I have always been a big believer on pitching winning championships more then anything else. Pitching seems to be the foundation of many ball clubs and where you see more franchises looking to improve on during the off-season/trading deadline.
Look at how much press guys like Derek Lowe, Ryan Dempster & Ben Sheets got this off-season. All great players but not really high caliber pitchers. But due to a lack in the pitching market their value went up.
The idea that pitching and defense wins championships is almost as old as the game itself.
But yet if you look at the historical standings in baseball history, the correlation of wins and loses for both offense production and pitching is about equal.
That being said though success feeds on itself.
That is too say that most teams that have great offenses also have great pitching and defense.
Needless to say this debate has been going on for quite sometime, and is actually very difficult to measure. Much more so then anyone has really given credit towards.
People will just generally say either pitching or offense just because they have a bias towards how they think the game is.
I just find it interesting that people can even make this type of an argument when there are no numbers I am aware of that give one side more support then the other. I mean sure you can find individual examples of where great pitching has led teams to World Championships, but there are just as many examples of where teams won titles based on the strengths of their bats just as much if not more then their pitching.
JeffPeck brings up the point of salaries, but on average hitters earn more then pitchers, if their importance is greater why are they being paid less on average? Also there's problems with measuring how much impact players have on their teams based on salaries.
My answer to this is that it can't be answered as to which is more important is that they are probably equal. There's no data I'm aware of that says one is anymore important then the other, no significiant difference in correlation, and just convential wisdom says you need both to win, which is what great teams usually have.
(On a side note I voted for hitting, but it was solely to be different, because I know more people think pitching wins championships)
Yah I know, why do you think that the Yankees once again went for pitcing. It looks good right now for the Yankees CC, AJ Burnett, Ching Ming Wang Andy Pettite and Phil Hughes looks like a pretty good lineup for me.
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pitching without a doubt is why teams win championships. using the yankees as an example, the reason why they were great from 96-03 was because of pitching. after there main pitchers, clemens, cone, pettite, wells, left they havent done anything since. they have focused mostly on hitting but maybe this year with some decent pitching they can win it all
I think its a combination of the three that win you a championship. You need to have enough offensive fire power to be able to produce runs Like the phillies did last year with Ryan Howard and a few others. You need to have atleast one or two really good pitchers and a good rest of the roation and a good bull pen and a reliable closer to come in and finish off the job. Last you can't make stupid fielding mistakes and have a lot of errors because when that happens then your team will give up more runs and lose more games
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I think it goes a little deeper than pitching and offense. The Yankees will tell you that all the talent in the world doesnt always equal a championship. I look at it like this, even the worse teams these are together for the better part of 7 months and I think that the right mix of young guys, role players, and vetran presence or "team chemistry" can go a very long ways especially in baseball. As far as the baseball end goes you can have a so so rotation with above average offense but you must have a solid bullpen top to bottom.
