Getting the ‘W’ is still important for MLB pitchers
Given that the average MLB start by a pitcher is just under 5 1/3 innings it’s less likely that a starting pitcher will record the win since it takes five full innings to qualify to record a win by a starter. Recording the loss for your team as a starter is much easier since there are no innings limitations on being a losing pitcher.
Starting pitchers are throwing an average of 86 pitches per start through early May this season, courtesy of FanGraphs. Managers are more reluctant than ever to allow the starting pitcher to face a lineup for a third time in a game. Analytics are the main reason, and analytics don’t lie. A starting pitcher’s effectiveness is inversely proportional to the number of innings and total pitches they’ve thrown during a start.
Managers and teams don’t really care — and shouldn’t — which pitcher gets credited with the win for the team. Starting pitchers don’t agree since in part they are still paid for being the winning pitcher and it’s a measure of their performance vs. pitchers of the past and future.
Baseball is a ‘team’ sport isn’t it?
But why does baseball, a team sport, need to award a player, (a pitcher), with a recorded win? The primary reason is that for the first 120 years of professional baseball, the starting pitcher pitched the entire game, or almost the entire game. It was easy to see who the pitcher was, and rarely did another pitcher outclass a starter even in the rare instance that starter did not make it through five innings. Middle relief pitchers, and relief pitchers in general, were hurlers not good enough to be starting pitchers. If they were pitching things had not gone so well. Late game ‘closers’ did not really come into vogue until the 1970s, and aside from workhorses like Rich Gossage, Hoyt Wilhelm, Sparky Lyle and few others, closers, (who were not called that at the time), didn’t pitch more than an inning plus.
In addition to pitching more innings than their modern-day counterparts, pitching staffs of the 1990’s and prior, had four and five men rotations being the norm. A fifth starter was tapped to give the other four pitchers an extra day of rest every now and then. Oakland A’s star Dave Stewart had five consecutive seasons with 35 starts or more from 1987–1991 including two with 37 starts. Stewart won 20 games or more in four of those five seasons. In 2024 a starting pitcher if healthy will start 32 games or less AND pitch fewer overall innings. Stewart averaged 257 IP over that five-year period. In 2023, Logan Webb of the Giants led all MLB with 216 IP and only four other pitchers exceeded 200 innings.
When a starting pitcher does not make it through five innings, leaves the game with a lead, and his team wins the game never having trailed after the starter departed, that game’s Official Scorer is given the responsibility of choosing the winning pitcher. The one that is deemed the most effective. It’s been one of baseball’s traditions for a long time but not as long as one might think.
From a 2013 SABR article by Frank Vaccaro.
The standard appears in the rulebook in time for the 1950 season. That makes Washington pitcher Ray Scarborough’s opening day victory on April 18, 1950, the first modern assigned win in baseball history, a game in which Harry Truman, some might say, threw out the “first pitch.” Of course, Scarborough wasn’t the first pitcher to win a game after pitching five innings: baseball history is chock full of five-inning wins dating back to the old National Association. But of those, Scarborough was the first pitcher to take a shower knowing full well that the “win” was in his pocket, so to speak, provided the Nationals never lost the lead.
Baseball legend Henry Chadwick — inventor of the scorecard, is credited with creating the pitcher win.
The win was invented in 1884 by Henry Chadwick and he published National League individual totals in the 1885 Spalding Guide. The practice did not catch on. The loss came later. On July 7, 1888, The Sporting News for the first-time published win-loss records, and only then after the following disclaimer:
It seems to place the whole game upon the shoulders of the pitcher, and I don’t believe it will ever become popular even with so learned a gentleman as Mr. Chadwick to father it. Certain it is that many an execrable pitcher game is won by heavy hitting at the right moment after the pitcher has done his best to lose it.
Chadwick was right about a lot of things, but he was not right about pitcher wins, which never went away.
Awarding a starting pitcher a win before 1950 included something called ‘The Injury Exception’. It does not make things clearer.
The principal exception used by official scorers from the Deadball Era all the way to 1949 was the injury. Any pitcher injured was released from any minimum innings requirement — most of the time. Of 58 post-1917 games in which the starting pitcher had the lead but was injured before completing five innings, 34, or 59 percent, went for wins.
There were also exceptions for weather-shortened games. The AL enforced a three-inning minimum in 1949, while the NL required four innings in these shortened games. It was not until 1950 that it was codified in both leagues that a starting pitcher must pitch five full innings to qualify to be the game’s winning pitcher.
The Athletic’s Tyler Kepner wrote a recent column in which he talked with pitchers about the ‘W. ’ One of them suggested that how maybe four innings from a starting pitcher should be the new standard for recording a win. The way starting pitchers pitch today, vs. 30 years ago, has changed and not acknowledging that change, displays a level of ignorance.
Baseball fans have already acknowledged that pitcher wins are not as important as they once were. The Mariners Felix Hernandez won a Cy Young with a 13–12 record in 2010 sending shock waves throughout baseball. Jacob DeGrom while with the Mets won consecutive Cy Young awards carding a 10–9 record in 2018 and a 11–8 record in 2019. Wins were not the determining factor in evaluating any of those exceptional seasons by those pitchers.
Getting rid of the ‘W’
Should MLB do away with the win altogether? That would remove some important connective tissue to baseball’s earliest days. Jack Chesbro of the New York Highlanders (Yankees) won 41 games in 1904. Those days are over as are the days when pitchers routinely reached 20 wins in a season. Currently injured Brave Spencer Strider reached 20 wins in 2023, accomplishing that feat with a great hitting team supporting him in only 32 starts. Over the past 10 seasons including the pandemic season of 2020, only eight MLB pitchers have recorded 20 wins in one season. We’re moving further away from 20-win seasons for pitchers.
The concept could use some refinement. Of course I have a suggestion.
A simple alteration would be to allow the official scorer to determine who the most effective pitcher was, independent of how many innings were pitched by any pitcher. Consider that as it now stands, a pitcher could pitch 4 2/3 shutout innings, leave the game with a big lead, a lead that the following relievers almost choke up, but the starter’s team still wins the game. None of the other pitchers were demonstrably better than the starter, but the official scorer is mandated to choose from what were obviously lesser options. That’s doesn’t sound or feel right. So why are things continuing to be done the same old way? Making it one inning less for a starter (four innings complete instead of five), is a good place to start.
Here’s what I wrote about the Mets this past week:
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/mets-pitching-coach-jeremy-hefner-needs-to-help-the-catchers/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/22-games-from-now-the-mets-will-know-more-about-their-chances/
https://mlbreport.com/2024/05/brandon-nimmo-as-mr-met/
About the Author: Mark Kolier along with his son Gordon co-hosts a baseball podcast called ‘Almost Cooperstown’. He also has written baseball-related articles that can be accessed on Medium.com and Substack.com.
