2016 MLB Regular-Season Thread

No mention of the first 9-3-2-6-2-5 triple play in MLB history?

 

If you're touting his complete games as a metric of his greatness, then the wins and losses don't matter in that case either.

 

That was fun. Usually the White Sox are the ones running bases like that.

 

What does that tell you that innings don't?

 

How often said pitcher pitched well enough to hold a lead that stood up. I believe wins are more significant for a pitcher the worse his team was. For anybody to win 20 for those Angels was quite the feat. You can use any stat you want to show how amazing Steve Carlton was in 1972, but I think you're ignoring the elephant in the room when you don't mention he went 27-10 for a team that didn't win 60.

 

Who's the greatest pitcher who should have dozens more wins, who was let down by his bullpen year after year?

You know, is there a guy who had 168 wins but should have had 229?

Or a guy who had 257 who should have had 309, drastically changing his Hall prospects?

 

If Carlton were 10-27 that season, he still would have been just as good. People would say he wasn't.

 

There's no one like that. Wins are certainly a good thumbnail guide to how a pitcher performed, particularly over a lengthy career, because they correlate well with pitcher performance. But they do not independently tell you anything about how a pitcher performed. You should ignore them.

 

I don't necessarily want to use it for in-depth analysis. But there have to be a handful of guys who got rooked out of 40-50 wins because of shoddy pens.

 

Chris Sale?

 

Assuming all other things are equal, Carlton couldn't have been just as good if he was 10-27 unless all the other Phillies had been much worse. Since they were worse than the '62 Mets on days he didn't pitch, that seems scarcely possible. The 27=10 record is the stat that jumps off the page. It's not, this guy was great for a lousy ballclub, it's this guy was great enough that season to make a lousy ballclub a winner by himself.

 

I dunno, King Felix was 13-12 for a 61-win team and won the Cy Young. He was clearly recognized as the best in his league despite a meh record for a Phillie-ish team.