162 quality starts isn't better than 162 wins.

They are a better way to determine a pitcher's skill.

Pitcher 1 could give up 6 runs per start and get a win. Pitcher 2 could give up 1 and lose.

Who pitched better?

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

The guy who beat pitcher 2.

Pitcher 3 was not an option.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Does he cost too much to sign because he's so much better than pitcher 2?

Nobody gives up 6 runs per start and gets a lot of wins. But there are certainly games where a guy pitches very well and allows 6 runs and there are games when a guy pitches like shit and only allows one.

Like Samardzija yesterday. I certainly wouldn't say he pitched a bad game. But saying he "deserved" to win is a different story. There was another dope in the game who most people would insist isn't nearly as good as Samardzija who pitched a better game. Conditions weren't set up for scoring. There was a gale wind blowing straight in. It was cold and it figured to be a very low scoring affair.

Now, if you want to say that the Cubs lineup is absolutely atrocious, which it is, I will agree and grant some leeway to Samardzija. This is a very bad Cubs team. But having lineups so lopsided is not a common thing in major league baseball, as it is rare when a GM is actually attempting to lose on purpose. And most major league pitchers don't pitch consistently on teams that are so terribly overmatched. And also, I don't want anyone to use the horribleness of the Cub anemic offense to support Samardzija's losses and then show up in another thread saying what studs Castro, Rizzo, Bonifacio, and Castillo are.

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I didn't ask which pitcher would have a better season, or wind up with more wins.

I asked who pitched better, using in a small sample size.

Is the win or the earned runs a better determining factor?

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Well the Cubs are proving you can consistently give up 3 or less and get a lot of losses. And yesterday they didn't feel like fielding the ball. I'll let the sucker want the guy with a bunch of wins.

Who is the sucker that doesn't want a pitcher that wins?

I fine with teams valuing wins. Good for them. This way I'll have someone to trade Ken Bottenfield for Jim Edmonds.

This is where the sabr "revolution" has led us to. Actually winning the game is dismissed as worthless. You guys are like Sidney Dean. Rather have a guy look good and lose than look bad and win.

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Since I'm not a general manager, I don't really find much value in trying to compare guys who pitched in two different games. When we use terms like "better" and "worse" they have to be relative to something else. An upset stomach is bad. Cancer is worse.

Samardzija pitched better than a whole lot of guys yesterday. Unfortunately, he did not pitch better than Alfredo Simon who was the only guy he was actually attempting to pitch better than.

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Wow. Sam had 1 ER over 7IP. That should be good enough to win any game. He is not the reason why his team did not win. Did Simon pitch better or do the Cubs hitters just plain blow? The answer is that the Cubs blow. I mean Sam has a 1.29 ERA and a WHIP just over 1. That means that if the Cubs manage to squeak out just 2 damn runs he put the team in a position to win ever game. But the Cubs cannot hit the fucking ball. That's not the other pitcher pitching better, it's the cubs blowing.

So this whole thing isn't going to come to conclusion. You've got this crazy idea in your head and it won't go away so I suppose it's completely pointless to endlessly debate it. I simply cannot understand anything you're trying to convince us of. Your baseball theory is bizarre to me. It makes no sense to pretty much everyone I've ever talked about baseball with. It can't just be everyone else. In the words of David, "Tell me Michael, how could a billion Chinese people be wrong?"

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Nobody thought about it the way you do for a hundred years of baseball. I guess they all must have been wrong. If the Cubs hitters "just plain blow" don't ever tell me again how good Castro and Rizzo are. They Cubs aren't good, there's no doubt about that. But they do have a lineup of mostly big league hitters. We're back to playing normal baseball. 1 ER over seven innings often isn't good enough to win. For a lot of teams on a lot of days. For most of the history of baseball that's been the case. I understand that for the majority of your time as a baseball fan there has been an era of huge offense that is informing your viewpoint of the game. I'll quote you: "That's not the other pitcher pitching better, it's the cubs blowing." Are you really saying Simon didn't pitch well yesterday? That seems extraordinarily silly.

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For 1000 years we thought that the Earth was the center of the Universe. That was wrong


I don't think I ever told you how good Castro and Rizzo are.
.
Agreed.

Disagree. 1 damn Run scored this week?


No.

No. He pitched well. But something tells me that pitching well over his average ability has less to do with his awesomeness and more to do with the fact that the Cubs suck, are NOT a group of mostly big league hitters and that the pretty much blow.

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So a billion Chinese can be wrong.



Okay. I just want to make sure that nobody is working both sides of the argument. On the one hand, the Cubs suck, on the other Castro and Rizzo are great.



And I think what the lack of run scoring really had more to do with was the weather conditions in the park and the plate umpire's generous strikezone.

