By Elizabeth Finn
There is no denying that baseball has entered a new era. For better or for worse, there are some aspects of the game that are likely changed forever. Though no doubt causing much of the upheaval, steroid use as we begin to understand it is not responsible for all of the shifts. Some are superficial: growing concern over head injuries and the fragility of the newer maple bats have led to mandatory helmet rules for base coaches. Some are enlightening: a new breed of statistics known as sabermetrics is allowing managers and fans alike to examine players in a more insightful and well-rounded way than ever before. But some alterations to the game may have a lasting effect on one of the greatest career milestones in baseball history–and how we measure success.
When analyzing the worth of a starting pitcher, popular opinion among more-than-casual fans is to dismiss the win statistic almost entirely. Because, of its nature, the win-loss record is dependent on factors outside the pitcher’s control, many believe that it should count for little when evaluating talent and legacy. There is even a groundswell of support for downplaying win totals when determining a Hall of Fame candidate.
While there are certainly other, better methods of examining a pitcher’s talent, relative to his era (WHIP, ERA+, and K/BB are some of the best pinpoint measurements of effectiveness and command) it would be a mistake to dismiss, or even diminish, the win total as irrelevant. This isn’t because the win in and of itself is particularly impressive, or difficult to obtain–a reliever in his first major league tour of duty can earn a win by throwing one pitch; rather, it is what we can derive from a pitcher’s win-loss record that is important in judging the measure of a Hall of Famer. There are certain conclusions that can be drawn about a pitcher’s work ethic and value to his team simply by looking at the first two columns on his baseball card.
To record a win, a starting pitcher must pitch through the fifth inning of a game he starts, and either leave with his team winning or rely on his offense to immediately take a lead they never surrender. Because of the number of variables beyond the pitcher’s control, he is susceptible to “hard-luck” losses of the low-scoring variety, that, when occurring in epidemic-fashion, become known as “lack of run support,” a calamity befalling even the best pitchers. Admittedly, a starting pitcher cannot force his offense to score runs to help his cause.
What he can control, however–and what has become a hallmark of career pitching success–is the number of innings he pitches. By lacking the efficiency and/or stamina to pitch past the fifth or sixth inning of a close game, a starter essentially leaves his win in the hands of the weakest part of the bullpen–the much-maligned middle relief. Many a low-scoring loss is a well-deserved win whittled away by an ineffective bullpen. History’s best pitchers are not only known for their strikeout totals or fastball speed but also for their durability; Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux, and Nolan Ryan, widely considered to be among the greatest ever to take the hill (asterisk or not), averaged nearly 7.0 innings per game and combined for 449 complete games pitched. Not coincidentally, the trio notched 1,033 collective wins. One has to wonder how many of those were earned in the final innings–wins usually reserved for late-game relievers pitching in nailbiters.
Besides durability and pitch efficiency, a less tangible but still documented quality in a winning pitcher is the ability to “keep his team in the game.” The phrase gets thrown around often, but the sentiment is no less important; the value of keeping a high-scoring game within reach or effectively pitching with a lead is, over the course of the long season, almost immeasurable. In doing so, the pitcher keeps himself in line for a win more frequently. There is merit in not allowing a game to spiral out of hand for the offense, a skill that requires the poise and control of a winner.
In what is hopefully unintentional irony, as the win statistic loses favor with many fans, organizations are grooming starting pitching prospects to be less and less able to earn one. From the lowest developmental levels of the instructional leagues, talented young pitchers with blazing fastballs are kept on tensile leashes. For fear of damaging their most precious (and expensive!) commodities, teams carefully monitor pitchers as they ascend through the system, allowing them a set number of innings that increases in carefully researched increments yearly. Each promotion is scrutinized, not necessarily to ascertain the skill level of the pitcher, but to assess the health of his arm. Once the prospect reaches the majors, his development is further monitored in the form of pitch counts. Rather than allow a young pitcher to build confidence by pitching deep into ballgames and earning wins, the rookie is yanked as soon as his pitch total hovers anywhere near triple digits. Though quality starting pitchers are rare, and a team’s responsibility is to guard the long-term health of its players, is it possible that teams are stunting development rather than strengthening it?
