Should MLB kill the win?

[soxhop411]

IMO I think MLB should kill the win and replace it with Quality starts stat.... In todays stat heavy age Wins are a pointless stat that don't actually tell if a pitcher is good or not....

A starter could go 5 innings and give up 6 ER and get the win. A starter could also go 8IP with 1ER and get the loss.... One is deserving of a win and the other isn't..

Case in point: Jacob deGrom... Here are his stats for his last 16 starts per Jeremy Frank on twitter.

107.0 IP, 125 K, 22 BB, 79 H, 21 ER 1.77 ERA, 0.94 WHIP, 10.5 K/9...

Now you might think he has a splendid record with those stats... Right?


Well you would be wrong.

Spoiler: This is his record in his last 16 games

2-7 record,

Just once this year has he given up more than 3 ER's.. (one 4ER game)

In SIX starts this year he gave up 0 or 1 ER and was given a ND.... and in those six he went at least 7IP...


The win stat is outdated and needs to be replaced

 

[Cesar Crespo]

You could give up 4 er over 8 innings and not get a quality start. Is 6ip 3er significantly better than 7 ip 4 er? QS is kind of crap too.

 

[Cesar Crespo]

Also, Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young in 2010 going 13-12. I don't think anyone really uses wins to judge pitchers anymore.

 

[Cuzittt]

MLB could stop using the stat (or frankly any stat), but that doesn't mean it would actually go away.

Wins are not a great measure of quality. But, they never actually were. So, there really is no reason to banish them.

 

[grimshaw]

I just want them to stop using outdated stats for the purposes of arbitration cases. Outside of that, I don't really care.

 

[soxhop411]

Also, Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young in 2010 going 13-12. I don't think anyone really uses wins to judge pitchers anymore.

the HOF still does..... Until all the old voters are purged for stat heads

 

[YTF]

So when a reliever is credited with a hold or save, just exactly what is it that they held or saved if you're not going to recognize the win?

 

[Reverend]

I think MLB should abolish the seven.

 

[phrenile]

Well it's not like holds and saves are meaningful stats either.

 

[Pandemonium67]

Or basehits. I mean, you could hit four 400-foot line drives and end up 0-4, or hit two bleeders, a chopper and a bloop and end up 4-4.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

I think MLB should abolish the seven.

My keyboard has no E you Eool. I mean it has an "E" but not the other one that is an E with only two horizontal lines.

 

[DJnVa]

No need to get rid of it, there's just a need to understand what it represents.

 

[Sad Sam Jones]

There are plenty of stats that aren't an ingenious measure of performance, so I don't know why they should get rid of wins, unless they're also doing away with saves, holds, rbi, runs scored, etc. Holds are easily the most useless, unless we're also counting blown saves for non-closers. When is the last time MLB officially got rid of a statistic? Game Winning RBI? Am I imagining things or was there was a year or two in the late '80s that Topps stuck GW-RBI in a separate line on their cards, down below all the other stat totals?

*

 

[Cuzittt]

Just some more data to support that it has ALWAYS been this way. [And I thank MLB network who gave me the tools.]

In 1937, Eddie Smith tossed 196 2/3 innings over 38 games (23 starts/14 complete games) with a 3.94 ERA and a 120 ERA+ (It's important to recognize eras here. His 3.96 ERA and 1.363 WHIP was the best on his team (Avg. 4.85/1.575) and was better than league average (4.62/1.548)).

Now, Smith's Philadelphia A's were not a good team, finishing 7th in the 8 team AL, 46 1/2 GB of the NY Yankees. They won only 54 games. How many of those 54 wins did Smith get? Four. Four whole wins. He finished behind the following teammates of his in wins:

George Caster (12 wins, 4.43 ERA/1.442 WHIP)
Harry Kelley (13 wins, 5.36 ERA/1.688 WHIP)
Bud Thomas (8 wins, 4.99 ERA/1.532 WHIP)
Buck Ross (5 wins, 4.89 ERA/1.670 WHIP)

and he tied with the following fellows:

Lynn Nelson (4 wins, 5.90 ERA/1.647 WHIP)
Al Williams (4 wins, 5.38 ERA/1.819 WHIP)

Now, why is 4-17 Eddie Smith being tossed around on MLB Network? Because he is, thus far, the only starting pitcher in history to earn fewer actual wins than WAR (4.1). At this moment, DeGrom will become the second.

Now, here is another data point.

Back before Tommy John became the pitcher a surgery was named after, Tommy John was a really good pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the second dead ball era (aka the late 60s).

