Every now and again here, you might have noticed, I will throw a few body blows at the bloated concept of "pitcher wins." But -- and I don't know if I've ever made this clear -- I would not want pitcher wins to go away. For one thing, they are fun to argue about. It amazes and entertains me to no end the logical maze people will take to argue that pitchers can win games more-or-less singlehandedly. The Mighty Win people certainly understand that pitchers don't strike out the majority of hitters they face. They obviously know that different ballparks have different configurations. They can't help but realize that pitchers cannot win games unless the offense scores at least one run, usually four or five or more.*
*Justin Verlander is pitching amazing baseball this year. The Tigers have still scored five or more runs in 13 of his 21 wins. The Tigers have scored four runs in another five of his wins.
They also must understand that in today's world starting pitchers almost never pitch all nine innings, and rarely pitch eight. Up to the moment, there have been 1,477 games where a starting pitcher won in 2011, and the average inning total is actually fewer than 7 (it's about 6 2/3 innings). It breaks down like so (and fractions are included -- so 8 innings also include 81/3 and 8/23 innings):
Complete game: 7.2%
Eight innings: 13.1%
Seven innings: 33.0%
Six innings: 33.4%
Five innings: 13.3%
So you can see that a winning starting pitcher is almost twice as likely to pitched fewer than six innings as throw a complete game. How absurd is it to say that a pitcher who threw 5 1/3 innings WON a game? Not too absurd, apparently. We say it all the time.
But, today, I come today to praise the win not to bury it. Because in addition to the pitcher win being fun to argue about, it also connects us to the game's history -- which I think is a good thing. Bill James was probably the most outspoken critic of the whole "error" concept in baseball. It irritated him to no end that baseball, which as a game is set up for such a clean statistical record, would allow fielders to be judged and catalogued by how they looked from the press box rather than how many plays they actually made. But Bill has also told me that he would not want to get rid of errors because they such are a part of baseball. That's how I feel about the win too. I like referring to Steve Carlton as a 27-game winner in 1972. It's a common language in a time when common language is becoming rarer.
I certainly think wins have SOME correlation with a pitcher's ability or performance. Not nearly as much as The Mighty Win people want, but good performances obviously tend to lead to wins more often than bad performances. Winning 300 games in a career is a remarkable thing, and winning 20 games in a season is an accomplishment. There have been 72 20-win seasons since 1990, and all of them were good seasons. Some were a lot better than others. Randy Johnson's 20-win season in 1997 was a whole lot better than Bill Gullickson's 20-win season in 1991.
Still … John Updike once challenged Ted Williams critics (who said that he was only interested in individual numbers) by saying that for Ted Williams to organize his hits so that they wouldn't help anyone but himself would "consult a feat of placement unparalleled in the annals of selfishness." Well for a pitcher to be lousy AND win 20 games -- especially in the age of five-man rotations and active bullpens -- would be a magic trick worthy of a big room in Vegas.
So, no, I don't want to get rid of wins. I don't even want to stop referring to them. What I want, what I wish, is that people would look at wins as what they are: A kind of quirky little statistic that doesn't tell us much but also doesn't NEED to tell us much. Wins are INTERESTING. That's why they're worth looking at.
Hey, you know what wins are like to me? I just thought of this, so the analogy might not work but I'm going with it: Maybe pitcher wins are like how much a money a movie grosses worldwide. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 has grossed more than a billion dollars. That's interesting. A conversation starter. Does that prove it's a great movie? A good movie? Did it earn that much money because the acting was great, because the writing was sublime, because the direction and editing was brilliant, because the special effects and lighting and sound were remarkable, because it was a gutsy movie that competed every step of the way? Maybe. It's also possible that it grossed that much because the Harry Potter franchise -- from the books to the movies to the theme park to everything -- is so awesome. It's possible that it has made that much money for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do at all with the specific quality of the movie.
Personally, I didn't like this Harry Potter. I'm not saying I'm right or wrong -- I thought it deviated from the book too much and I thought it butchered my favorite scene in the entire Harry Potter book series. But that's beside the point. If you tell me Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II is better than, say, The Godfather or Annie Hall or The Terminator because it made a lot more money, well, I would throw the flag and penalize you 15 yards for Misleading Logic. Sure I want to know how much money a movie grossed because I think it's interesting. Just don't try to make it mean more than it means.
