WINS DON'T COUNT BECAUSE NOBODY FINISHES THEIR OWN #### ANYMORE.

But wins are a value stat! We're not handing out the awards to next years likely Cy Young winner! We're handing them out to this year's!

I try not to be like this, but now these guys get to see how it feels when they're losing the battle. Ya gotta suck wind to blow it.

But wins are a value stat! We're not handing out the awards to next years likely Cy Young winner! We're handing them out to this year's!

Go sell snotty ######### somewhere else. We're all stocked up here.

I don't know any nine letter swears. Except #########.

Also, you know who else believed in advanced pitching metrics?

Hitler.

In my day, guys won a zillion games a year! And they liked it!

Perhaps a better question for Burwell to ask is: why aren't good pitchers winning as many games as they used to?

Or, another good question: why am I such a slobbering anus?

"If I lived in Dallas I would have a problem with this NL vote, so don't tell me I'm a homer."

Well that pretty much wraps that up right there.

Perhaps the better question for Burwell to ask is: why aren't the best pitchers winning as many games anymore?

Or, another good question: why am I such a slobbering anus?

Or, another good question: why am I such a slobbering anus?

You eat too much Taco Bell?

This isn't quite to the level of Burwell's "Jim Rice is in the same group as Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig" column from a few years ago, but it's a nice effort.

Stick to basketball, Bryan. You're less of an idiot when you deal with hoops.

"In his last 10 starts, the San Francisco ace was only 3-4 with a 3.15 ERA. I'm sorry, but that has to mean something, doesn't it? If won-loss records are suddenly obsolete, why do we bother to keep the stat?

Now look at what Wainwright and Carpenter did. Let's start with Wainwright, who had the most wins in the NL with his 19-8 record. In games that he started, the Cards won 23 contests. Over the final three months of the season, Wainwright had an 11-3 record with a stunning 1.90 ERA. In Wainwright's last 11 starts, the Cards lost one game. All of this was done in the heat of a push to the postseason."

I can't really argue with this reasoning at all, and I was pretty schocked that Wainwright didn't win. I certainly don't have a problem with Lincecum getting it, but I personally would have voted Wainwright - Lincecum - Carpenter, and if the ballot had a spot for fourth and fifth, it would have been Vasquez and Jurrjens. I know the award is for the best season overall, but it seems to me that Wainwright's utterly dominant second half has to factor in somehow. If he was 0.50 or more behind Lincecum in ERA overall, or had a very poor K/BB ratio it would have been different. He also pitched a start's worth more innings.

If this guy wants a discussion, which I doubt, why does having Albert Pujols as your 1b make you a better pitcher than having Ryan Garko? Because that is why Wainwright won more games than Timmah!

If won-loss records are suddenly obsolete, why do we bother to keep the stat?

This guy raises a good question! My answer is "Inertia".

This guy raises a good question! My answer is "Inertia".

They're useful as a record of what happened on the field. Let's not get crazy now. I wouldn't want wins and losses or RBIs to be eliminated.

All of this was done in the heat of a push to the postseason.

In September, the Cardinals didn't have a team get within eight and a half games of them until the last two games of the season. Was there really a lot of "heat" there?

They're useful as a record of what happened on the field. Let's not get crazy now. I wouldn't want wins and losses or RBIs to be eliminated.

Eliminated? No. But how about modified so that a team's win is awarded to the pitcher who most contributed to it. A starter pitches 7 innings of scoreless ball but a reliever gives up a run in the 8th. In the bottom of that inning, the team scores 4 runs, and in the ninth, the closer gets the "save" by only allowing one more run. Final score is 4-2. Why not go back and give that starter the "win"?

I'd be willing to care more about that stat if it reflected what actually happened on the field.

I wouldn't push for win and losses or RBIs to be eliminated.

But I quite frankly never look at them anymore.

There's a certain irony to a writer in 2009 asking, Don't wins count anymore? His dad's generation of writers voted how many relief pitchers the Cy. Guys today won't do that. That suggests wins are considered to be more important than in the past, not less.

But Burwell really ought to be willing to answer the question, Should you consider how well a guy actually pitches?

They're useful as a record of what happened on the field. Let's not get crazy now. I wouldn't want wins and losses or RBIs to be eliminated.

RBI are a poor measure of value, but they're essentially a record of what happened on the field, yes.

