Home / General / Do Pitchers Play For Teams? A Far and Balanced Debate.

Do Pitchers Play For Teams? A Far and Balanced Debate.

/
/
/
1247 Views

Blogger Murray Chass, in a recent blog post on his blog, generously supplemented his own original thoughts with some equally fresh perspectives:

Klein called the recent “devaluation of wins” a mistake.

“Remember when it used to be said of good pitchers that ‘they do what it takes to win’ and of certain pitchers that ‘they’re good enough to lose,’” he added. “Granted, there are always hard-luck pitchers who consistently pitch strong games but get minimal hitting support.

“But I always felt there was a class of pitchers who would win 2-1, and another class of solid pitchers who, in big games, would lose 3-2. Wins are still the most important stat. Felix Hernandez was declared the Cy Young winner, but I didn’t hear anybody declaring the Mariners the AL champs. Why? They didn’t have enough wins.

Noble said these days “most stats aren’t predicated on who wins but added, “That’s kind of silly. Isn’t that the reason for playing?”

As for the new statistics, Noble said, “You can’t quantify everything. That’s the charm of the game. You can have 18 hits and lose by 5 runs when the other team has 6 hits.

“There’s more new stuff because there are computers. In the past we couldn’t figure out these things. It’s the computer more than anything else. These guys grew up with computers. There are guy who make money creating these stats.”

And the advocates of the statistics, Noble added, forget that people play the game.

“They ignore the David Eckstein factor,” he said. “He’ll do something that will piss you off,” he said, something, he meant, that you can’t find in the statistics. Or “Jeter late in a game,” adding, “Jeter was seen as the worst player at all positions but who else makes that play against the A’s in the playoffs?”

The defense could site systematic studies, note how crazy it is to blame Felix Hernandez for playing for a historically bad offense and how appalling it is to imply that he lacks guts, etc. But for today we will point to yesterday’s Boston Marathon, in which Mr. John Lackey was credited with a “win” for having the guts and Jack Morris makeup and Pete Vukovich pancake foundation to get the shit beat out of him for five whole innings, and Bartolo Colon was credited with a “loss” for being so gutless as to be the only pitcher in the game to pitch multiple innings with any effectiveness.

The defense rests. Although it does concede that stats do not fully quantify the extent to which John Lackey does things to piss you off.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :