking, of course, about the Big Red Machine; specifically, the matchless 1976 team. Could the great eight - Rose, Morgan, Bench, Foster, Griffey, Perez, Geronimo and Concepcion - still win the World Series with the ball in Eric Milton's hands, and Ramon Ortiz's, and Ryan Wagner's?

Could they win the pennant? The division?

Half their games?

There exists an uncertain but nonetheless intriguing way of finding out. I'd recently encountered an enterprising, numbers-friendly, box-score-reading master's graduate of the University of Cincinnati, now employed at WhatIfSports.com, which does this sort of thing professionally. So I asked Paul Bessire if he could somehow interpose Cincinnati's 2005 pitching staff on Sparky Anderson's most indomitable club.

Of course he could.

It took him a day, working with his brother, Joel, an intern at WhatIf. Their method was to input all the numbers from all the players on all the teams in the National League, and then simulate the '76 season, pitch by pitch.

The Reds' case was naturally a little extra complicated. Owing to liberally changed conditions, the Bessires couldn't simply plug in the current stats.

In 1976, for instance, most teams employed four-man pitching rotations, or variations thereof. WhatIf's task, then, was to identify the present Reds most likely to fill that role, thereby subbing for Gary Nolan, Pat Zachry, Jack Billingham and Fred Norman (Don Gullett was healthy for only half the '76 season). Milton, Ortiz and Aaron Harang were givens. In the absence of other candidates with sufficient innings to complete the foursome, the simulators defaulted to Paul Wilson, filling out his performance chart with the partial use of last year's numbers. Similarly lacking a chartable left-hander in the bullpen, they took the same sort of liberties with Jung Keun Bong.

In another stark departure from the present, Riverfront Stadium was not the slugging arcade that Great American Ball Park has swiftly become. The corresponding adjustment would obviously benefit a fellow like Milton, who, last year in Philadelphia - based on his relationship to the league average, which is how this stuff works - surrendered more home runs per nine innings than any other starting pitcher in major-league history.

Then there is what Bessire calls "normalcy" - the standard of the day. Runs were not produced as prolifically in 1976 as they are in 2005. That alone would make the present-day pitchers a little less alarming.

At the same time, they'd be happily positioned to receive the defensive benefits of Johnny Bench and Dave Concepcion and Cesar Geronimo. "They'd be supported by not only one of the best offenses ever," said Bessire, "but also one of the best defenses of all time."

And so, you're not going to believe it.

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[General]

Charlie Hustle, Morgan, Griffey, not to mention Bench (who no doubtedly would call a better game than LaRue) would win the division.