Seven teams scored 1 run or less last night. Six more scored three or less. You just can't expect four or five runs of "support" every day. A lot of pitchers are limiting run production very well right now. It's not 1938 or 2000.

Take a look at a guy like Wes Ferrell. He had a .600 winning percentage. But his ERA was over 4 and his WHIP was about 1.4. Did he suck and get lucky? No, he just competed in a time when run production was high. His record is what tells you who he was, not his WHIP or ERA. Those things are relative to conditions.

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Well I can't agree with you at all. I mean not just that I can kinda get what you're saying and I just don't agree on the finer points but I mean straight out completely disagree. Win/Loss is a terrible way to tell you who a pitcher is. There's really no way to see it as much as I try. I mean here you are telling me that a guy with a .600 record wasn't a great pitcher by all his other numbers but supported by inflated run production by his team he had a higher winning percentage than he would have otherwise earned.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
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JORR is still trying to convince 1 person that W/L record tells you everything you need to know about how well a pitcher has pitched.

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Well it ain't gonna work on me.
I'm out of this conversation. I'll be in the Blackhawks section if you need me.
PEACE

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JORR Wrote:

Yeah that must be it. The umpires are the reason they can't score runs. Did they have the same umpires and weather conditions for the Yankees game also? Which is it JORR? The Cubs have a bad hitters or are they getting shafted by the umpires and bad weather?

I was talking about a specific game where I happened to be sitting right behind the plate. I could have told you there wasn't going to be a high score regardless of who was playing.

And for the record, the Mighty Yankee offense scored what? Five runs? In that doubleheader off mediocre Cub pitching.

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Except the offense exists, its not pitcher vs pitcher


Lance Lynn is 4-0

He has not been better than Samardzija this year.

And did anyone dismiss it as "worthless"? Sounds like most are just saying it's not the best statistic to measure a pitcher by.

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"Play until it hurts, then play until it hurts to not play."
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I assure you that Wes Ferrell did not win 60 percent of over 400 decisions because he received "inflated run support".

_________________
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Isn't all offense created by hitting off pitchers?

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

Not taking a position one way or another here, but I think a distinction needs to be made between 1) individual losses and 2) evaluating a pitcher based on said losses.

I can agree with JORR that Samardzija's 1 run over 7, for example, was obviously not good enough to beat the pitcher who gave up less in the same game. Fine. But did he nevertheless have a "good" game? I don't see how one could say that the performance wasn't anything but excellent, despite it not being enough to beat the opposing pitcher for that game.

Since Samardzija's performance cannot impact how his teammates perform against the opposing pitcher, I think you can indeed have a great performance, or even perhaps a great career, while piling up more [deserved] losses than wins at the same time.

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But "good" has to be relative to something else. The numbers don't mean anything in a vacuum. (Except that they actually do these days. They mean a whole lot for a fantasy team. And I think that has plenty to do with how the game is viewed right now.)

I don't think anyone would say Samardzija pitched poorly. And anyone can lose a tough game or two. But these conversations usually occur when someone is trying to defend a supposedly good or great pitcher with a bad record. And my argument is that if you're really so good, how can it be that some other guy who usually isn't anywhere near as good usually pitches better in the games that you're actually in? And then I'll get the argument about how all offense aren't equal. But the thing that makes them unequal is how they perform vs. various pitchers. If they faced a great pitcher every game, it would be fair to believe that their offensive performance would be less than great. And the difference between two batters in the space of 3 or 4 at-bats is absolutely impossible to discern.

People love the numbers but only when they support their own already drawn conclusions. For example, take Bob Gibson in 1968. Obviously a great year for him. Eye-popping ERA and WHIP. But if we really look at it, in almost a third of his starts there were other guys pitching in the same games who did better than he did. And it wasn't because St. Louis had a putrid offense and the opposing pitchers were "supported" by an All-Star team. It was because as great as Gibson's numbers were, they aren't quite so great as they seem on the surface. It was difficult to hit that season for a variety of reasons that ultimately led to changes in the game. And yet, some people want to compare Gibson's ERA and WHIP to Wes Ferrell's when Ferrell pitched in a time when the NL hit .300 as a league.

And let me say right now there is no starting pitcher who has had a great career with a less than .500 record. You can search Baseball Reference all day long and you will not find him.

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Jenkins vs. Gibson-When men were men!

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favrefan said:"Chris Coghlan isn't gonna pay your rent, Jimmy."

I used to feel so sorry for them when they faced each other since neither one usually got any "run support".

_________________
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I'm convinced that JORR can't believe the argument that he continues to make. It's a ridiculous argument. I can guarantee you that if he were selecting pitchers for his team he would take the guy with a sub 3 ERA that finished the season 10-15 over the guy with a 4.85 ERA that finished the season with 22 wins. He would also take the guy with a 1.90 ERA and 30 saves over the guy that has 50 saves but has an ERA of 4.

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