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Originally Posted by Mike D.
I'm not sure anyone is using this to say that newer pitchers are better than those from yesteryear...it's really more of a "tidbit" or "trivia" than a "stat".
That being said, any time "pitcher wins" are made to prove a point, my eyes glaze over. As a starting pitcher you can "win" 9-8 or "lose" 1-0". Pretty useless stat in my opinion.
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Then you've missed some of the other threads on here talking about pitcher comparisons. To many of the modern statistician types, it seems most all older era players can't hold a candle to the modern era athletes, and how today they are all bigger, stronger, faster, etc. But I think that has a lot more to do with context of the times and eras, advances in medicine, nutrition, and technology, and maybe most importantly of all, money. The older era players didn't become rich playing baseball, and a majority would even often need off season jobs to get by. So they didn't go crazy with year-round training and push themselves beyond normal human activities to excel in their sports. Plus, teams didn't invest tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in players, nor offer them guaranteed contracts, like they do today, which pushes modern teams to pamper and restrict modern pitcher's activities so they don't injure or burn themselves out. And because of the financial rewards today's athletes can reap, many people now identify gifted children and push/prompt/steer them to intense and involved training programs early on so they have advantages and focuses in more prolonged and specific training than older era ballplayers ever had, or particularly needed.
And when you say your eyes glaze over when people talk about wins being important, it makes my eyes glaze over listening to people like you saying that they don't. You are most likely from a younger generation, not a baby boomer. So tell me honestly, when you buy a ticket to a game, or turn on the radio or TV to listen/watch your team play, do you root for them to lose or win? And if you root for them to win, please explain to me then how wins don't matter???
And I know baseball is an intricate and involved team game with a myriad of intricate things that can impact and effect a game's outcome, and are generally not ever decided by one single player or person. But think about it, of all the players in a ballgame, which one(s) arguably has the most influence and probably the greatest chance of being the ultimate deciding factor in a game's outcome.....a team's pitcher! Or more precisely, a team's starting pitcher, as they more often than not throw more pitches and go more innings in the games than any other pitcher. Hitters only get 3-4-5 at bats per game, on average. Fielders only get involved the few times in a game the ball is hit/thrown to them. But pitchers start and initiate every single play in the game when they start their windup and send the ball towards home plate. And obviously a pitcher does not control anywhere near all the factors that can significantly influence the ultimate outcome of a game, but the longer that starting pitcher stays in the game, and the more pitches they end up throwing, the more likely they will eventually have some significant impact on deciding a game, and as a result of that, whether or not they win.
I was merely pointing out how great older pitchers like Feller, Johnson, and Spahn have an obvious higher percentage of their games they pitched where it resulted in a won-loss decision for them, which to me is indicative of them having had a greater impact on more of their game's outcomes. And since they more often than not would win, that would mean those wins were also more likely or not because they had been the ones pitching in them till as late as possible in those games. Or are you still going to argue they got a lot of those wins more because they were lucky and won a bunch of games 9-8, instead of pitching and winning a lot of 1-0 shutouts? You do know you can see from their ERAs they didn't likely pitch in and win a lot of 9-8 games, right?
For modern pitchers like Darvish and DeGrom, they don't pitch as often, or as deep into games, as pitchers did in older generations. So I agree, they are less involved and likely to be the deciding factor in games they pitch in today. But that is not always the case for older generation pitchers. Put it another way, if wins are really so unimportant in regard to pitchers, that would leave it to all the other factors and players in a game being more responsible for the team's wins. So how do you then explain pitchers like Johnson, Feller, and Spahn generally having better overall winning percentages than the teams they pitched for? It can't be all luck, can it?
And that is the point. Certain pitchers just have that "It" factor where they somehow consistently win more games than other pitchers. And they aren't all strike out artists, or all throw 95+ MPH, or have superior fielding or hitting teams behind them. They just somehow get their teams wins. But despite all the well-meaning intentions and designs of advanced statistics, they still have no way to effectively measure and quantify that "It" factor that allows certain pitchers to succeed over others when it comes to racking up victories. But instead of acknowledging the inherent limitations of such statistics, especially when it comes to the cross-generational comparability of many advanced statistics in regard to pitchers, statisticians look at how they game is played today, and simply declare wins for pitchers don't really mean anything. That takes away and unfairly punishes and discounts the abilities of pitchers from older eras who went out there and just kept winning games.
So forgive me for being totally skeptical when I hear people saying that wins don't really matter for pitchers. Last I looked, the Cy Young Award given to the best pitchers in each league every year is named after the winningest pitcher of all time. And the awards are usually given to pitchers that have close to, if not the most, wins every season. And I've never heard of a Cy Young winner with a losing record, can you name me one? And generally the "Ace" of each team's pitching staff is the pitcher with the most wins. And even in today's modern game, when it comes to contracts and paydays, it seems the pitchers with the most wins or best winning records almost always get re-signed, or get to play the free agent lottery, and end up with the most money of all the other pitchers out there.
But wins don't mean much of anything and are pretty useless, aren't they?