"great pitching beats great hitting"

I'm thinking of when the diamondbacks beat the yankees in the world series with basically schilling and randy johnson.. those two ptichers basically won the series for them and I thought the yankees had some great hitters that year..

I was living in cleveland when they got to the WS against the braves.. that was the year that they were an offensive juggernuat..  great pitching silenced the bats there.

My biggest grip in the indians braves series was maddox... when they would show home plate with an overhead view his pitches were over a foot off the plate on the outside but were constantly called strikes, the hitters never readjusted to the ump's strike zone

I don’t particularly follow baseball, but I followed the 2005 White Sox enough to know that against the Angels in the playoffs their pitching staff pulled off three straight complete games to close the door on that series.  That was impressive.

Even being a Yankees fan that I am, the 2001 Series had to be one of the most exhilarating World Series ever, from the two 9th-inning homeruns by the Yanks in the Bronx, Soriano hitting an HR in the 9th to put the Yanks up in Game 7... to Rivera's throwing error and subsequent hit by Gonzalez to win it in the bottom of the inning. Great stuff. I agree that Johnson and Schilling won them the Series that year.

I remember watching Game 7 that year with my fiancee.... Gonzalez hit that ball, it went into the outfield, I didn't need to see any more... I switched off the TV and went outside. I came back in about 5 minutes later, and she was like, "well, don't you want to make sure they lost?" Fine. I switched on the TV, the sound came on before the picture, and I heard Freddie Mercury singing "We Are The Champions," and the TV was promptly switched off.

Still, a great World Series that year.

That is an excellent way to look at it. 

(Yankees up 1-0 in the bottom of the 5th as I start this )

I've been thinking about this question since I read in a couple of hours ago. Couldn't get it outta my head.

I'd say great pitching beats great hitting. But who knows.

One thing to consider is the level of the other team's other discipline.

For example, assume one team has great hitting and average pitching. The other team has great pitching and average hitting. So great pitching is going to go against great hitting, while in the same game average pitching is going to go against average hitting.

So then the question is which discipline has the bigger edge. Is the edge between great batting vs average batting higher or lower than the edge between great pitching and average pitching.

So take the 2007 year team stats .

For defense/pitching

The best ERA was 3.70 by San Diego

The median ERA was 4.44

The edge between the best and the median is .74 per nine innings

The best TRA (total run average) was 4.05 by Boston

The median TRA was 4.74

The edge is also .74

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For offense/batting

The best ERA based on RBIs is 5.73 by the Yankees

The median is 4.51

For great hitting vs average hitting the edge is 1.22

The TRA based on total runs scored is 5.79 also by the Yankees

The median is 4.75

The edge is 1.04

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So the earned run batting edge is 1.22

The earned run pitching edge is .74

So great batting has a .48 run edge over great pitching based on earned runs for the total year.

The total run batting edge is 1.04

The total run pitching edge is .74

So great batting has a .30 run edge over great pitching based on total runs for the total year.

Probably made a mistake or made a wrong assumption here somewhere, but it seems that in 2007, great hitting beat great pitching.

(Andy Pettitte got out of trouble in the 5th, Yankees still up 1-0 )