well yeah but he won 19 three times with Atlanta.
He also had his only losing season with... the Cubs (well, if you exclude the 40 innings he threw with the Dodgers, kinda a low sample size.)

But a FEW less? Geeze. i don't think he comes near 3 19 win seasons, 1 18 win season, 1 17 win season and 4 16 win season with that shit fuck Cubs roster of the mid 90's thru 03.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

I don't know. It's a difficult thing to say. He's a big reason the Braves were as good as they were. Of course, they had a couple other guys who were nearly as good. But if I really thought he would have lost a lot more games with the Cubs I'd be questioning his greatness. And I don't. And for most of those years the Cubs and Braves had similar offensive production. There are a couple seasons, '97 for sure, where the Braves were much better.

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I guess I just don't get why you don't view baseball as a team sport. This is one sport where the player in question has like zero influence on the offensive output that would give him the runs he needs to win. I.E. the perfect pitcher cannot win game in which his offense does not score runs, which he has no influence on, especially, needless to say, in the AL.

W/L is a useful stat on some level but doesn't tell you what a pitcher is really doing in my opinion. Just like games played just doesn't really make a player great...

But that's the beautiful thing about baseball man, we can argue about this shit forever.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

That's where the pct comes in. If you consistently exit the game with a lead you will have very few losses


All stats are imperfect. There are uses for almost all of them

Maddux was winning anywhere he pitched. That guy was fucking magic

Yeah, it may be more fun to talk about it than to actually watch it.

I like your shot regarding Dunston, but you know I never said his games played made him great. I said you don't play 1800 big league games if you're "bad at baseball".

All I'm saying with regard to W/L record is that it illustrates very well how a guy performed vis-a-vis the pitchers he faced in the games in which he faced them. Over enough time, those opponents should be comprised of all types of pitchers, rookies, crafty lefties, future Hall of Famers, etc. But the argument only arises when someone is making a case that a particular pitcher is good. And my answer would be that if this vast cross-section of pitchers was better than he was more often than he was better than them, how good could he really have been? And then inevitably the guy I'm arguing with will blame the offense which is really just something that couldn't generate runs off one of those opposing pitchers.

And Greg Maddux won 19 games for the 1995 Braves. But the 1995 Cubs outscored those Braves by over a third of a run per game. So why wouldn't we expect that Maddux would have won 22 or 23 that season had he remained a Cub?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Sorry. Couldn't help it. Remember, I am a prick.


Well, there's more it it than offense. There's the bullpen. Your closer. I think the cubs closers cost pitchers more tha what 16 games this season? That has an effect on stats, but isn't predicated on pitcher vs. pitcher.
W/L is not at all a measure of pitcher v. pitcher in any more than a very caveman way.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

Here's another thing that people don't consider when looking at ERA. The plate umpires have a big effect. People complained about Maddux and Glavine getting a big plate, which they did. But they didn't get it just because of who they were. This isn't the NBA. They had such excellent command and were so good at hitting the corners, they slowly expanded the plate as the game went. They earned that big plate. Umpires are only human. You try calling 250 pitches. And what's forgotten is that those guys weren't just expanding the plate for themselves. They were expanding it for the opposing pitchers too. And the ERA numbers of those guys had to benefit.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I heard Garza say it was 32 blown saves, but I didn't think it could possibly be that many.

And yeah, it's more than offense. The defense matters too. But if you leave a game with the lead, you aren't getting a loss. Unless your runners are on base and they cost the lead.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

You have no proof of these bullshit accusations!

#definitelybourbontonight

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I think this exchange really captures the modern distaste for W/L record. The whole reason it is supposedly a "bad stat" is that it can't account for "run support". Darkside and I were just talking baseball, naturally he assumes that the '95 Braves are far superior to the '95 Cubs in every way. Not an unreasonable assumption off the top of one's head. When I actually check the numbers, I find that the '95 Cubs were a superior offensive team to the '95 Braves (and those Braves didn't have to face Maddux, Glavine, or Smoltz either!). That being the case, we should expect that Maddux would have had a better record had he pitched for those Cubs, not worse. But that just doesn't "sound right". In fact, we're doing exactly what the SABRmetric guys often scoff at traditionalists about- going by the "feel" of something rather than what the numbers tell us.

The only reason W/L record is now considered "meaningless" is because a large group of baseball writers have repeatedly said it is. And make no mistake, guys like Bill James and Nate Silver are writers, not statisticians. They're really good writers too. But they're spinning a story to sell media. More power to them. But when the public begins to confuse them with real scientists, that's a problem.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

We'll have him on tomorrow. Heeeeey, you're the Brown's Chicken Poster of the Thread!

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

But you also aren't getting a win!!!!!! That's a really really important point.

And your winning percentage is unaffected.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Its difficult for YOU to say because you can't admit you are wrong. Its not difficult for any other rational person to say.

Greg Maddux was a great pitcher, and yeah he shut teams down. The Braves also won 10 fucking division titles in a row, so they were pretty frickin good for a long, long, long time. Yes he was a part of that, but it was the BRAVES that won those divisions. They don't have a banner that says "Greg Maddux NL East Champion" now do they? Its a team win. Sometimes the TEAM picked up Maddux up and got him a W. Sometimes the team let him down and cost him a W or gave him and undeserved L. Sometimes Maddux shut his opposition down and got his team a W.