And that's how how I feel about pitcher wins too. Take Yankees rookie Ivan Nova. You might know: He is 15-4 this year. That IS interesting. You can just stop right there. Everybody understood that the Yankees came into this season with exactly one starter they could count on -- the venerable C.C. -- and they had to hope against hope that something else worked out. Maybe A.J. Burnett would regain form. Maybe Phil Hughes would pitch like he did at the start of 2010. Maybe Ivan Nova would develop or -- and this seemed too much to hope for -- Freddy Garcia or Bartolo Colon would find a bit of past glory.
Well, a couple of these things did not happen -- A.J. Burnett's collapse has been particularly painful for Yankees fans --but some did. Nova has pitched quite well, especially in the last month or so. And Yankees fans should celebrate that. We all know that fans view the world through their own team's prism, and if you're a Yankees fan then having Ivan Nova pitch well in 2011 has been a very important part of the Yankees excellent season. And so to say, "Hey, look, Ivan Nova is 15-4!" seems to me a good and fun fan reaction.
But, beyond that, what does that 15-4 record actually mean? What does it really tell us? Well, let's compare him with a guy with a terrible won-loss record -- say, Kansas City's Jeff Francis. At the moment, Francis is 5-15, almost the inverse of Nova's, and his .250 winning percentage is the worst in the American League.
So, clearly you can take from those won-loss records that Nova is having a better year than Francis. But how much better? A whole lot better? Three times better? Infinitely better?
Well … Francis has actually thrown one more quality start than Nova this year, 15-14. Trouble is, in Francis' quality starts his record is 5-5. Nova in his quality starts is 11-1. So, immediately you ask: Are Nova's quality starts of a higher quality than Francis'? Well, his ERA in those 14 quality starts is 2.40 to Francis' 2.52. But they both average 6 2/3 innings in those quality starts, their walks and hits per inning are almost identical and Francis has the better strikeout-to-walk. Point is they when they are throwing quality starts they are not THAT different. But Nova is 11-1. Francis is 5-5.
You might, at this point, make some reference to quality of the teams they happen to play for.
Of course, it gets more stark at this point. Nova's record when not not throwing a quality start is 4-2 (one of his losses came in relief). And Francis' record when not throwing a quality start? Yep: He's 0-10. He lost again Sunday giving up four runs in five innings. Nova has won a game this year when he gave up seven runs in 5 1/3 innings.
This is not to say that if you traded Jeff Francis for Ivan Nova that their won-loss records would just flip. The world is much more complicated than that. But this is exactly the point: The world IS complicated, and people for so many years have wanted to simplify it by saying "Pitcher win game. Pitcher have heart. Pitcher good pitcher." People have attached all sorts of mystical qualities of competitive spirit to pitchers with good won-loss records rather than appreciate that the record probably means a whole lot of things -- hey, maybe the pitcher DOES indeed have a great competitive spirit, maybe his competitive juices spark him to pitch to the score, maybe … maybe … maybe. And also, you know, maybe the team he's on plays good defense behind him and scores a lot of runs when he's pitching. Maybe it's all of it combined.
The patron saint of wins, I have come to believe over the last few months, is not Jack Morris* as I always assumed. No: It's Steve Carlton. It seems to me that whenever anyone makes the point that pitchers do not win games singlehandedly, the Mighty Win people point to Carlton and 1972 when he won 27 games and his astonishingly dreadful Phillies won 59. The Phillies finished 11th in the league in runs scored that year and they made quite a few errors and so Carlton must have won those games more or less on his own. This is the line: "Oh yeah, what about Carlton in '72?"
*Here are the Top 10 pitchers since 1950 in wins when they allowed four or more runs:
1. Jack Morris, 54
2. Robin Roberts, 47
3. Roger Clemens, 46
4. Steve Carlton, 45
(tie) Jim Kaat, 45
(tie) Phil Niekro, 45
7. Jamie Moyer, 44
(tie) Fergie Jenkins, 44
9. Warren Spahn, 43
10. Randy Johnson, 41
But even in Carlton's extreme 1972 case … it isn't quite so simple. Yes, that year Carlton did win 1-0 twice that year …. but in 1972 so did Andy Messersmith and Bill Stoneman and Dave McNally and Dick Tidrow and Don Sutton and Jon Matlack and Nolan Ryan and Pat Dobson and Roger Nelson and Rudy May and Wilbur Wood.
Carlton's record when his team scored two runs was 7-2. That's pretty amazing. But that same year, Gaylord Perry also won seven games when his team scored two for him.
Even with all that, the Phillies still scored three or more in 18 of Carlton's 27 wins and four or more runs in 14 of 27 wins, this in a time when the league ERA was 3.45. Best I can tell, only once all year did an unearned run cost Carlton a victory (he gave up an unearned run in New York and lost 2-1). The Phillies also drew him a no-decision twice when he wasn't very good at all (but probably cost him three or four more wins by not scoring enough runs).
Point is, even in 1972, even in one of the most extreme examples in baseball history, Steve Carlton did not win games by himself or anything close.
I said that I came to praise wins. I really do think they are an interesting and fun part of baseball, as long as you don't try to read too much into them. And by "too much," I guess what I really mean is: "anything."
Absolutely! Wins in a single season don't necessarily tell us much. Winning 20 games is great, but the pitcher might have been going a Lefty Gomez and was lucky instead of good.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a "Mighty Win" guy either, but I will also agree that 300 wins--or soon, 250, is a sign that you you were probably not just lucky.
This is not a mathematical response. Now, I appreciate the power of math as much as the next guy so don't think of this as an anti-science Republican contender response.
ReplyDeleteBut... I'm trying to wrap my mind around watching a baseball game in which the pitcher is irrelevant. In slow-pith softball this is very nearly the case but we still spend the winter trying to perfect knuckle balls and teeny dinky little curves and screwballs. Of course these trick pitches don't matter at 20 miles per hour but we simply can't resist. Mentally -- and visually -- it is impossible to take the pitcher out of the center of the diamond. I mean, what if Jeff Francis had not given up four runs yesterday? Would the Royals not have won 6-5?
It seems to me the more we know -- open our minds and allow math to tell us -- about baseball, the more complex and interrelated, and ultimately unknowable, the game becomes. Which is not a bad thing. Just an uncomfortable thing.
Twain wrote that becoming a river boat pilot spoiled the magic of the Mississippi River for him. The river was never the same once he learned the tricks (and math) of navigating it.
the point is not at all that starting pitchers are irrelevant. on the contrary - pitchers are the most relevant and important players on the field in any given game. the point is that pitcher wins are an almost entirely useless way to judge the performance of a pitcher. There are a litany of statistics, both simple and complex, that do a much better job at measuring a pitcher's contribution to a team win/loss or a team's overall success or lack thereof.
ReplyDeleteI feel about the same way on wins as you do, Joe. I'm not a fan of them as an argument to prove a point, but I don't want them eliminated from the record book. Pitcher wins do say something, just not what many people think they do.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, the first thing I thought of when I saw this headline was how absurd the rule for assigning wins can be; because the Jays and Yankees brought it to the fore on Saturday. Boone Logan got two poor hitters out with no one on base, adding 0.033 win probability, and ended up with a win.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA201109030.shtml
While I don't think we need to abolish pitcher wins, I also wonder if we need to assign one for every game.
Since "wins" make sense to us, since they connect us to the past when pitchers pitched entire games (or entire schedules: I'm looking at you, Tommy Bond), I prefer to used earned runs allowed and ERA+ to determine "pragmatic" W-L records. Nova and Francis are sill virtual inverses, but not so starkly: to date, Nova has allowed 60 earned runs with an ERA+ of 111 over 19 decisions, while Francis has given up 91 ER with ERA+ of 85 in 20 decisions. So Nova could/should/would be 11-8 and Francis 8-12, which seems much more in line with their respective performances.
ReplyDeleteYou know what I find interesting? Sometimes the people who argue that pitcher wins are mostly/fully attributable to the pitcher are the same people who argue that a pitcher can't be MVP. I'd like to see the logic behind both those things being true.
ReplyDelete@John, nowhere does Pos write that the pitcher is irrelevant, just that pitchers don't win games all by themselves.
It seems to me that Doug Fister is the definitive answer on the question of pitcher wins.
ReplyDelete2010: 6-14, but a 2.9 WAR
2011: 6-13, but a 120 ERA+ and a 4.2 WAR (!!)
Wrong argument, Joe.
ReplyDeleteNo, not your analogy about film - although that one also misses because gate size (popularity) and film quality are two entirely different beasts. Of the top 50 grossing films, not one is considered by Rotten Tomatoes as one of the 20 best made.
The reason Pitcher Wins do matter is because MOST OF THE TIME they are an accurate gauge for judging pitchers. You can point to the oddity of Nova/Francis season's as proof the stat stinks, but couldn't you do the same about SABR friendly stats such as UZR (Swisher), FIP (Greinke), and BABIP (every player presently "locked in" at the plate)?
