In pitching, the only thing that really matters is wins: Paul Hoynes' Rant of the Week
CLEVELAND, Ohio — The most important statistic in baseball is a win. It determines which teams reach the postseason and which teams go home. It is not an acronym for a math quiz. It's the stat that makes baseball go.
Team wins are important, yes. Agreed. 100%. Also, sick jab at those tricky equation-filled stats that only nerds/dweebs use like OBP, bro.
Why is the pitcher the only player charged with a win or a loss on the stat sheet?Because the stat sheet is stupid. If you look at the advanced stats (read : nerd shit), you can look at things like WARP which are much better at attributing wins to players (MUCH MUCH MUCH BETTER). But yeah, technically pitchers are the only people who get a win or a loss.
I would imagine it has to do with him being the most important player on the field.
The pitcher is very important, yes. After all, he has an amount of influence on whether you're going to win or lose. But he's not the only reason why a team would win or lose (see : run support, defensive play, a decent amount of luck, etc.).
Last year, Zack Greinke of the fourth-place Kansas City Royals won the American League Cy Young award with 16 victories. In the National League, Tim Lincecum of the third-place San Francisco Giants won it with 15 victories.
It's a shame that they pitched their asses off, enough to show that they were the two best pitchers in the league in spite of the fact that their teams didn't score a lot of runs in the games that they pitched. Coincidentally, 3 of the 5 finalists in the NL Cy Young race last year won 15 or fewer games.
The value of the win has been devalued by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America who favor statistics meant to remove all influences on the pitcher except himself.
This is a bad thing? Removing all the outside influences on a win like the skill of the defense behind him, run support, and the like shows how good a pitcher really is.
This year, the case study will be Felix Hernandez, Seattle's fine right-hander.
And arguably one of the best pitchers in baseball and a well deserving candidate for the Cy Young.
He leads the AL in innings pitched and strikeouts. He has everything going for him except for one thing -- he has won only 11 games headed into Saturday's start against the Angels.
More accurately, the team he's pitched for has only won 11 wins that have been accredited to him.
Hernandez might get four more starts after Saturday. If he wins out, he could finish with 16 victories. Does that mean he should get the award over CC Sabathia, who goes for his 20th victory Monday for the first-place Yankees?
If he maintains how good he's pitched, yes. It should be between King Felix or Cliff Lee, in my opinion. After all, Cliff Lee has managed to pitch 192 innings and only walked 15 people (even more impressive when you think that two have been intentional). So yeah, there are two guys more deserving than CC. Not to say that CC isn't good, he is. But these guys are pitching on another level this year. It's not their fault that their teams suck when they pitch.
The time to give Hernandez the Cy Young award was last year when he went 19-5 with a 2.49 ERA, but he finished second to Greinke. He had the stats, including the most important one, to make a far more compelling case than this year.
Greinke was far and away the best pitcher in the AL last year (not only do I think he should've won the Cy, I think he should've been the MVP, but that's a different story). Felix had a great year last year, yes, but was it better than Greinke? No. Similarly, CC Sabathia has had a great year this year, but I'd be willing to bet that if you put Felix Hernandez on the Yankees with that lineup behind him, he'd finish with upwards of 20 wins as well.
Wins, like you said at the beginning of the article, are a team stat. If Randy Wells pitches 5 innings and gives up 7 runs, but the Cubs score 8 in those 5 innings, he gets a win. Meanwhile, if Zach Greinke pitches a complete game giving up 1 run while his Royals teammates are unable to score a run, he gets a loss. Does that mean that Randy Wells is a better pitcher? Afterall, he won! Wins are dumb.