"A few less" wins if Maddux pitched for the Cubs for 15 years. There is no way he would have ended up with 330-340 career wins if he spent his entire career with the Cubs. No fucking way. His ERA and K/BB #'s would probably look pretty close, but there is absolutely no way he wins 300 games pitching for an awful team like the Cubs. You're either nuts or stupid to say otherwise.

Just like there is no way that great Whitey Ford would have the win% he does if he was on the Indians or Senators during the1950s.

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They wouldnt have been such an awful team if Maddux was there.

Maddux would have won 15-20 games per year pitching for ANYONE


Hell, he came back and won 15 for the 04,05, and 06 teams. Not great teams, btw

But you pitched well enough for a win, and a factor completely outside of your control cost you that win. It shows how flawed the stat is.


W/L doesn't take in to account any no decision. It's an incomplete stat. It's not telling you what you want to know. The other stats are offering you a lot more information to qualify how his season has gone, and you are ignoring them. Flat out rejecting the extra information, and instead relying on an incomplete stat that relies heavily on forces he can't control. It's not just the hitters that are the variable. It's his bullpen. Both of which can swing that pitcher from a win or a loss, while his ass is on the bench with an ice pack.

But clearly- and I've mentioned this previously in this thread- the W/L record is less pertinent when relievers are covering so many innings. It's much more germane when every starter got a decision in nearly every game he pitched. W/L record gives you a perspective that you lack with ERA. For example, Bob Gibson's 1968. Nobody is going to argue that that was a bad season. A guy who is 20 years old now and didn't live through that sees 1.12, it's fucking eye-popping. But if you look at his record, he started 34 games and in over a third of those games the opposing pitcher(s) pitched as well or better than he did. You could say, "well, yeah, he didn't get 'run support'", but it shows you that a lot of motherfuckers were allowing very few runs in 1968. Gibson's year was great but not quite as great as most people think.

There could come a time when some managers decided to have nothing but short guys and blow open the whole concept of a rotation. The W/L record would mean nothing at all. But the sudden decline in offense makes such a radical plan unlikely for at least the near future.

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That is true of every stat

WAR is FILLED with factors out of your control.

All stats are flawed. Why pick on this one so hard? And yeah, sometimes a bullpen blows a starter's game. Sometimes you hit a screaming line drive and Mike Trout lays out and robs you.

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They would have been better for sure, but not World Series contenders year in and year out like the Braves were.

Maddux pitched 11 years for Atlanta and got 194 wins. Thats 17.63 wins per year. Lets say he averaged 15-16 wins for those 11 years with the Cub. That is at least 20 less career wins. And would probably would have been more like 35 or 40 fewer wins. At least.

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Ok, if you're saying he would have won like 20-30 less games over 11 years, that's reasonable.

It sounded like you were saying a lot bigger difference than that.

I've already shown you that on many occasions during those years the Cub offense was superior to that of the Braves. Isn't that your issue? Why ignore it now? The reason the Braves were better is because they had three Hall of Fame pitchers in their rotation. Hitting is pitching. Pitching is hitting.

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Correct, admittedly. But I don't see much else that can come in and give you a better statistical picture of what a pitcher has done. That's not the case with W/L. I can look up a lot of stats that are a lot better, more accurate and most importantly.... give me a much better picture of what happened.

I'm picking on it because of the amount of weight you want to put in it. You're using it to say a pitcher is having a bad year, who is actually having a really great year.

We just have a different definitions of what a great year is. I'm fine with that.

Let's talk about Colorado pitchers- pre-humidor years. Fair to judge them based on their ERAs?

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No thanks

Did you notice Sale has 3 no decisions this year? All of which were games he pitched pretty damn well. 3 decisions, when we are talking about 13 results, is too big to ignore. It's just SUCH an incomplete stat, it's not telling you enough about what happened. You're leaving data on the table. Data that is readily and easily available, and you're simply choosing to ignore it.

How many times do I have to say it's silly to look at a 16 game sample? Sale was a guy brought up by Frank in one of his many ad hominem attacks. The fact remains 5-8 is bad. if he contines to go 5-8 over every 16 games he pitches he will have a terrible career regardless of any other number you want to suggest is more important. But of course that won't happen.

Colorado pitchers are very pertinent to this discussion. ERA numbers and other peripherals were not going to be "good". But there is a win and a loss awarded in every game. The thing is, pitching in that park crushed some guys mentally. They went on the road and were just as bad.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

And nobody has disputed that 5-8 was bad. Everything else on Sale's stat sheet right now as we sit says he is having an outstanding season. And that is fact. You have said on more than one occasion that Sale is "not having a very good year." That is factually incorrect at this point. Try and spin it any way you want, you are 100% wrong.

Travis Wood is below .500 and while I would not call his season great or outstanding, its certainly very very good at this point, especially since he started the season in AAA.



Would it be that outrageous to say he wouldn't have won 300 games if he pitched 20 years for the Cub? I don't think it would be crazy to say that he would have ended up at 296 or something. Maybe he even retires earlier not having the wins that he had with the Braves. We'll obviously never know.

Joe Orr said "a few" less wins. A few to me is less than 10. I think it would have been at least 30, and probably more like 35 or 40 few wins had Maddux pitched 18-20+ years for the Cubs.

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You're not addressing the fact that his W/L record is entirely incomplete, and avoiding a lot of pertinent info to the question of "is he pitching well?"



And the "of course it won't happen" is because he's really good. Which is the opposite of what his record says.