Baseball is the most intricate and detail oriented sport in America (Cricket has it beat, but I am not worried about sticky wickets). It is that detail that makes it great, and frustrating. Its detail is one of the reasons the modern fan does not appreciate baseball because they are either too stupid or too impatient to understand the nuances. However there are some rules that make absolutely no sense, and were obviously made in the 1800’s. The rule that bothers me the most is the rule behind the pitcher of record.
In order to earn a win as a starter you must go 5 innings. If you go under that you do not qualify, regardless of the score. You can lose if you go under 5, but not win. By itself that rule does not seem intimidating, or complicated, or jaded or whatever you want to call it. The problem arises when it comes time to decide who does actually win.
The part of the rule that gets me is if a starting pitcher leaves a game with his team winning before he pitches 5 innings, he is still ineligible for the win, even if the score does not change. In that situation, it is up to the discretion of the official scorekeeper to declare the pitcher of record. Therefore the official scorekeeper decides which relief pitcher did the most to contribute to the win, and that pitcher gets the win. But the starting pitcher cannot get the win. So as long as the score never ties and the lead never changes, the official scorekeeper decides the winner.
So here is my problem, didn’t the starting pitcher contribute the most to the win? Didn’t he do enough for his team to win? Shouldn’t that be the measure of who gets the win? In the logic of the rule some guy who comes in with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th and gets 1 out can get the win for only facing 1 batter, but the starter who went 4 2/3rds innings and only let up 1 run can’t get the win. Also by that logic, every subsequent pitcher can give up 2 or more runs, thus giving up more runs than the starter, but as long as the lead does not change the official scorekeeper still must chose someone to get the win, and it can’t be the starter.
The starter can leave a game with the score 2-1 in the 5th with a blister, and by the end of the game the score is 25-17 he still can’t get the win. He could have the least earned runs, most innings pitched and most strikeouts of entire staff for the night, and still not win. I think that is a travesty of the rule system.
This is obviously an archaic rule hearkening back to the days before regular relief appearances and fragile starters. For Cy Young to not go 5 innings he either had to give up like 20 runs or get shot by Ty Cobb. Back then I understand the rule. But today it makes no sense. So shouldn’t we change the rule?
I have 2 possible solutions. First we can change the rule to read that a starting pitcher can only win if he leaves the game with his team ahead (pending runners and earned runs factored in), but there is no minimum. Or, we change the ‘win’ stat to reflect who earned the win, the starter win (SW) or the relief win (RW). For example if a starter goes only 3 innings, but his team never trails and wins the game he can earn a SW. But if a reliever comes in and cleans up the mess he earns a RP. This would fix the problem and add a new stat for fantasy junkies and Elias to track.
At the end of the day this situation only happens a handful of times a season, but with fantasy championships and players’ salaries tied to these stats, every win counts. Just think, if they kept those stats maybe ‘The Loogy’ would have won.
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3 comments:
Wow. Reading that really brought me back to those games of Euchre. You know...where two seconds after trump was called, Flip would lay down all his cards and for the next fifteen minutes explain how there were no possible alternate scenarios that could have resulted once trump was called. Congrats, my best man. You are truly in the barn on this one.
And since we are positing on alternate sports universes...Wrap your brain around this one. NFL Super Bowl...best of three. Right, bear with me now. So instead of one over-hyped, usually disappointing excuse for hilarious Bud Lite propaganda, what about a best of three Super Bowl series? It would take place in three neutral locations (think of the increased revenue for everyone involved...stadiums, hotels, restaurants, high class ladies of ill repute). And as far as scheduling, just move the season back a week (eliminating the vestigial and hated final pre-season game) as well as the off week before the super bowl (officially the worst weekend of the year) and you only add one more week to the schedule. I think this would vastly improve the Super Bowl and lend more credibility to the eventual victor. Thoughts?
I have no problem with the current way that wins are calculated. It is interesting that they can be subjective - that's quite intriguing. But the point of the official scorer is to (at times) make decisions on the stats of the game. From calling errors and hits, he does this already.
Outside of the fantasy realm (you know, the one "The Loogy" razed this past season), Wins are just about the most meaningless stat attached to a pitcher. It's crazy, though, that only the 'stat-geeks' and 'seem-heads' really seem to realize it. How many times have GMs overpayed for wins? How many times have pitchers gotten fat contracts in arbitration for wins?
It's just another example of the counting stats versus rate stats that is changing the whole baseball landscape.
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