Why Pitchers' Win-Loss Records Have Lost Significance

Tim Lincecum won his second NL Cy Young, edging Chris Carpenter by 4 points. This upset several sportswriters such as Bill Conlin (Phillies) and Bryan Burwell (Cardinals) who complained that Lincecum won only 15 games and that we have fallen into the Valley of VORP or some such un-understandable gibberish in which winning is no longer valued.

Winning is, of course, valuable. And, of course, the point of pitching is to throw the ball in such a way that the other team is unable to reach base and score runs. This goes without argument.

However, the starting pitcher is not solely responsible for his team's victory. Duh. He can lose a no-hitter if his fielders make errors and allow batters to reach base and come home to score. He can give up only one solo homer and lose if his hitters can't manage to score.

These guys know this stuff.

They like to pretend that Back In The Good Old Days, every one of the 16 teams had 4 pitchers who pitched every 4th day, threw complete games every time, threw over 120 pitches/start without deleterious effect and pitched for 20 years. They have exactly zero evidence to support their contention that even during their own lifetimes, the majority of pitchers completed even half of their starts or threw well over 120+ pitches every start.

They could, of course, go back to game logs (in Retrosheet) and take a good long look at the quality of hitters in the league and see if, in fact, the other 7 teams had lineups with 8 solid hitters (they didn't) and they would see that they seldom had more than 2 good hitters. Tango's pitch count estimator shows that pitch counts Back In The Good Old Days weren't different than they are these days.

Starting pitchers tire somewhere between 80 - 120 (give or take a few) pitches. With very few exceptions, they always have. If they throw significantly more than 120 in a start, they tend to tire more quickly their next start. Duh.

It is also well documented that the vast majority of the time, that pitchers get hit much harder the 4th time through the lineup and that fresh arms are usually much more effective than tired ones, which is why relievers have much lower ERA+ than starters. Most managers operate Tony LaRussa bullpens, and have a specific person to pitch the 8th inning and another specific pitcher to pitch the 9th.

Even if a pitcher threw 7 shutout innings every time up, he would still be at the mercy of other relievers as well as his hitters and fielders.

These media guys know this perfectly well. Why on earth they propose that essentially, the other team members' efforts should be treated as totally irrelevant when considering a pitcher's effectiveness, I do not understand.

Because the starting pitcher is not totally responsible for pitching the entire game he starts, because starting pitchers are no longer used as relievers (and acquire additional wins that way) and because they are dependent on the support of their own fielders and hitters, the pitching W/L record is hardly an accurate representation of the pitcher's pitching abilities.

And the mainstream media guys KNOW this - and it is, in fact, why they didn't award the 2003 Cy Young to Russ Ortiz with his NL leading 21 victories (and 4 something ERA.) Instead they gave it to Eric Gagne, who didn't blow a save all year but lost more games (3) than he won (2). And, of course, a miniscule 1.20 ERA and (shudder) 0.692 WHIP, a sky high 6.85 K/BB ratio, and only 2 HR/82 IP.

Personally, I think they know only too well that the "best" pitcher is not always the one who has the most wins. They just want to grouse that those stupid dorks in they mama basement and their endless stupid acronyms are explaining why the ancient standards aren't totally appropriate for evaluating the modern game. Yes, the modern game. Because some people want to pretend that there is no difference whatsoever between the baseball game that was played in 1900 and any baseball game played in 2009.

The hard cold facts are that there are more differences than similarities, in spite of the continuity of the rule book (with only a few changes.) Times change, people change, the way things are done change. And pitchers these days seldom pitch complete games because even if they are good pitchers on losing teams, Organizations want to be able to use those pitchers at a high level for a long LONG time instead of wrecking their arms by having them pitch 300 innings to demonstrate testicular capacity.

AND pitchers don't want to throw their entire careers down the drain attempting to duplicate Mark Fidrych's only glorious season. Some people hate the fact that ballplayers are paid more than, say, minimum wage employees, but they are, and they are going to be until this society no longer values athletes as entertainment, and the ballplayers are going to consider the consequences of their actions in light of their future employment.

Truth is that in spite of all the crying, the BBWAA members no longer believe that "Wins" are the best measurement of pitching excellence. They know very well that the best pitchers prevent hitters from reaching base, and prevent any men who do reach base from scoring by getting subsequent hitters out. They also know perfectly well that this ability may or may not be correllated to run support, fielding excellence and quality relievers. I know they hate the acronyms (or, like me, don't fully understand them) but I also know they actually DO know that they are significantly more accurate than merely ERA or "Wins." I know they are cognizant of changes because they use them in their columns to describe pitchers and because they no longer automatically award Cy Youngs for the most wins.

It's that there is this Vision of how Things Used To Be - and back then, everything was Done Right. I understand. Back In The Good Old Days when I was a kid, MTV played videos 24/7 instead of the stupid un-reality shows and Baseball Tonight hosts discussed ALL the teams instead of 45 minutes of the Big 6, 5 minutes of 15 second excerpts of the Washington Generals' games and 5 minutes of homers/web gems AND the networks/commissioner didn't think it was a terrible thing if neither Yankees nor RedSox qualified for the playoffs (which they seldom did.)

Of course, the difference is that my vision is The Truth and theirs isn't...