Posted by Jtpsops on 9/7/2014 7:04:00 PM (view original):
Anyone who doesn't look at wins is a fool. Does it mean anything by itself? No. But a pitcher with a .667 winning percentage over a 3 year span is clearly a guy who gives his team a chance to win every time he takes the mound. Tillman always has his team in position to win the games he starts. I'll take that all day every day.
That's bull. You can prove it by simple extension. The sum of your pitchers' records is your team's record. The Orioles have a better record than the Mariners. By your logic, that would strongly imply that the Orioles have a better pitching staff than the Mariners. Which is hilariously far from the truth. Felix Hernandez has a .577 career winning percentage. That's 18th among active pitchers (Tillman doesn't have enough decisions to qualify). At most 1 or 2 of those pitchers are better than King Felix. Matt Cain and Hiroki Kuroda are .500 for their careers. Matt Garza and Aaron Harang are below .500. Does that make them "worse" in your view than guys with great winning percentages (over 55%), like Scott Baker, Shaun Marcum, Jorge de la Rosa, or Ervin Santana? It's not like there are a few examples of pitchers for whom W/L is a horrible indicator of pitching prowess. There are better than a dozen active right now, easily over 100 in the history of the game.
I would say anyone who DOES look at wins very hard is a fool. Total waste of time and distraction from meaningful stats.