It’s hard to believe that the 2024 major league baseball season is already 25% complete. Of course, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s already Wednesday as I write this, but I digress . . .
It seems that starting pitchers are pitching less than ever and are increasingly removed before completing five innings, which a starter must do in order to qualify for a win. That statistic—“the win,” as well as “the loss”—is no longer valued in this analytical day and age because too many factors may account for a team winning a game on any given day. Two big factors include how well a pitcher’s defense plays and how many runs his teammates score for him. A team could commit three errors that lead to an unearned run while scoring no runs on offense resulting in the pitcher being tagged with a 1-0 loss. Conversely, a starter could surrender nine runs in five innings, but his teammates scored ten in the first four and thus, he is credited with the win.
As it is the rule requiring a starting pitcher to pitch five innings in order to qualify for a win was an arbitrary decision made in 1950. All kinds of rubrics were used before then to assign individual wins, including “injury wins” and “World Series warm up wins.” In baseball’s formative years i.e. the 1860s and 1870s no pitcher was credited with a win because it didn’t make sense to say that one player was more responsible for a win than another, an argument that sounds rather modern. (For a fascinating history of how wins were awarded to individual pitchers see Frank Vaccaro’s article, “The Origin of the Modern Pitching Win.”)
There is a simple solution for the problem of how to assign pitching wins: Every pitcher who pitches in a game that his team wins is credited with a win. We get rid of the “hold” statistic and that meaningless save statistic. The one exception would be that if a pitcher comes into a game and surrenders the lead, even if his team then comes back to win, that pitcher is not credited with a win. He’d get nothing. The guys who pitched before him and after him get a W, but not that guy. Yeah, I can think of all kinds of exceptions, but let’s keep it simple.
As for losses, I wouldn’t bother assigning them at all. They’re just not the same as wins. If you pitched in a winning game and never surrendered the lead, then you contributed to the win. If you pitched in a losing game, you might not have contributed to the loss. For example, say a starting pitcher—we’ll call him Bob—gives up one run in five innings, but his team doesn’t score while he’s in the game. Both teams go on an offensive tear over the last four innings and Bob’s team loses 10-9, but never at any point does it tie the game or take the lead. Under the current rules, Bob would get the loss, but is that one run the one that beat Bob’s team?
Pitchers have all kinds of statistics to measure how effectively they pitched that have nothing to do with whether the game is won or lost. In fact, hitters are judged based on how well they hit the baseball, not whether their hits contributed to a win.
I may be missing something in all this. . . . Actually, I’m pretty sure that I’m missing something, but such a revision in the rules would 1) more closely reflect the current situation and 2) simply make more sense than quantifying the idea that one guy is responsible for his team’s “win.” At the end of the season, the most valuable pitchers would certainly be evident. They’d be the guys who pitched in the most winning games.
Austin Gisriel 
I like it. We should also stop paying pitchers full salaries. Pitching 5 or 6 innings once a week should get you a part-time salary.
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Glad to hear that you approve! I’d settle for the minimum salary.
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I’ve been trying for 1/2 hour to get WordPress to accept this comment. I am getting “duplicate comment” or wrong account complaints.Anyway, herewith: A few observations: If you assign a win to each pitcher whoparticipated, the obvious win “leader” would be the closer. That’s not a faircomparison to the other pitchers. Just to keep it simple, a closer may averagepitching only one inning while appearing in 80 or more games, most of whichwould be “wins” because he usually comes in to protect a lead. A starter mayaverage 4-5 innings while appearing in only 30-35 games. Other relievers couldaccumulate more “wins” than a starter while possibly pitching to only 1 batter.
The other issuethat comes to mind is how do you play the game of comparing eras of the game ifyou so drastically alter the value of the basic “win” stat? Rule of thumb statfor HOF pitchers used to be 280-300 wins. That’s gone by the wayside even nowwith starters getting less than 35 starts/year and 15 wins is a good year. Forexample, Clayton Kershaw is a consensus HOF and may wind up with fewer than 230“legitimate” wins. Anyway, a good game of “what if”. Jerry
Without Freedom of Speech, we would notknow who the idiots are!
Anon
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Well thought-out, Jerry. I’m not sure it’s automatic that the closer would be the wins leader under my scoring scenario. I would hope it would do away with the position of “closer” altogether. Teams are moving away from that idea anyway and toward bringing in your best reliever in the tightest situation regardless of which late inning it might be.
Era (not ERA, lol) comparison has always been tricky if for no other reason than the natural flow of pitching versus hitting. That’s why one cannot ignore the eye test. When I was growing up I knew that the Robinsons, Yaz, Killebrew, Kaline, Palmer were all HOFers just to name American Leaguers. I knew that Boog Powell and Norm Cash, for example, didn’t quite have that pedigree. To me, the best comparison is not the numbers per se, but the idea of were they they best player at their position in their era.
Thanks for giving the topic this much thought!
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The new hot stat is: Quality Start. With all of the stats injected by the Saberheads, WAR being the most absurd and unfortunately, the most recognized……I think it is way past time for some good old-fashioned editing. Editing forces a distillation down to an economy of words or numbers that get to a persuasive conclusion, without extra fluff or filler. See the dialogue side of an Arnold Schwarzenager movie script for example. Less is more. 4-5 relevant stats for Hitters and 4-5 for Pitchers is plenty, just like 4-5 consecutive words for Arnold was the most we ever needed.
I’ll be back,
Dave Norman
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As you well know, a by-definition quality start leaves you with an ERA of 4.50. It’s arbitrary nonsense same as the save. I’m sure you remember that game years ago in which the Orioles lost 33 to whatever it was against the Rangers and Texas’ reliever got a save because he pitched the final three innings!
Here’s the formula for WAR: WAR=useless.
I absolutely agree that we need to simplify baseball’s numbers, not complicate them. To that end, the best new statistic of the past 20 years or so is WHIP. You give up fewer walks and hits per innings pitched than anyone else, then you have gotten more outs percentage-wise than anyone else, which makes you the best at your job! And I have no problem with batting average for hitters, either.
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Hi Austin, First, I readily admit that you have forgotten more about baseball than I’ll ever know. So it took me a while to decide whether or not I wanted to respond to your “pitching an idea for wins and losses”. While I do not disagree with your better idea for awarding wins and losses, I do feel a need to comment. You make a great argument for not awarding a pitcher a “win” or “loss” because there are so many factors that may go into whether the TEAM wins a game or not. Why not just do away with awarding wins and losses to pitchers. Award the win or loss to the team at the end of the game and be done with it. If it is important to grade the performance of the pitcher, give them credit for performing well and take away credit when they perform poorly. It would be more like a batting average For example, you could award two points for pitching a strike and take a point away for pitching a ball. A strikeout would get five points; a walk would take two points away. Points would be subtracted for base hits, balks or hit batsmen. At the end of the day, Pitcher A would be awarded 78 performance points and Pitcher B would be awarded 27 performance points. You could have average performance points per game and at the end of the season you could compare total performance points for the year for everyone. In other words, create a statistic that would quantify the actual performance that you are paying these guys for. Just a thought. Look forward to seeing you in September. Tom
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This would make for a very thorough evaluation! I think most of us actually want to see these evaluations made simpler, which is why I like WHIP. Thanks for commenting!
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