In 1967, John put up an ERA of 2.47, a WHIP of 1.065, completed nine games (which was kinda low for the time and for his second career after surgery with the Dodgers) and tossed SIX shutouts.

He won 10 games (in 29 starts/31 games).

The next season, he also won 10 games with a 1.98 ERA and a 1.038 ERA over 25 starts.

Wins and Losses have NEVER been a good metric of how good a pitcher actually is in any given season. But, as I said before, it ain't going away.

 

[Plympton91]

MLB could stop using the stat (or frankly any stat), but that doesn't mean it would actually go away.

Wins are not a great measure of quality. But, they never actually were. So, there really is no reason to banish them.

Wins are as good a measure of pitcher quality as defensive stats are of defensive quality.

I don’t understand the point? Everyone who matters understands that you have to dig deeper than wins to understand how pitchers differ. What does “getting rid of the stat”’ accomplish?

 

[Reverend]

No need to get rid of it, there's just a need to understand what it represents.

No you idiot, @Lose Remerswaal has the right idea--we just keep getting rid of more and more information until we've gotten rid of all the dumb stuff and they'll we'll be wicked smart. It's science.

 

[GrandSlamPozo]

Just change the name from "Wins" to "Games where he pitched better than the other guy and his defense and bullpen didn't blow it for him"

 

[oumbi]

Just change the name from "Wins" to "Games where he pitched better than the other guy and his defense and bullpen didn't blow it for him"

You've got my vote. But can we also add some sort of +/- to it so it looks sort of scientific?

 

[tonyarmasjr]

You've got my vote. But can we also add some sort of +/- to it so it looks sort of scientific?

No, that's a different statistic, measuring "Games where he pitched better than the other guy and his defense and bullpen didn't blow it for him" against league average.

 

[Reverend]

No, that's a different statistic, measuring "Games where he pitched better than the other guy and his defense and bullpen didn't blow it for him" against league average.

I won't be happy until I get a list of the complete set of all possible records the pitcher could have achieved within a 90% confidence interval, i.e. all possible W-L records that are not too unlikely to have been possible depending on what happened when they actually played the damn games.

It's the only way I can judge the player fairly, not just on what he did, but whom he might have been.

 

[Max Power]

It depends on what you're looking for. The fact that DeGrom only has five wins actually tells us a lot about the season he's had. The Mets are shitty and no matter how well he's done, the bullpen and lineup aren't giving him any help. Whether you believe that should have any bearing on his winning the Cy Young Award is part of the fun of discussing postseason awards. But all his great pitching hasn't won the Mets many games. It's not his fault, it's just the way it happened.

 

[Reverend]

It depends on what you're looking for. The fact that DeGrom only has five wins actually tells us a lot about the season he's had. The Mets are shitty and no matter how well he's done, the bullpen and lineup aren't giving him any help. Whether you believe that should have any bearing on his winning the Cy Young Award is part of the fun of discussing postseason awards. But all his great pitching hasn't won the Mets many games. It's not his fault, it's just the way it happened.

Nope.

Destroy the data. Someone might misunderstand it and use it for evil.

 

[Reverend]

Come to think of it, we probably shouldn't even be keeping score.

That's just what they expect us to do, and runs produced just obscures the true nature of these players by subjecting their life essences to the random vagaries of nature.

 

[simplyeric]

Nope.

Destroy the data. Someone might misunderstand it and use it for evil.

No no no.

Keep ALL the data. Just don’t let anyone see it, analyze it, or refer to it.

Come to think of it, we probably shouldn't even be keeping score.

That's just what they expect us to do, and runs produced just obscures the true nature of these players by subjecting their life essences to the random vagaries of nature.

Again: way off.

Show every pitch, in great detail. Except, don’t show the result of the pitch. But also show each pitch received, but not the result of any hits.
Show runs, outs, errors, ball-sack scratches. But not in a continuum. This way everyone gets to watch America’s great pastime, without having to deal with causality or meaningful stats or anything.

Obviously no one would be allowed in the stands.
And frankly, the players shouldn’t be on the field at the same time.

Basically, baseball should be produced that same way that the Star Wars prequals were made.

