So let me see if I’ve got this straight: you’re arguing about something not in contention, something nobody had even brought up, and you’re continuing because you enjoy doing the first two?

OK cool. Now kindly piss off.

What help is it to look at which pitchers are arbitrarily assigned credit for those wins?

Neither are a good stat in evaluating, which is what we’re all talking about.

instead of worrying about how Pitcher X did on that day based off wins and losses. If you agree that W/L record is pointless in evaluating a pitcher’s performance, why does it matter who was pitching when his team wins or loses.

The problem with BuckyB’s argument is it ath it is a lot more likely that the Rangers go 20-13 with Harden being awesome statisitcally than to go 20-13 with Harden sucking and getting lucky.

All I’m saying is that at the end of the day, if you can look back and see that Harden got 20 wins, then that is significant in terms of team success, regardless of whether he lucked his way there.

If his peripherals sucked, I would not argue for him to be Cy Young, I would not want to depend on him next season.

You’re not making any claim that they are except as they relate to team wins. Make the connection for me without telling me that pitchers control wins to a great degree.

The number of wins a team gets is whatever the pitchers are credited with. And “credit” is exactly that. It has nothing to do with how well an individual pitched. Someone can pitch great and not get a win or pitch horrible and get one.

To say “if you add up all the pitchers’ wins you find out how many wins the team had and that’s why wins are important” doesn’t make any sense. Why add those numbers up since the W/L for the team will tell you that. And that’s the point – it’s a “team” win loss record. 3 of Harden’s wins might very well belong to Hamilton.

If Harden goes 12-6 with a 6.00 FIP I’m not going to be happy. That’s because if he had pitched better his record would likely have been better than 12-6. If he goes 6-12 with a 2.50 FIP I’m cool with him but pissed at the team.

You really aren’t that bright.

You truly don’t understand correlation/causation? I mean, I learned that concept in like 5th grade.

And that’s the point. You can’t tell if Harden went 7-15 because the team couldn’t score more than 2 runs for him each time out, the bullpen screwed things up for him when he would get pulled, or because he was flat out not good. On the other hand, he could go 15-7 and end up with a 5.00 ERA thank to a magnificent offense or just getting lucky that the team bailed him out on bad days.

W/L record is useless to look at past the old baseball nostalgia of W-L record mattering.

I’m saying that in the absence of other information, the two statistics you are likely to hear about a pitcher are W-L and ERA. If you have nothing else, you have at least a ballpark estimate of what that pitcher brings to the table.

But this is the point: why would you not have anything else? Where are you going to look at how pitchers did and see only wins and ERA?

And pretending they tell you something useful is exactly the attitude that will continue to have Joe Morgan telling you wins and losses when he’s on TV instead of having someone tell you something informative.

because mike young went all child like and pouted and demanded a trade.

had he actually been a very good player, that would be one thing. but hes not.