But wins and losses, particularly in the post-CG era, are not. (Not for individual players; obviously at the team level they are). Consider it this way: suppose we instructed the official scorer to award a W or L to one batter on each team for each game, according to some algorithm we developed (perhaps vesting him with some minor discretion). Would we consider those Ws and Ls a "record of what happened on the field"? If so, aren't we neglecting the historical record by failing to implement this proposal right now? Or, on the other hand, is this just an arbitrary assigning of credit to one player for a team outcome?

What "happened on the field" was that Carpenter pitched a certain way. He didn't get a W on the field, though; he got it in the scorer's booth. We could easily change the scoring rules for W-L awards (*), and it wouldn't change "what happened on the field" in the slightest.



(*) For instance, the whole notion of a "pitcher of record" is screwy; if we win 2-1 and I pitch 7 innings allowing just one run, why should my W or ND depend on whether my team's second run was scored before or after I left the game? Even more silly, if I leave the game trailing 2-1, and we ultimately lose 5-2, why on earth should my ND or L depend solely on the order of events that all happened after I left -- on whether my teammates scored their second run before or after the other team scored their 3 extra runs? A rational scoring system wouldn't do that even if we were crediting pitchers with Ws and Ls.

baseball is not a wonderfully simple game

Yes, wins and losses are screwy, but we've also had 100 years to get used to it and its fun to track them. I consider them a luckometer and Anthony Young is its patron saint. I wouldn't want my team to sign or value pitchers based on wins and losses, but I think they're fun. I admit to being silly and not so bright on the topic. (And several other topics, as well.)

Betting lines have sometimes included W/L in a pitcher's starts over the years, and that's certainly an interesting stat, a bit more so than actual W/L, which as Kronic and DMN note is kinda arbitrary. Two starters for the same team, in pitcher A's starts the team is 10-10 and in pitcher B's 15-5, that's worth knowing.

I have no problem with the result of the NL CY voting. This is one of those odd years where any of the top three could have won and I wouldn't have been really worked up about it (AL was another matter). This writer fails to realize that his candidate really didn't lose. When the vote total looks like that no one is a loser and I don't mean that in a t-ball don't keep score kind of way. The results show that several voters still consider wins to be a statistic to pay attention to. Sure wins matter (just ask Herm Edwards), but while the pitcher is credited with the W it is primarily a team stat. In fact at another time a good argument could be made that crediting one individual with the win in a team sport is clearly wrong and slightly insulting to the other players. Sure a starting pitcher has more direct control of a single game than a left fielder or first baseman. However, a position player who plays 155 games obviously contributes to more total wins.

I am tired of watching managers who let struggling SPs kill themselves to reach 5 IP. (The last Met years of Al Leiter were like this all the time IIRC.) This is another case where the accounting rules--like the save rule--seem to dictate on-the-field tactics.

Yes, wins and losses are screwy, but we've also had 100 years to get used to it

Wow, Shooty, you are OLD.

Imagine if the Game-Winning RBI had developed into one of the key factors in MVP voting.

And here I thought newspapers would survive forever, you mean I've been misled.

Go take a bath in creamed corn Burwell.

Wow, Shooty, you are OLD.

You're confusing him with his comedy material.

If Wainwright had won 20, he'd have won the Cy Young.

This guy definitely would have written this very column if Carpenter had beaten out Wainwright for the CYA. I'm certain of it.

Burwell sounds like an a-hole. He's example #2 why newspapers aren't relative anymore.

Baseball's not a simple game it's bizarre and wacky and fairly nuanced and complicated and that's why people like it.

The W-L record is something from the 19th century when pitcher pitched 480 innings a year and pitchers were compared to boxers.

I love how Burwell goes strait to the name calling, "stat-geek, seam-head, dweeb etc." It's like he can't debate the points that Carroll and Law make so he's reduced to 3rd grade name calling.

But even simple logic dictates that W-L isn't very accurate. If your a good pitcher on a good hitting team you more often than not have a better W-L than a good pitcher on a bad hitting team. You give up 1 run but your opponent pitches a shutout, you get a loss. You give up 5 runs but your team scores 6 runs you get a win. You pitch 8 innings and give up 0 runs in a 2-0 game but the relief pitcher gives up 3, you get a N-D. You pitch 6 innings and give up 4 runs and your team scores 7 you get a win etc.

Then you have fielders and Park Factors, One guy pitches in front of Grich, Belanger, and Robinson and another guy pitches behind, Carew, Thompson, and Braun. One guy pitches at Fenway Park, one guy pitches at the Oakland Colosseum.

But how about modified so that a team's win is awarded to the pitcher who most contributed to it.

Most of the time, that happens.