 

[charlieoscar]

TangoTiger wrote in his blog that he feels "if a bullpen blows the lead for a SP, and the team subsequently wins, the SP should still qualify for the win." He goes on to say that starting pitchers are winning less than 50% of the time and that (what Bill James calls) transference of wins would flip that, which makes sense because starters account for about 3/4-ths of the WAR. There is a link to a site by RotoValue, who is tracking it (a fuller explanation of the method may be found at the link to RotoValue's dedicated page).

http://tangotiger.com/index.php/site/comments/fixthewin-fixing-the-w-l-loophole

 

[gedman211]

I heard DOB reference "Game Winning RBI" the other day, and it hasn't been a stat since the 90s

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

True, but it gets mentioned fairly regularly ever since then

 

[Van Everyman]

I just realized that our long man (Velasquez) has as many wins as the best pitcher in baseball this year (Jacob deGrom).

 

[grimshaw]

I just realized that our long man (Velasquez) has as many wins as the best pitcher in baseball this year (Jacob deGrom).

Somewhere Joe Morgan thinks Velazquez just knows how to win.

 

[joyofsox]

I heard DOB reference "Game Winning RBI" the other day, and it hasn't been a stat since the 90s

He also gives a fair amount of air time to useless factoids such as home-game hitting streaks (and regular hitting streaks as short as four games!) and assorted stats against both particular teams and against all of the teams in a player's division. He's not alone, of course. None of these ever need to be mentioned. In the case of stats against a team, I have yet to understand how what Price did against the Blue Jays in 2011 has any value to what he might do on a summer night in 2018. It's a completely different team - you might as well give his stats against the Pirates instead. ... But if it's in the Game Notes, OB will read it while giving no consideration to how clueless he sounds.

I'm actually surprised that announcers don't give a pitcher's stats on a particular day of the week. "Sale is 9-1 on Thursdays over the last two seasons, so the Tigers will have their work cut out for them this evening." That is as silly as career stats against a team.

P.S. Kill The Win.

 

[Kliq]

If someone were to get to 300 wins again; I think it would still be a big deal and if a Sox pitcher wins 20 games, it's still cool to me. I wouldn't evaluate a pitcher on how many games they won, or argue that pitcher X is better than pitcher Y because pitcher X won more games; but when you grow up with certain numbers being romanticized it's still fun as a fan to see those milestones reached; even if they are not a definitive sign of greatness.

 

[Cesar Crespo]

He also gives a fair amount of air time to useless factoids such as home-game hitting streaks (and regular hitting streaks as short as four games!) and assorted stats against both particular teams and against all of the teams in a player's division. He's not alone, of course. None of these ever need to be mentioned. In the case of stats against a team, I have yet to understand how what Price did against the Blue Jays in 2011 has any value to what he might do on a summer night in 2018. It's a completely different team - you might as well give his stats against the Pirates instead. ... But if it's in the Game Notes, OB will read it while giving no consideration to how clueless he sounds.

I'm actually surprised that announcers don't give a pitcher's stats on a particular day of the week. "Sale is 9-1 on Thursdays over the last two seasons, so the Tigers will have their work cut out for them this evening." That is as silly as career stats against a team.

P.S. Kill The Win.

It could matter what Price has done in Toronto, maybe. I'd guess stadiums affect pitchers different ways. Of course they have 3 hours of air time to fill so this is what we get.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

I'm actually surprised that announcers don't give a pitcher's stats on a particular day of the week. "Sale is 9-1 on Thursdays over the last two seasons, so the Tigers will have their work cut out for them this evening." That is as silly as career stats against a team.

P.S. Kill The Win.

That info is provided to the media in the daily Press Notes , at least by the Sox and the Celts. I'm sure some members use it.

 

[Jim Ed Rice in HOF]

Point for killing - Kimbrel gets one for last night's less than stellar performance. Interesting thing is Barnes got a blown save but not Kimbrel.

 

[Lose Remerswaal]

Mlb.com box score has BS for both of them

 

[MakeMineMoxie]

MLB won't kill it but it's absolutely meaningless. Drives me nuts when DOB references it for relief pitchers. (Actually, he drives me nuts all the time)

 

[Max Power]

MLB won't kill it but it's absolutely meaningless. Drives me nuts when DOB references it for relief pitchers. (Actually, he drives me nuts all the time)

It's not meaningless. It means exactly what it says it does, a pitcher was in the game when his team took the lead and kept it (with innings requirements for starters). Can you choose not to value it, but its meaning is quite clear.

 

[trekfan55]

I don't mind the win, but it must be taken for what it is. I have seen some relievers "earn" the win by keeping the opponent from scoring while their team goes ahead afterwards. But, as an example, last night Kimbrel is credited with a win, when for all intents and purposes, he blew the game and the Sox only won because a tailor made DP ball was misplayed.

So yeah, keep it there, use it for whatever reasons you want, but I really want to break my TV when someone like Joe Morgan says that the pitcher knows how to win and that wins are important.