published by drbill on Mon, 2006-08-28 07:22
You will hear the mediots put out any figure between 75-90%. That's ridiculous, of course; it seems obvious that offense and defense are each half of the game. I would guess that pitching is about 30-40% of the game.
That analysis is correct to first order, but it doesn't answer the question that the typical 75-90% figure is addressing. The "half this game is 90% mental" crowd is claiming that good pitching is the rarest commodity. They are saying that how much better your pitcher is than average is most of of your chance to win the game.
