...i dont think anyone expected Gaudin to be 2-1. (he got the loss on Saturday) I think Lou is really going to count on him down the stretch. and you’re right, he got Hardy and Braun one at bat after they went back to back. I think Lou’s pen will have… Gaudin 7th, Marmol 8th, Woody 9, and Samardzija filling in when one of them can’t go. Throw in Cotts/Eyre with Marshall, and you got yourself a pretty good pen.

and then we hope Howry reaches B status…

or has a good offense behind him. Therefore, the pitcher himself didn’t do anything to deserve the win; the credit should really go to the offense or defense. Wins do not accurately measure the individual performance of the pitcher; rather, they are a measure of the team as a whole in the games that a certain pitcher pitched in.

Wins can be deceiving. A pitcher with a 5.00 ERA and 20 wins was lucky and is unlikely to continue to win. I’d take the guy with the 3.00 ERA with the .500 record because I expect him to stop being unlucky at some point and I’d expect the 5.00 ERA guy to stop getting lucky at some point.

Most of the time, wins and stats like WHIP, ERA, etc correlate pretty well. WHIP, ERA, K/9, etc are much better predictors of future win totals than current win rates are a predictor of future win rates.

As a TEAM, wins are all that matters. But that’s the key: wins are a TEAM stat. A pitcher can get a win if his team scores more runs than he allows (whether he allows 1 or 10). WHIP, ERA, K/9, etc are much better indicators of the quality of the pitcher. Win totals are an indicator of the quality of the player AND the quality of the team.

We stood in right field, behind the Cubs bullpen. The left field side had more people and it was harder to see.

“Wins don’t matter” is a bit of hyperbole. The more accurate statement is that “wins aren’t the best measure of the quality of a pitcher.” Wins are a team-dependent stat, and while they frequently are aligned fairly well with pitcher’s quality, they can often diverge dramatically.

The “evidence” you brought up in the last post is largely unrelated to the topic. Texas isn’t a great team because they aren’t good at both hitting AND pitching. Texas is LAST in runs allowed. Similarly, the A’s are 24th in runs scored. The Angels, on the other hand, are 8th in runs allowed and 19th in runs scored. They’re balanced, have a strong bullpen (winning close games) and play in a bad division. So you aren’t really making a point by pointing to half of the picture there.

And again, you’re pointing to TEAM stats, not individual stats. See my Roger Clemens comparison again. I guess you’d rather have had Chris Capuano (18-12, 3.99 ERA) or David Wells (15-7, 4.45 ERA), Jon Garland (18-10, 3.50 ERA), or Cliff Lee (18-5, 3.79 ERA) that year than the guy who would win over 350 games, huh? Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that wins are a TEAM stat and thus not always the best reflection of an INDIVIDUAL’S performance.

so how could one possibly win the Cy Young over the other? Nothing in your argument even makes sense. You must be a big fan of Steve Phillips and John Kruk…

a pitcher can only control as much as half the game. And that’s only if he strikes out 27 and pitches a complete game. Even in that case, he’s dependent upon his offense to help him get the win. If you don’t pitch the entire game, you then introduce more room for variation with the bullpen. If you don’t strike everyone out, you introduce your defense into the equation. But even in the most extreme case the pitcher can only control half of the factors that determine a win.

Hence, win totals for pitchers are simply not the best measure of the quality of a pitcher. They aren’t the worst measure, either. But people who judge a pitcher primarily by the win totals (within a season at least) are using the wrong metric. Every year there is at least one pitcher (and probably many more) whose performance exceeds (or trails) the win total he collects.