-- MWE

I love how Burwell goes strait to the name calling, "stat-geek, seam-head, dweeb etc." It's like he can't debate the points that Carroll and Law make so he's reduced to 3rd grade name calling.

To be fair, a lot of statheads also consider the points made by Carroll and Law to be somewhat stupid, and among the worst examples of statheadery.

I thought "seam-head" just meant an obsessed fan, not a dweeb. I mean, a seam is part of a baseball, not part of a calculator.

I consider them a luckometer and Anthony Young is its patron saint.

I would not go as far and say they are luck. If that were the case we would have some average to below average pitchers who had high career win totals. I do think luck can play into it but it is usually a 4 or 5 win swing at most. The difference in runs scored between the highest offense and the worst offense is 1 run per game which is a lot during the coarse of a season but if you have a 3.50 era on each of these teams you will probably have a winning record the luck would just be whether it is 14 or 18.

I am not sure if you ever saw Anthony Young pitch or not but he is not the patron saint of luck (or not luck as it may be) he is the exception to the rule of how a pitchers performance should reflect in wins and losses. Anthony Young was an exceptional pitcher who actually could not take the pressure of the game. These players usually do not make it out of the minors because the get destroyed. He was extremely talented even for a major league pitcher but for what ever reason he folded and found new and interesting ways to lose. It was a train wreck watching him pitch late in games.

If won-loss records are suddenly obsolete, why do we bother to keep the stat?

Remember the time he ate my goldfish? And you lied and said I never had goldfish. Then why did I have the bowl Bart? Why did I have the bowl?

Piffle.

This is my favorite part:

And up until Thursday, I kept hearing from folks with far more baseball knowledge than mine that this was a three-man race in the NL between Carpenter, Lincecum and Wainwright. I can't tell you how many conversations I've had since the middle of August with any number of Cy Young voters who were all wrestling mightily with trying to sort through the merits of this talented trio. I was under the belief that Lincecum, Carpenter and Wainwright had dramatically and definitively separated themselves from the pack.

So he heard from a bunch of people who were having a hard time sorting through those three, and that felt that those three had separated themselves from the pack dramatically.

So the vote comes in, and one of those 3 wins, and they're very close and clearly separated from any other candidate. So...what's his #####?

Yeah, I know, he wanted to get the potshots in at Law & Carroll, that's fine. Primer folks do that kind of nitpicking too. But the rest of the article is basically saying that Lincecum was a bad choice over Wainwright and even Carpenter -- so again, why was he starting off the article implying that lots of people (presumably people he respects, from the tone) of good faith were concluding that it was hard to decide between the three?

I don't know if this is a better example of bad writing (in terms of logical flow) or poor or lack of editing. But it's at least one or the other, if not both.

Why don't wins count anymore?

Why are these questions not coming out of anywhere other than St. Louis? Why are (some of) the same people who applauded the selection of Greinke complaining about Lincecum? Why does nobody realize that if Carpenter was replaced on the two ballots in the exact same positions given to Vazquez (second) and Haren (third) he would have only had four more points and STILL would have finished second to Lincecum?

Anthony Young was an exceptional pitcher who actually could not take the pressure of the game. These players usually do not make it out of the minors because the get destroyed. He was extremely talented even for a major league pitcher but for what ever reason he folded and found new and interesting ways to lose. It was a train wreck watching him pitch late in games.

Why do I get the feeling you're pulling this out of your ass?

What an incredible waste of time to have written. Even more so to have read.

Why do I get the feeling you're pulling this out of your ass?

You can get that feeling if you want, wouldn't bother me really. If you watched his games and don't feel that way then I would like to here what you have to say. I have never seen a pitcher before or after Anthony Young who almost looked like he was throwing the game, every time.

You can get that feeling if you want, wouldn't bother me really. If you watched his games and don't feel that way then I would like to here what you have to say. I have never seen a pitcher before or after Anthony Young who almost looked like he was throwing the game, every time.

Well, "I know it was so" isn't really a point that's worth discussing. You haven't the foggiest clue that this was going on in his head, that he was "folding" under the pressure. You can't substantiate it in the slightest. That's why you're falling back on the tired "I watched the games."

He's right. Wins should matter. Bob Gibson, hand that 1968 Cy Young Award over to Juan Marichal. Once that is done, Tim Lincecum will hand his over to the Cardinal of Burwell's choice.

He's right. Wins should matter. Bob Gibson, hand that 1968 Cy Young Award over to Juan Marichal. Once that is done, Tim Lincecum will hand his over to the Cardinal of Burwell's choice.

