Should We Care About The Win?

Justin Verlander of the San Francisco Giants (Suzanna Mitchell/San Francisco Giants/Getty Images)

We all should care about winning, particularly winning World Series championships. Ring culture is alive and well, yet we’ve seen a nosedive in the perceived value of the win as a pitcher’s stat. Starting pitchers must pitch five innings in a nine inning game with the lead intact to receive the win. If not, it goes to the most effective relief pitcher according to the official scorer. Those who argue and rail against the win as a stat are generally stat-forward people ironically, who love advanced derivative stats that need a formula to exist. A win or a home run, for example, does not need an algorithm to be measured. The stat-forward group tends to use a pitcher with awesome stuff that doesn’t stay healthy and wins a lot of games, enter Jacob DeGrom. DeGrom is the most dominant right-handed starter of the generation, but he’s never won more than 15 games in a season. He’s only won double digits games four times in his career, and those are also the four seasons he’s thrown 150+ innings. He’s won two Cy Young awards in his illustrious day job, but you wouldn’t know by looking at his win totals. He has a historically good 2.49 ERA and hasn’t even cracked 100 wins yet at 37 years old?

Bill James 2023 Tweet on MLB Statistics (X)

I grew up reading Bill James and his annual handbook, so I’ll refer to his quote above to aid my point that wins still matter. It is true that a veteran on the Dodgers or Yankees will rack up more wins than a pitcher of a similar caliber on the Pirates or Tigers. In 2010 for example, Félix Hernández won the AL ERA crown with a 2.27 ERA, but went 13-12 regardless because the Mariners were awful. To me, there is no doubt you need multiple statistics to get a sense of the value that a pitcher brings. WHIP or K rate are great metrics, but they don’t tell you the whole story. If they did, we wouldn’t have elected Jim Palmer into the Hall of Fame. That would be a mistake, of course, because he and his 5K/9 won three Cy Young awards in four years, as well as three World Series rings. We are in the age of data and analytics, and there is a huge incentive for kids to have the best stuff and maximize their velocity. As they do so, injuries mount and fewer pitchers than ever are even eligible for a win in an MLB game because they haven’t thrown five innings. More starters are also having trouble facing an MLB lineup for a third time, an issue that legends like Randy Johnson or Nolan Ryan rarely encountered. Well, there you have the first story that wins tell: can you throw five innings with a lead intact?

Jim Palmer MLB Profile (Baseball Reference)

A second piece of information the win tells you: can you accomplish your goal? Quality starts are great, but ultimately you are there to win the game. Do we ever point to a team at the end of the year that missed the playoffs and rave about their pythagorean records? I’m sure we could find a nerd or two that does, but there is a general consensus that missing the playoffs means you are a loser and the season is a failure. Even if you are rebuilding, how is it a failure to provide your organization and fanbase with at least a playoff berth? The 1993 Mets went 59-103, despite a Pythagorean record of 73-89? Since the actual win record is way off from where the ‘93 Mets should have landed, is it now a throwaway statistic? If we do acknowledge that wins are a destination stat for a team despite its flaws, why can’t we deploy individual wins as a meaningful metric for starting pitching?

1993 Mets Actual Record Vs. Pythagorean (Baseball Reference)

There are more than three arguments, but we’ll keep it to three for today. My third point in advocacy for the win is that we exist in context as we live our lives, so why shouldn’t players be judged in context? Sure, it is probably not realistic to expect someone to even catch Justin Verlander and his 260+ wins anytime soon, forget 300 wins. The highest total for a pitcher under 30 years old right now is 62 wins, an underwhelming stat belonging to Logan Webb. Webb is awesome, but not when you compare his win total to generations of the past. 62 wins at 28 years old is impressive today, demonstrating his durability, competitiveness, and consistency. We can’t expect Logan to get 250 wins, it’s not going to happen. For a ridiculous comparison, Walter Johnson had 231 wins by 28 years old, but that was 100 years ago and the Big Train was unstoppable. If we look past Verlander, who won’t make it to 300 wins, the guys right behind him are dinosaurs. Gerrit Cole has 153 wins, but he’ll be 35 years old in his next start coming off a Tommy John surgery; it’ll be a challenge to get to 200 wins. No one else in the top 10 even has a shot at 200, José Berríos and Aaron Nola are the only active veterans with a real shot after Cole. Nola is 32 years old with 105 wins, while José Berríos is 31 years old with 102.

2025 Active MLB Win Leaders (Baseball Reference)

Even if we can’t compare generation to generation on an even playing field, we can compare guys to their peers. The context of the generation is similar to the context of the game, can you beat the pitcher in the other dugout? Old timers used to pitch differently in a 6-0 game than they did in a 1-1 game. Why shouldn’t they pitch differently? Why not pitch to contact when you’re up by six runs? You may give up an extra couple of homers a year, but you also stay healthy by not utilizing your max effort every pitch of the game. Hunter Greene of the Reds have started implementing this old school mindset, stating a desire to keep his max velo for later in the game. He’s also expressed an obligation to go deep in games as the ace of the club, a mindset I like to hear from a young star. Veteran pitchers like Greg Maddux and CC Sabathia have discussed the art of pitching versus throwing, and that philosophy plays a role in how guys approach the game. 200 innings of 3.80 ball is better than 80 innings of Jacob DeGrom or Tyler Glasnow, despite what the Dodgers may think. These days, it’s also considerably cheaper. The K rate cult has dominated the MLB so severely that Jose Quintana barely got a deal last year and Wade Miley barely got one two years ago. I’m not saying these metrics don’t matter, but we can think dynamically. Wins and RBI are mutually exclusive from K rate and FIP.