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Like a few other traditional measures of baseball performance, a pitcher’s win-loss record is really useful only at the margins. If a moundsman wins 24 games, then, yes, he was probably otherwise very good. On the other end of the continuum, if a pitcher goes, say, 3-17, then you can rightly badume he didn’t do a great job of keeping runs off the board.
In the vast middle territory, however, pitcher wins and losses don’t tell us much in terms of pitcher-to-pitcher comparisons. Wins are in part a product of pitcher performance, yes, but they’re just as much the product of run support and bullpen support. Wins and losses at the team level are the most important stats of all. At the level of the pitcher, though, they obfuscate more than they illuminate. That is to say, they belong in the standings and not in discussions of pitcher worth.
All of that brings us to Jacob deGrom. The Mets’ right-hander on Wednesday was named the National League Cy Young award winner for 2018. It was also not a close call, as deGrom took 29 of 30 first-place votes. That stands to reason, as deGrom pitched to a sparkling 1.70 ERA while working 217 innings — a motherlode by 2018 standards — and striking out almost one-third of the batters he faced. His was truly one of the most dominant pitching seasons of his era. There’s also this …
Yes, deGrom won a measly 10 games against nine defeats. Never has a starting pitcher won so few games and still claimed the Cy Young award. Time was when, of course, Cy Young voters valued wins and losses most of all, and less than a generation ago deGrom might not have finished in the top five, measly ERA notwithstanding.
Times, though, have changed. Now voters pay attention to the terrible run support deGrom received (the Mets scored just 3.5 runs per nine innings in his starts). They observe that deGrom allowed three runs or fewer in 31 of his 32 starts this season; two runs or fewer in 23 starts; and one or zero runs in 18 starts. They may have even noticed was tagged with the loss despite pitching a quality start on nine different occasions this past season. We could go on. The point is that voters recognized that deGrom excelled when it comes to things he could most control. His teammates, however, did not …
Brutal but factual. So deGrom — despite being tied for 22nd in the NL in wins (tied with, among others, Chris Stratton and Luis Castillo) and despite having fewer wins on the season than Max Scherzer and Aaron Nola had at the All-Star break — was one vote from being the 13th unanimous Cy Young winner in NL history. Progress is what that is.
Voters simply aren’t paying attention to the win all that much anymore. The complete marginalization of the pitcher win will come when we have a starting pitcher who wins the Cy Young despite a losing record. DeGrom going into his final two starts of the regular season was 8-9, so he could’ve been the test case. Alas and alack, he allowed one run total over those final two starts, and not even the Mets’ offense could muck that up.
So is the win dead? Nah. As long as we keep counting pitcher wins and losses and festooning baseball cards and television broadcasts with them, it isn’t dead. DeGrom’s routing of all comers in the 2018 AL Cy Young balloting, however, proves that the pitcher win is more irrelevant than it’s ever been.
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