Or heck, just go back to 2005 when Chris Carpenter won over Dontrelle Willis who had more wins AND a lower ERA! I wonder who Burwell voted for that day.

RBI are a poor measure of value, but they're essentially a record of what happened on the field, yes.

Right, with the exception, e.g., of batters not getting an RBI for hitting into a double play.

If won-loss records are suddenly obsolete, why do we bother to keep the stat?

How else will future HOF voters be able to formulate their crap ballots when it comes to pitchers?

Well, "I know it was so" isn't really a point that's worth discussing. You haven't the foggiest clue that this was going on in his head, that he was "folding" under the pressure. You can't substantiate it in the slightest. That's why you're falling back on the tired "I watched the games."

Right lets just stick with the tired old "luck". I never said I knew anything nor did I say I knew what was going on in his head (which is what the "almost looked like" comment of mine was). The numbers DO show he folded under the pressure, his ERA and peripherals show he should have done better in the W/L category but didn't.

I don't understand why you think watching him would not give another perspective. A runner can get caught stealing because of a good pitcher/catcher release or he could hesitate or make a mistake on the base paths that would not show up as a stat.

Anthony Young was different than what the numbers said he should be and I think it was in his makeup and not luck. Can't prove it, it is based upon my viewing of his games not an EKG, psychological analysis or a luck-o-meter.

Year end MVP awards should be about wins and RBIs and "clutch hitting" and great stories a lot more than they should be about the metrics. It is not about the best player in a vacuum.

Valuations for contracts and gameday lineups are another matter entirely.

Year end MVP awards should be about wins and RBIs and "clutch hitting" and great stories a lot more than they should be about the metrics. It is not about the best player in a vacuum.

Oh great, it's been about a month or two since we've had this argument.

Anthony Young was different than what the numbers said he should be and I think it was in his makeup and not luck. Can't prove it, it is based upon my viewing of his games not an EKG, psychological analysis or a luck-o-meter.

Walter Johnson lost 25 games one year. He lost 20 another year. I hear he was pretty good.

Steve Carlton lost 20 games. Warren Spahn lost 19.

Frank Tanana lost 19.

Did Nolan Ryan not know how to win? He had good numbers but went 8-16 one year anyway.

You can get that feeling if you want, wouldn't bother me really. If you watched his games and don't feel that way then I would like to here what you have to say. I have never seen a pitcher before or after Anthony Young who almost looked like he was throwing the game, every time.

I think I know what you're getting at, bp ... he would give up 2 in the 1st, then cruise, then once the Mets tied it up he'd give up another run or two. It seemed like he did that every time out.

However, if memory serves, he also spent some time as closer in the middle of his losing streak (and was passable-ish). Doesn't that ruin your argument, or at least suggest that the entire Mets organization wasn't seeing what you saw?

I love how Burwell goes strait to the name calling, "stat-geek, seam-head, dweeb etc." It's like he can't debate the points that Carroll and Law make so he's reduced to 3rd grade name calling.

But it's not just that. Lots of writers -- mainstream media types -- voted Lincecum and/or Carpenter over Wainwright. Were there even any "sabermetric" voters for the AL CYA where the 16-win Greinke beat 3 19-win guys and 1 17-win guy by a healthy margin? Much like the "blame" for the use of pitch counts lies squarely with "baseball people" not BPro, the "blame" for the election of the 15- and 16-game winners lies squarely with mainstream baseball writers, not Law and Carroll.

As to Vazquez and Haren: neither, especially Vazquez, is a bad choice. And most years there's an odd pitcher or two who gets a 2nd/3rd place vote. Dempster made a couple ballots last year in the NL; Mussina and Ervin Santana in the AL. In fact last year, Dice-K finished 4th despite pitching just 167 innings -- could it have been the 18 wins?

Anyway, we all know the answer to Burwell's question. Do wins matter? Of course. But pitchers don't win games on their own (very often), they contribute to winning games. Pitcher wins are an accounting mechanism, nothing more. The key notion for the CYA should be which pitcher contributed the most to his team winning games. Often that tracks well with "wins" but not always. Actually it probably almost always tracks well, but it tracks very well only often.

However, if memory serves, he also spent some time as closer in the middle of his losing streak (and was passable-ish).

Your memory appears to be correct. In 1992, Young went 2-14 with 15 saves, 2 holds, and 5 blown saves. His 1993 is the amazing season. He put up an ERA+ of 107 and went 1-16, 0-8 in 10 starts despite a 3.52 ERA (which would work out to an ERA+ of 115, I think). That's some epic bad luck. Of course, somebody had to have the worst luck in the history of MLB, right?