Randy Johnson earned the 300th win of his career on Thursday, becoming the 24th player in baseball history to accomplish the feat. Though media coverage of the historic win centered around Johnson’s long and well-traveled career, the prevailing sentiment among analysts was that Johnson would likely be the last player to reach the milestone in at least a generation. Because of the new organizational trends toward innings limits, and teams’ apparent willingness to toe the line of careful, measured development over confidence-building wins, the chances of a young starter being allowed to pitch out of jams, push himself just a little bit harder, and take command of his own ball games on a consistent-enough basis to rack up high win totals are slim. Even successful franchises have adopted this way of thinking, most recently in the form of the Tampa Bay Rays holding back David Price, their 2008 postseason hero and No. 1 prospect, in AAA until the organization was assured that he would not exceed his innings limit for the year. He was called up mid-May. Price, whom many believe can be a perennial 20-game winner, would be an asset to any team, and could have provided the Rays with an immediate boost from Opening Day.
Durability, stamina, and sheer heart and guts may have become devalued to make room for trainers, whirlpools, and MRIs, but, to the players all the talking heads, blogs, and PECOTA projections are simply background noise to what really matters. Because as long as there are competitors, there will be a drive to win. In a press conference after his milestone win, an unusually mellow and reflective Johnson shook off mentions of his other career accomplishments to make his priorities known:
“To me, wins have always outweighed strikeouts…To me I wanted to be more known for winning ballgames than striking people out.”
As long as there are competitors, there will be a drive to win, and that will never be obsolete.
{ 16 comments }
I agree ! Keep up the great writing ! I’m looking forward to your next article.
This is well-written, and you make a brave argument that’s sure to draw the ire of many sabremetrically inclined baseball fans. I guess I would agree with you that wins/losses still hold a substantial amount of prestige for the guys playing the games. But, for knowledgable fans looking to objectively evaluate pitchers, the win/loss stat remains highly dubious.
As a Cubs fan, I can point out a perfect, current example: Randy Wells. In six starts so far this season, he’s 0-2. Lousy pitcher, eh? No, he has a 1.86 ERA and a 238 ERA+. He’s pitched well (no pun intended) enough to win in every start, but either lack of offense or an ineffective bullpen has let him down.
Oh, and he’s gone at least six innings in five of those six starts. And it’s here that I’d quibble with one of the statements you make. To wit: “What [a pitcher] can control, however–and what has become a hallmark of career pitching success–is the number of innings he pitches. ”
This isn’t completely accurate. The MANAGER controls how many innings a pitcher throws, not the pitcher himself. Now, granted, many times managers pull pitchers after they’ve given up a certain amount of runs. But, in many other instances, a starter is pulled because the manager THINKS he’s about to get lit up - whether said pitcher actually would have is never established.
Again, you make a valid point that, for players, wins still matter. But I would strongly discourage any serious baseball fan from taking what I consider the lazy approach to evaluating a pitcher by focusing solely (or even primarily) on wins and losses.
dat cubfan daver,
You make interesting points..however, I take exception at your criticism of Finn’s saying that the pitcher has control of the number of pitches..you say it is the manager. This is true, however what Finn was saying was that a pitcher has control based on his stamina and endurance. A manager will often pull a pitcher if the pitcher has shown in past outings that he cannot sustain past a certain number of pitches. It is not always a completely arbitrary decision on the part of the manager. The pitcher’s ability to perform plays a large role in a manager’s decision to “protect” him from a high pitch count.
