I know I should know better and should waste my thoughts on something less pointless, but people quoting pitcher wins and the like is starting to really strike a nerve. It's just stupid, and worse, it's OBVIOUS stupid. Luck is involved in a stat that is more dependent on offense, defense and bullpen performance than a pitcher's? No ####### way.

Yes, joker, obvious and hackneyed to you. But to many, especially inside the game, this is a startlingly new observation.

Well, it seemed like we were turning a corner on this when Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young Award.

I dunno, I almost never see wins cited anywhere that matters. It's kind of cute.

[4] Pitcher wins haven't gone away yet.

A White Sox pitcher has again been named the American League's Pitcher of the Month. This time, it's left-hander Chris Sale.

The American League's leader on the season with a 2.34 ERA, Sale takes home his first monthly award after going 4-1 with a league-leading 1.71 ERA in May. Sale, a 23-year-old lefty, struck out 35 and walked just nine in 31 2/3 innings and five starts and six appearances.

http://chicago.whitesox.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120603&content_id=32703890&vkey=news_cws&c_id=cws

Nationals left-hander Gio Gonzalez was named the National League Pitcher of the Month for May – the second consecutive month a pitcher on the team has earned that honor. Stephen Strasburg earned the distinction for April. ... Gonzalez, 26, who was acquired for four of the Nationals best prospects, was a perfect 5-0 in his five May starts, with a 2.24 ERA in 32 innings and a league-best 45 strikeouts. Overall, Gonzalez is 7-1, with a 2.04 ERA, second-best in the major leagues, and a remarkable 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings, also second-best in baseball.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/nationals-journal/post/gio-gonzalez-named-national-league-pitcher-of-the-month-bryce-harper-earns-rookie-award/2012/06/03/gJQA1y6dBV_blog.html

Maybe I'm missing something, but if you think pitcher wins are "OBVIOUS stupid" and you'd like to see less emphasis placed on them by the MSM, then wouldn't you consider MSM articles about how there's a lot of luck involved in pitcher wins to be a GOOD thing?

I don't really see how the quotes in #4 show anything about pitcher wins. Obviously Gonzalez probably wouldn't have gotten the award if he hadn't gone 5-0, but he did have an ERA less than two and a quarter and lead the league in K's. Same for Sale, who had the best ERA during the month. I don't see how you can look at those stats and say "Oh, there are two guys who didn't deserve it but won the award on the back of a bunch of wins."

[7] It's not that the pitchers are undeserving, but merely that the pitcher wins are still prominent in their descriptions, if not as a criterion.

[7] It's not that the pitchers are undeserving, but merely that the pitcher wins are still prominent in their descriptions, if not as a criterion.

I guess I don't see the problem, necessarily. It's a description of the pitchers' months; if you were writing about a lottery winner, you'd feature that fact prominently in your description, and that's clearly not any sort of judgement on their character.