Wins Are Stupid, But Jamie Moyer Is Old
A few days ago, baseball bloggers asked the question, “Can a pitcher win the Cy Young Award without winning a game?” That question would have sounded fucking retarded a few years ago. But not anymore. The article was about how last year’s American League Cy Young winner, Zack Greinke, is pitching well on a subpar team and is on pace to an 0-18 record.
Wins are a tricky thing. If you’re a starting pitcher, all you have to do is pitch at least 5 innings and leave the game with a lead. Or be the relief pitcher when your team gets the lead. The thing is, wins are almost completely out of the pitcher’s control. Their team still has to score runs to win. And even if a pitcher leaves the game with a lead, their bullpen has to avoid blowing that lead for them. Sometimes it works. Sometimes you’re Zack Greinke and you pitch for the fucking Royals.
To prove how bad it can suck for a starting pitcher, you can go back to July 1, 1990 when Andy Hawkins of the Yankees was pitching against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park. Hawkins took a no-hitter into the 8th inning. With two outs in the 8th, (skinny) Sammy Sosa reached first on a throwing error. Then Hawkins walked the next two batters to load the bases. The next batter was Robin Ventura, who hit a fly ball to left field, which was promptly booted by Jim Leyritz, scoring 3 runs for the White Sox. The next batter hit a fly ball to right, which Jesse Barfield lost in the sun, scoring Ventura. With home field advantage, the White Sox did not bat in the bottom of the 9th and Andy Hawkins had pitched an 8-inning no-hitter, but still lost the game 4-0. Ouch.
With the advent of Sabermetrics, baseball writers have slowly changed their view of the win statistic. The fact that Greinke (16-8) and Tim Lincecum (15-7) won the 2009 Cy Young Awards shows a shift in thinking away from win-loss and ERA in favor of stats like WHIP, FIP and BABIP. In fact, Lincecum’s 15 wins is the lowest ever for a Cy Young winner in a full season.
That leads us to the fact that wins are also tricky, historically. 2006 was the first time baseball had failed to produce a 20-game winner in a full season. It happened again last year. In (giant) contrast, Will White of the 1879 Cincinnati Reds won 43 games. He also lost 31. He also started all 75 games for the Reds that season and pitched in all but 46 innings of the entire season. He was the only starting pitcher they had. And it was 1879, so he probably threw underhand. A lot has changed since then. First, pitchers clearly began throwing overhand. Then pitchers threw harder and teams got more of them. And more of them. And they eventually realized that all that overhand throwing can fuck up your arm. In the 1970s, the five-man rotation was established. Then pitch-counts were enforced so guys couldn’t throw over 100 pitches per outing. To save arms, managers gave their pitchers less starts and less of a workload. Last year, Justin Verlander of the Tigers led the majors in innings pitched with 240. He wouldn’t have been in the top 10 in the AL in, say, 1988. 1988 also happens to be the year that Oakland A’s manager Tony La Russa and his pitching coach, Dave Duncan, invented the one-inning closer by making Dennis Eckersley their 9th inning man. Since the A’s went to three consecutive World Series with Eck as their closer, everyone copied the set-up/closer format.
In short, every starting pitcher has less of a chance to win, but more of a chance for their lead to be blown for them. Hence, fewer 20-game winners. And fewer 20 game winners means fewer 300 game winners. With five-man rotations and pitch counts and relief specialists, it’s almost like you’d have to pitch until you’re 50 to get to 300 these days. Bingo.
Jamie Moyer could be the anti-Zack Greinke. Greinke is 26-years-old with a 2.27 ERA and 0 wins on the season. Moyer is 47 with a 5.70 ERA and 3 wins. Oh, and 261 career wins - 39 shy of the illustrious 300 Club. Sure he’s old and gives up a lot of runs. But Moyer is on the high-scoring Philadelphia Phillies. That’s the same team that hotshot Roy Halladay pitches for and some people have optimistically predicted he’ll win (gasp) 25 games this year. Moyer’s on pace to win 19 games so far. If his arm doesn’t fall off, you can almost count on Moyer hitting the 300 win milestone in early 2012…. Maybe. A lot of things would have to happen there, but the point is - just when everyone thought Randy Johnson would be the last 300 game winner ever, it looks like Moyer could have a better shot than we think.
I don’t know what baseball voters will eventually do with the 300 win standard. If they changed their mind on Cy Young voting, they could likely change their minds on the Hall of Fame. Wins are a stupid statistic. I hope Greinke does go 0-18, but leads in everything else. But I’ll be excited to watch old man Moyers hobble up to the mound to try to be the last guy to 300.