Dave–
While I agree that this seems to be the trend in recent years (as I alluded to), pitchers of old had more autonomy in deciding when they could leave the game. The easy and trendy argument to make is that there are far better measurements of talent (a point I would agree with wholeheartedly). But when extrapolated over the course of a 16-year career, there is no denying that wins, while maybe misleading in terms of pure skill, are no doubt an accurate measure of success. Often, you’ll hear managers and fans talk about which pitchers they’d want on the mound when the series is on the line. More times than not, that pitcher is one who knows how to win–not necessarily the pitcher with the 1.13 WHIP. Your argument is the easy one to make, with plenty of pure data to back it up. But sometimes the more intangible qualities in a pitcher are fun to explore, too.
Thanks for reading!
There are a lot of factors in determining how many innings a pitcher goes in a given game, but a pitcher certainly increases his odds of earning a decision by averaging more innings. Look at Roy Halladay. In 13 starts he’s 10-1 with only two no-decisions. He pitched seven innings in both of those games, and in fact has not gone fewer than seven innings in any start this year. He’s a workhorse, and he’s picking up the wins as a result of both pitching well, and sticking around long enough to still be there when the game’s decided. It certainly doesn’t hurt that the Jays have scored a lot of runs this year.
Wells has pitched very well for the Cubs, and it’s not fair to judge him by an 0-2 record. He’s averaged nearly seven innings in his six starts. He could probably have worked longer in a couple of them, but the Cubs are averaging less than three runs in his starts, and none of his games have been decided by more than two runs. That means pinch-hitting when the pitcher’s spot comes up, even when he’s pitching a good game.
To me, wins are a better gauge on a career basis than a short-term basis. Over time, luck has a way of evening out. But pitchers who typically work a lot of quality innings put themselves in a position to win a lot of games over a 10-year span. I would never play down the importance of ERA, ratio, etc., but I’d rather have a 20-game winner with a 3.70 ERA than a 10-game winner with a 2.70 ERA (assuming same number of starts, etc.). Winning is the bottom line.
I feel like too much time is spent over-analyzing statistics, poring over splits and stats such as how many strikeouts a pitcher records in day games against left-handed utility infielders with last names that start with a vowel. Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but the fact is, people get way too caught up in the little things, and fail to enjoy the game for its purity. Therefore, the win becomes important. Guess what? I like it when my team wins. Who makes that possible? well, if a guy has 17 wins, he made it possible. You say he needed run support? awesome, because I like the hitters on my team, too, so we all win.
There is something to be said for simply watching a game and observing these athletes applying their trade. Watching a pitcher work with a catcher to decide on the put-away pitch, watching an outfielder get a read on a line drive, watching a hitter “take” to study a pitcher’s delivery. These are the keys to baseball, so at the end of the day, I like wins. We all do.
You go, J. Flash !
I agree completely ! I’m an Orioles fan..and I still enjoy watching the game and I especially savor it when my team wins !
This is another thoughtful conversation, sparked by a thoughtful article.
No one of us would consider the W/L stat irrelevant, since we’d still sit up and take notice of either a 17-20 game winner or loser. Despite changes in pitchers’ roles, the significance of wins/losses has changed organically with the entire game. The proliferation of stats actually enables us to see more complete pictures, to make finer distinctions. Our understanding, say, of the importance of an E.R.A. is as a companion stat to that of W/L’s, not a replacement for the latter. In the same way, our increased emphasis on OBP’s –together with the importance of RBI’s and runs scored–helps us to distinguish between hitters with identical BA’s and AB’s.. One stat casts clarifying light on another. To dismiss (or overly diminish) W/L’s significance as an ongoing yardstick of success is to miss the opportunity we have to measure success more precisely.
Mr. Bailey, you’re spot-on in your suggestion that hard-earned and “easy” W’s even out over a career. Ms. Finn, you’re also correct in your implying that the 20 game winner is more remarkable than ever.
I guess I can agree that, as a quick and dirty way of measuring a pitcher’s success (NOT performance) over the course of a career, wins and losses give you some sense of how things turned out for the guy. But even that can often be dubious.
