I was thinking about a thread made earlier this year about the usefulness, or uselessness, of a pitcher's W/L record, and how the argument may or may not extend to football, and to QB play in particular.

If many here don't believe a pitcher is at fault for losing a game in which he gave up three or less earned runs, then should someone like Tony Romo be blamed for failing to outscore Denver's 51 points last week, even though he helped produced 40+ points for his team on offense?

On the other hand, many will ignore a pitcher's role in a loss during which he satisfied the requirements for a "quality start," but how come that same generosity doesn't extend to QBs when, continuing with the Romo example, they help put up more than enough points to win, but end up losing due to the opposing team outplaying the QB's defense?

I realize QBs and pitchers are more dissimilar than they are similar: one is tasked with scoring, the other with preventing scoring, QBs can shoot themselves in the foot by handing opposing team a short field, thus increasing the likelihood of having to score more points than normal to win, etc. But even when you account for those differences, and assume a QB scores something like four TDs and no TOs, why has he failed to "outperform" the other QB, but in baseball some of us believe a pitcher hasn't performed badly even when "losing" a game due to a score of something like 2-1?

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Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
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One way I see it is if you think a QB is at fault for losing even while putting up more points than the opposing team averages, without throwing a pick six or anything like that, then you must also believe a pitcher rightfully earns a loss during a game in which he satisfies the requirements of a quality start.

_________________
Successful calls:

Kyrie Irving will never win anything as a team's alpha: check
T.rubisky is a bust: check
Ben Simmons is a liability: check
The Fields Cult is dumb: double check

2013 CSFMB ROY

Obviously, I have a few thoughts on this. First, I'm not sure "fault" is the right word. But the fact is that the two starting pitchers have an inordinate effect on the game when compared with anyone else involved. Although, the two quarterbacks are unquestionably the most important players in a football game, I don't believe their influence is quite as great as that of the starting pitchers in baseball. For example, the head coaches/play callers in a football game have a huge effect, while the influence of a manager is negligible. I would suggest, however, that the influence of the quarterback has grown while at the same time that of the starting pitcher has lessened.

Beyond that, we should examine the statistic we call "Win-Loss Record" for starting pitchers. Contrary to popular belief, this statistic is only incidentally related to the W/L record of the specific team the pitcher is on. It is a statistic that, like many other statistics, features arbitrary criteria. In this case a minimum of five innings pitched, a lead upon exiting the game, etc. For some reason, people are disturbed by the arbitrariness of this statistic while ignoring the vagaries of something like, for example, batting average, which does not actually measure how well a player hits the ball, but rather his luck in where it happens to land.

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