Greg found himself a new gif source.

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The "Don't make eye contact with the bear" one is the best.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon ... iest-thing

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I guess this is also where we have a key difference. The W/L is a team statistic, not the pitcher's, since W/L never necessarily relies on a pitcher's performance. Sure the pitcher plays a role in W/L, but like many have mentioned, there are too many variables at play that make me uncomfortable with attributing wins and losses to pitchers.



This is a good question. Again I'm not as plugged into the baseball scene as many others, but I see pitchers having the same task across the continuum of games, with obvious exceptions for inning or on-base/batter specific-situations. If I'm pitching, I don't care if my offense has scored zero or eight runs, it should not alter my goal of retiring three batters per inning in the most efficient way possible.

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I appreciate your position generally, but I have to strenuously object to this idea. The two starting pitchers are by far the most important two players in every game. In fact, one of the unique things about baseball is how different a team is day to day based upon who is starting the game. Playing the Sox with Chris Sale and playing them with Dylan Axelrod are two completely different experiences.

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But the game is still remarkably easy to win against Sale and Axelrod when the Sox offense scores zero runs.

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Why do you choose to denigrate the Sox offense rather than crediting the opposing pitcher?

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Because they somehow find a way NOT to score runs against good and awful pitchers. Because they miss pitches that even you would crush. You notice these things when you watch a game instead of looking at a W/L record.

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So hitters can find ways not to win but pitchers can't? Come on. I just want to know why when Sale produces a 2.50 ERA it's because of his good pitching but when a guy facing the Sox does the same thing it's because of the Sox' bad hitting.

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Sure, and even though I'm still not entirely convinced by your position(s), I still appreciate the nuanced approach. It's definitely food for thought.

That being said, I don't know why your contention regarding starters being the most important players in the game should undermine what I said about W/L being more reflective of team performance than an individual starter's performance. Like I mentioned previously, using the Sox and the paltry 3.8 runs averaged as only one example, I don't see how a pitcher who gives up two runs over eight innings is responsible for the 1-2 loss. He gave up the two runs that caused the loss, but he's not responsible for the failure to score more than what he gave up. That's where I'm not comfortable with the L in this case. That an opposing pitcher gave up less runs than the Sox pitcher should not, in my view, retroactively become the criteria by which the Sox pitcher is judged. I don't think performance criteria should be fluid and game-specific, although I think that's where you stand given your earlier remark, which I'm loosely paraphrasing, about pitchers pitching within the single game of record.

Put bluntly, and using some of the "quality start" criteria as a benchmark, I will always laud a pitcher who goes at least seven innings while giving up three or less runs. To me, and I know this is where you'll strongly disagree, that's always at least a good game even if the opposing pitcher gives up less runs over the same number of innings or more. Maybe my thinking fits into the more modern, watered down way of pitcher expectations you mentioned earlier - and which I find plausible - but that's just how I see it...for now.

_________________
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

I'll say this, W/L would be more applicable as a reliable stat of pitcher performance if every pitcher pitches all 9 innings every time.

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http://soundcloud.com/darkside124 HOF 2013, MM Champion 2014

I agree. Baseball is a highly complicated game with lots of little pieces. You look at the season when Felix Hernandez won that Cy Young with a 13-12 record. I'm not going to say he didn't "deserve" it. He was playing on a team that was really challenged when it came to scoring runs and was often facing a two run swing in average run scoring vs. the teams he faced. But at least some of that was due to park factors which also helped him with his ERA, WHIP, etc. Frankly, I thought he should have won it the previous year when Greinke got it. Now, Greinke, there's a guy who I don't think is all he's cracked up to be.

Everybody has different opinions. Otherwise we could just look at the best WAR or WHIP or winning percentage or whatever and hand out the Cy Young. The voting has a purpose. It sparks discussions like this one. Obviously, I don't have a vote, but if I did, I wouldn't be voting for pitchers around .500 when there are guys with much better records. I would never vote for a reliever either. It's called the Cy Young Award. It's not the Ed Walsh Award or the Mariano Rivera Award. There is irony in the very fact that the one thing the guy who the award is named after is known for is his career wins.

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Listening to White Sox Weekly with Chris Sale on:

"My job as a starting pitcher is to win ball games, or leave the game with my team in a position to win. It doesn't matter how we get those wins, but in the end that's all that matters. That's all it boils down to."

On run support: "It's something you hear a lot. I try not to think about it and go out and pitch my game, try not to overthrow. I just have to focus on what I can control."

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Obviously, Sale understands his job and his goal in each game. The fact that he is capable of producing low WHIP and ERA and good K/BB ratio doesn't make him a "good" pitcher. They are merely advantages he can use to be a good pitcher. He has a head start on someone like Mark Buehrle, but he still has to run the race. And I'm sure Sale will finish his career with better WHIP than Buehrle, but I doubt he will be a better pitcher. There have only been 3 or 4 guys in the 120 year history of the White Sox who have been. I can only hope that Sale joins them, but I wouldn't bet on it.

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Which he has done several times only to get an ND or an L.

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See what happens when Chris Sale pitches with a decent offense?

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He's supposed to be the MVP last night. Of course they gave it to Rivera.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
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Winning pitcher[edit]

In Major League Baseball, the winning pitcher is defined as the pitcher who last pitched prior to the half-inning when the winning team took the lead for the last time.

There are two exceptions to this rule. The more common exception is that a starting pitcher must complete five innings to earn a win (four innings for a game that lasted five innings on defense). If the starting pitcher fails to meet the innings requirement, the official scorer awards the win to the relief pitcher who, in the official scorer's judgment, was the most effective.

The second exception applies only to a relief pitcher who makes a "brief appearance" and is himself later relieved. If, in the official scorer's judgment, the relief pitcher was "ineffective", the win is awarded to the succeeding relief pitcher who was most effective, in the official scorer's judgment.[1]

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I'm going to guess everyone who has been a party to this discussion was well aware of the parameters of the statistic before you posted this.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
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