To use another Cubs-related example, look at Jason Marquis (now with the Rockies). He’s put up double-digit win totals his last FIVE seasons. He’s 86-74 lifetime thus far. I guess that makes him successful, but is he any good? Well, not really. He’s generally considered a “bottom-of-the-rotation” starter. Durable, but not particularly talented.
And I don’t see what’s “intangible” about wins. They’re numbers based on recordable events. Again, granted, most major leaguers still value them - and most really good pitchers end up with a lot of them - but, in the here and now, they’re misleading and not particularly fair.
Anyway, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. And to J. Flash, et al. who just want to enjoy the game sans stats: More power to ya. I wish I could go back to that point some days, but I’ve found that, the deeper you dig, the more rich the game becomes.
Well done piece–I’ve always felt the innings limiting was a little ridiculous, but in terms of getting wins, I don’t know that starters aren’t recording a significantly smaller percentage of decisions than they have in the past 20 years or so since the so-called death of the 20-game winner (in the 60’s and earlier, there were many–sometimes 10 or more–20-game winners every season. Since then, that number has dropped to about 4 per year). I heard about this in the aftermath of the 2006 season (the only full season in baseball history in which there were no 20-game winners) but then saw that starters recorded a higher percentage of decisions in 2006 than they did in 2001 (when there were seven 20-game winners).
Bottom line? if you win 15-20 consistently and stay healthy, you can win 300. Someone will do it again eventually–Randy Johnson had more wins after 40 than he had before 30. It just might be a few years.
Undoubtedly starters work fewer innings per outing today than in the 1960s, but it’s likely the bigger factor in fewer 20-game winners today vs. the ’60s is the five-man rotation. Pitchers worked every fourth day until the 1970s, when teams began adding a fifth man to the mix. That means roughly 10 fewer starts a year these days for a pitcher who stays healthy all season.
Thom, you are no doubt correct–fewer starts means fewer wins and the five-man rotation is the primary culprit here.
That being said, people who think the 20-game winner is going the way of the called-on-account-of-darkness-game due to increased bullpen specialization are mistaken. 2006 was a fluke–there are still on average about three to four 20-game winners per year (I brought that out in response to a blogger claiming that a pitcher winning 17 today was as impressive as 20 used to be. it isn’t.)
JGS–
No, it isn’t. And I hope it never is.
J. Flash–
I like that little prose jag there. Very well said. I’m not ignorant enough to dismiss statistics, but I enjoy the idiosyncrasies and intangibles of the game that make baseball-watching an experience unlike any other. I, do, however, like pointing to statistics like BABIP when justifying Robinson Cano’s slumps. It makes the game more enjoyable for me.
MtVernon–
I like your mention of stats casting light on each other. That’s a perfect way of putting it. I’m a big fan of the OPS stat, since it rewards both home runs and infield singles.
I guess by that specious logic, Nolan Ryan had a ****** season in 1987. He only led the league in every other category of consequence. Conversely, by your logic, David Wells was robbed of a Cy Young in 2000. So what if Pedro Martinez had an ERA that was 2.37 runs lower, allowed 138 fewer hits while striking out 118 more batters and walking 48 fewer? All Hail Bob Welch!
Remarkable to see that the most sarcastic posters don’t use their own actual names. Why is that? If you have something clever to say, wouldn’t you like to take credit for it?
Pedro went 18-6 in 29 starts in 2000. It’s not like he didn’t win his share of games. Wells was 20-8 in 35 starts. I don’t think anyone here is arguing Wells had the better season, but he did have a successful year. As for Ryan, he pitched in bad luck that year for a weak offensive team, and is the poster boy for arguing against the value of wins. Of course, he did rack up 324 wins over his career, so things have a way of evening out over time.
While it’s nice to see some lively discussion, this string kind of took a turn for the worse. We are open to more than one viewpoint here, but it helps when people can be a) civil, and b) not so ashamed of their own identity that they need to make up clever user names.
I will play the heavy and delete inappropriate/worthless comments (as I unfortunately had to here), so don’t waste anyone’s time with personal attacks, “Wooden.”
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