It's as imperfect as other stats, but almost all of the time, Wins tell us how well a pitcher has done.
BTW, I do agree with Scoops. Most reliever Wins are so absurd, they should be listed separably from Starter Wins. Something like Relief Wins.
ReplyDeleteWhy a starter pitching zeros, removed after 4 because of a rain delay, cannot get credit for the W while a reliever coming in to face one batter can, is lunacy.
You mentioned quality starts, so I want to ask this, keeping in mind that it is pretty much a nonsense stat: Is there a way to change the definition of it? How about 7 innings, 3 runs? Or 6 and 2? It's nonsense already, why not make it better (if either of those changes would even make it better)? Can we?
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Joe, you are mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for quality starts, which is an interesting read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_start
Agree totally with earlier commenters about the absurdity of the "win" for relievers. But then, does anybody really pay attention to those?
ReplyDeleteFor starting pitchers, though, he Win stat has a little bit more going for it than tradition. It provides a way to take into account all the game-day factors that aren't adjusted for by ERA, K/BB, etc. For example, on a day when the wind is blowing out at Wrigley, allowing 5 runs over 6 innings may actually be a pretty good performance even though it's not a QS. What a starter-Win does is establish that one pitcher allowed fewer runs under those conditions than the other starter did. The same argument applies in the case of a home-plate umpire with an unusually large or small strike zone. Obviously, the fact that they're pitching to different lineups is huge, which is why Wins alone are grossly inadequate. But they do contain useful information.
A pitcher win tells you this: "During at least the first 5 innings of the game, this pitcher (and his defense) allowed fewer runs than the other team's picher(s) (and defense). Several other pitchers on this pitcher's team may also have been used to maintain this lead."
ReplyDeleteHow much does that tell you about how good the pitcher was, even on a given day? Is it the W that tells us that Roy Halladay was a better pitcher than Ryan Dempster on a windy day at Wrigley?
Moreover, "What a starter-Win does is establish that one pitcher allowed fewer runs under those conditions than the other starter did" is very close to the "pitching to the score" argument. Roger Clemens, in 2005, did a pretty poor job of allowing fewer runs than the other team by W-L (let alone no-decisions). He also had a 1.87 ERA, a 226 ERA+, 7.2 WAR. He was a great pitcher that year. His team didn't score many runs for him. His bullpen couldn't hold some of those narrow leads he did get them. His W-L record marks him as pretty close to average. Pretty much every other measurement marks him as the best pitcher in the NL that year.
There's also the strange situation of how extending a lead can help a starter "win" a game. A pitcher leaves a game with a 5-4 lead in the fifth. His team scores 5 runs in the seventh. In the eighth and ninth, the other team scores a combined 3 runs. The final score is now 10-7 and the starter gets credit for winning this game despite the fact that he wasn't pitching when the winning runs were scored.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry Joe, but the pitcher win stat is so flawed that it's use only serves to skewer the discussion to the value of statistics, not the value of a player. We have far better methods for evaluating pitcher value which should be used to tell better stories. Pitcher wins are a crutch for bad sports writing.
ReplyDelete"I'm not a "Mighty Win" guy either, but I will also agree that 300 wins--or soon, 250, is a sign that you you were probably not just lucky."
ReplyDeleteThe thing about 300 wins, is, as said many times before, it's about your last five or six years. Meaning your 40s. If Mussina or Pettitte (who both retired before 40) had decided to vagabond around like RJ or Perry or Sutton, there's no way that they wouldn't have hit 300.
Only six pitchers started 500 games between 1990 and this year. From 1965 to 1985, ten made 500 starts.
But, and this is CRAZY, 21 pitchers made 400 starts between 1965 and 1985. And 21 pitchers made 400 starts between 1990 and 2011.
It's those last five years. Nothing to do with "starters being pulled early" or "five man rotations" or "STEROIDS".
Do the cyber-puckheads get into debates about the meaning of goalie wins as much as the cyber-seamheads do about pitcher wins? And do they also argue about whether a goalie should win the Hart Trophy (MVP) since the goalies already have their own goaltending Vezina trophy (Cy Young)? In short are these arguments isolated purely to baseball? Or are these arguments simply a reflection of the way modern day sports fans view (reference) statistics versus prior generations?*
ReplyDelete* Yes, the hockey goalie looks more like a catcher in form but they seem to closely parallel the role of the baseball pitcher in function.
