veganfan21 wrote:
I haven't read every page of this thread, so I'm sure this question has come up, but isn't it the pitcher's job description to retire the nine batters he's facing, irrespective of how well or bad the opposing team's pitcher performs? Advanced stats aside, it seems odd to pit one pitcher against the other, when in fact neither pitcher's performance has anything to do with the performance of the other.
The name of the game is run scoring and run prevention. Basically the pitchers job is to prevent runs. The win statistic for individual pitchers made more sense in the days when most games were complete games and relief pitchers were used out of desperation rather than preference. Now these statistics over time have shown more and more flaws as the game has changed, and people have come up with new statistics, but the old statistics are still there, and they still have merit. A fun one is when the pitcher makes an error and then gets let off the hook by being awarded unearned runs. Did you know the same pitcher can get a hold and a loss in the same game? Saves and holds are an abomination unto themselves; it would probably be better for the team that you won by so many runs that a giving up less than a 3-run margin wouldn't be given so much importance. So maybe assigning so much fallibility or credit to the decision isn't always the best way to approach these things.
Now it's not because these statistics are newer or better than the old statistics inherently, but because the way pitchers' role usage has changed. Then there is a subset of people who decry these newer statistics as people that don't watch the games being played. I've read that several times in this thread, I don't know to what degree sarcasm is being thrown around. Believe me, the people who come up with these statistics are watching a hell of a lot more games than anyone posting in this thread. That is because the purpose of these metrics, much like financial market analysis; is to exploit market inefficiencies that other organizations might not be even looking at. I can assure you that every team looks at all of these numbers, they probably even have proprietary metrics that we don't even know about. That is what Moneyball was really about, not because OBA is superior to BA or RBI, but because it was believed to be undervalued. There's so many people praying at the OBA shrine now, it is probably overvalued. But that's a whole other thread.
I’m not trying to say pitchers with high win totals should be ignored. Justin Verlander was the best pitcher in baseball and he had a lot of wins. King Felix did not win the CY a couple years ago despite his 13 wins because voters chose to ignore the historically bad offense of his team . Sabathia, the runner up was impressive with 21 wins, and you had 2 other 19-game winners. Hernandez won the award because he led the league in two other categories deemed more critical: ERA (2.27) - the rate at which he created outs, and the sheer number of outs he recorded (249.2 IP). Would he have won the award if he had say, 9 wins? Probably not. Again though, the CY is an individual award. I almost think of individual "wins" and team wins as seperate theoretical constructs. And yes, I am watching the games.
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