MLB 2018 regular season thread

Kershaw is 1-4, matching his loss total for each of the past two seasons. Don't let the 2.84 ERA fool you. He's cooked.

 

Taillon > Kershaw

 

I know wins don't matter, but seasons like Guidry's 25-3 or Gooden's 24-4 still stand out to me.

Carlton's 1972 season predates my memory, but a 27-10 season for a terrible team still seams like a hell of an achievement.

Same goes for McLain's 31-6 season in 1968.

I'd still love so see someone challenge these numbers. It's such a charmed season, so it kills me when a dominant pitcher gets robbed of a win by a terrible offense.

The 30 win season is probably impossible, given the number of starts. (And, it's pretty incredible that both Carlton and McLain both had 37 decisions.)

 

You could have stopped here.

 

I'm just saying, old habits die hard.

Even though I know wins don't matter, I want to see a pitcher have a 25-3 season. I just do.

 

I think it's still fun to celebrate a 25-win season. It's still an accomplishment, even if it doesn't really mean what we thought it once meant. It's usually a combination of a good pitcher, a good team and luck coming together. And if it comes on a bad team, that's even more fun to celebrate. We just shouldn't base the player's value on that feat.

 

Acuna Matata, y'all:



(Also, nice catch by the fan).

 

I actually think wins are going to come back around as useful shorthand, and may have already. You don't get to 15 or 20 wins without sticking around at least until the seventh inning, which by itself is getting more and more rare.

We've seen quality starts take on more meaning lately, and that was something we all thought was junk in previous decades.

 

I don't disagree with this, and I think the last 10-15 years has been an exercise in re-establishing ground rules, in a way.

We have now long recognized that baseball is an individual sport embedded within a team sport, and the stats that "matter" reflect that reality. That said, even before, wins and RBIs weren't solely intended to trump individual stats, or they shouldn't have been. What they do is help tell you how a season's has gone. How fun it has been.

 

wins do matter. They're part of the puzzle. They're not paramount, but to say they don't matter is dishonest.

 

I have said this a million times:

They do not tell me anything that better statistics do not tell me, without the high risk of introducing irrelevant factors into the evaluation. (Offensive support. Bullpen performance.)

What's what I mean when I say they don't matter.

I don't mean that a 22-5 pitcher is equally likely to have been effective that season as a 9-16 pitcher.

 

When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed · Say something once, why say it again?