For the person above who objected to "Quality Start" as being too low a bar: it's not called a "High-Quality Start." It's saying, "This is (at least) pretty good." Your definition might be a good place to start for the High-Quality Start.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one dying to hear which scene was Joe's favorite in all of Harry Potter? And exactly how the film butchered it? I'd read 1,200 words on that subject, easy.
ReplyDelete"Do the cyber-puckheads get into debates about the meaning of goalie wins as much as the cyber-seamheads do about pitcher wins?"
ReplyDeleteYes.
Wins = wins, GAA = ERA, and save percentage = WHIP. And I've seen ahootout stats used like strikeouts/walks in the True Outcome sense, which is crazy.
I think losses as a stat can be much more misleading than wins. Freddy Garcia lost 12 last year, and considering how historically inept that offense was it's pretty amazing he didn't lose more. Imagine how many losses he could have had if he "only" had an all-star season as opposed to a Cy Young season. In that 1972 season Carlton still had 10 losses. In his unimaginable 1.12 ERA season Bob Gibson somehow racked up 9 losses. An interesting study to do would be to check up on who should have won Cy's, or had otherwise historically pertinent seasons in the years before Sabermetrics, but got lost in the shuffle due to high loss and/or no decision totals.
ReplyDeleteAnd by "Freddy Garcia" I assume you mean Felix Hernandez.
ReplyDelete"The thing about 300 wins, is, as said many times before, it's about your last five or six years. Meaning your 40s. If Mussina or Pettitte (who both retired before 40) had decided to vagabond around like RJ or Perry or Sutton, there's no way that they wouldn't have hit 300.
ReplyDeleteOnly six pitchers started 500 games between 1990 and this year. From 1965 to 1985, ten made 500 starts.
But, and this is CRAZY, 21 pitchers made 400 starts between 1965 and 1985. And 21 pitchers made 400 starts between 1990 and 2011.
It's those last five years. Nothing to do with "starters being pulled early" or "five man rotations" or "STEROIDS". "
OK, I guess I might be misreading your comment, but you seem to at least intimating that the 300 game winners are just hanging around to get to 300 wins and are not really quality pitchers anymore, and that guys like Mussina and Pettitte chose not to do that, which is the only reason they didn't reach 300 wins.
It seems that there is an easy way to determine this, simply look at the last season the pitchers who did reach 300 wins pitched before their 300th win vs. the last season of the pitchers who didn't reach 300(Kaat, Blyleven, Mussina, Pettitte, etc). If the presumption is that the 300 win guys are not really that good anymore and that teams are only bringing them back to either a) catch lightning in a bottle and have them pitch like they are 30 again or b) marketing reasons, then that last season won't be very good and possibly worse than the voluntary retirees last season.
You know Charlie Walser? Has the place east of Sanderson?...
ReplyDeleteWell you know how they used to slaughter beeves, hit 'em with a maul right here to stun 'em... and then slit their throats?...
Well here Charlie has one trussed up and all set to drain him and the beef comes to. It starts thrashing around, six hundred pounds of very pissed-off livestock if you'll pardon me... Charlie grabs his gun there to shoot the damn thing in the head but what with the swingin' and twistin' it's a glance-shot and ricochets around and comes back hits Charlie in the shoulder. You go see Charlie, he still can't reach up with his right hand for his hat...
Point bein', even in the contest between man and steer the issue is not certain.
And so the research:
ReplyDeleteHere are the 10 guys who have reached 300 wins in my memory: R. Johnson, Glavine, Seaver, Perry, Niekro, Sutton, Ryan, Carlton, Clemens, Maddux.
Here are the first 10 guys under 300 wins, also in my memory: John (288), Blyleven (287), Jenkins (284), Kaat (283), Mussina (270), Palmer (268), Morris (254), Gibson (251), D. Martinez (245), Pettitte (240).
OK, here are the ERA+ and IP of the guys who won 300 games the year before they reached 300 games: Johnson 119 in 184 innings; Glavine 114 in 198 innings; Seaver 105 in 236.2 innings; Perry 91 in 150.2 innings; Niekro 136 in 215.2 innings; Sutton 107 in 226 innings; Ryan 124 in 239.1 innings; Carlton 119 in 295.2 innings (won the Cy Young); Clemens 102 in 180 innings; and Maddux 108 in 218.1 innings.
So, only one guy who didn't have an above average ERA and some of them really quite good.
Now for the last seasons of the other group: John 67 ERA+ in 63.2 innings; Blyleven 84 in 133 innings; Jenkins 88 in 167.1 innings; Kaat 95 in 34.2 innings; Mussina 132 in 200.1 innings; Palmer 43 in 17.2 innings; Morris 83 in 146.1 innings; Gibson 76 in 109 innings; D. Martinez 94 in 91 innings; and Pettitte 130 in 129 innings. Mussina and Pettitte are the definite outliers in this group and Pettitte's innings are much lower than almost everyone on the 300 win list.
So, my conclusion is that, yes, the 300 win guys did reach 300 wins because they pitched into their forties, but no, it wasn't because they wanted to pitch into their forties, but because they still COULD pitch and pitch very effectively. The non 300 game winners (for the most part) pitched until they were ineffective, then they stopped.
Scoops
ReplyDeleteClemens was great in 2005, but one thing I think his season points out (in comparison to Carpenter, who I think did win the Cy Young) is that the difference between an 18 to 21 out pitcher (as Clemens was that year) and a 21 to 24 out pitcher (as Carpenter was) is more than just the 3 outs.
That year, Carpenter handed the ball to Isringhausen (presumably the best non-starting pitcher the Cardinals had) with a lead (or finished the game himself) 10 times. Clemens only handed the ball to Lidge once all year with a lead. ONCE. Which means, he had to rely on other pitchers to get the game to Lidge, to get those "set-up" outs.
We can say the bullpen failed Clemens at times, and it probably did, but he was setting up the bullpen to fail, by not pitching deep enough into the game and relying on the 10th best pitcher on the Astros (because that is how every manager in baseball does it) to get the 20th out of the game.
"OK, I guess I might be misreading your comment, but you seem to at least intimating that the 300 game winners are just hanging around to get to 300 wins and are not really quality pitchers anymore, and that guys like Mussina and Pettitte chose not to do that, which is the only reason they didn't reach 300 wins."
ReplyDelete...Partially?
There's "quality pitcher", which is like, 90-110 ERA+, and then there's the point when you've clearly left your prime, and those aren't mutually exclusive. I don't think that the main motivator for the guys who got 300 was "THREE-HUNDRED WINS", it was "I want to pitch and make money as long as I think that I'll be good, and whatever happens happens.", but the specter of a big stat mark is always there. I mean, reduced quality for Greg Maddux is still really damned good, and a way better risk than Same Ol' Brian Moehler or whatever, so it's not like they can't be facilitated.
@Larry- correct, I had a brain cramp there and did indeed mean Hernandez.
ReplyDeleteThe way Joe feels about wins is the way I feel about most of Joe's prized stats: interesting, comforting for those of a certain mindset, but not terribly satisfying.
ReplyDeleteBut what I like about wins is that they will simply NOT be isolated, parsed and served in appropriate portions to each of the line-items we used to call Players. A win is the atom of baseball, the point of the whole deal. It doesn't split so easy. Which is cool! I like the fact that some pitchers, for wholly anecdotal reasons, seem to cause the rest of their team to play better. Far from a statistical annoyance, it entirely germane to the point of the game--certainly more so than statistical individuation.
Robert, thankyou! I am SO tired of reading, and people telling me that Grienke is having some dominant, incredible, amazing season because he is K'ing a lot. He is not. Its taken him all season just to get up to average. His team scores a TON of runs for him, so he has a bunch of home wins. On the road, he is a terrible pitcher.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me that everyone on the "Top 10 pitchers since 1950 in wins when they allowed four or more runs" list is either in, going to be in, or wouldn't be laughed out of an argument about, the Hall of Fame.
ReplyDeleteAll I know is what my very favorite scene in the entire Harry Potter book series is, that I went into the last movie thinking it was the only thing they absolutely had to get right, and that, indeed, they butchered it.
ReplyDeleteIt is when Neville Longbottom (who, remember, began the series as a pathetic schlumpf) stands up to Voldemort, is about to be killed for his trouble, reaches into the Sorting Hat, pulls out the sword of Godric Gryffindor, and whacks Nagini's head off.
It's fascinating in my opinion that for the "Top 12 pitchers considering that 1950 within is the winner once they permitted several or higher runs" record is actually in, likely to be inside, or may not be giggled beyond a disagreement regarding, the particular Hallway of Fame.
ReplyDeletehttp://fashoionstyles.com/
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