Nolan had a couple tough losses but nothing historic in 9 innings.

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In 1987 he went 8-16 and lead the league in ERA.

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And don't forget, he lead the majors in strikeouts that year with 270. The ultimate hard luck season.

Safe at Home said:

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In 1987 he went 8-16 and lead the league in ERA.

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And don't forget, he lead the majors in strikeouts that year with 270. The ultimate hard luck season.

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I remember that season, he was incredible, the offense when he pitched, not so much.

The Astros making a move on the Yankees for best record in the AL. After the Yankees lost tonight to Rangers, Astros only two games back.

Boston has the best record in the AL.

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I remember that season, he was incredible, the offense when he pitched, not so much.

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What I remember about it was a game late in the season when he was pitching. There was a ground ball to first baseman Glenn Davis. Nolan ran to cover the bag but Davis bobbled the ball or made a bad throw to first, not sure, for an error. Nolan chewed him out on the field. Not like him at all to have done that, but his frustration just boiled over that day.

Diggity said:

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Just goes to show how useless the W-L metric is. People have figured that out now.

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well, I could argue that the current W-L marks of the Astros starters...is very indicative of how they have pitched

Safe at Home said:

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In 1987 he went 8-16 and lead the league in ERA.

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And don't forget, he lead the majors in strikeouts that year with 270. The ultimate hard luck season.

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Or 1984 when Jose Cruz led the team with 12 home runs!

BTW I think the only thing we are disagreeing on is the meaning of the word "useless".

k20dub said:

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Game today starts at 5:10. Watch the Astros for 3 hours then switch to the Rockets game right after at 8.

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Why starting so early in Cleveland

Don't those people have jobs

I am pretty sure we agree on what useless means. It literally means nothing about how a pitcher performs. Nothing. I have no idea why people even refer to it anymore. That and the save. On a useless scale of 1-10 those are 10s. RBIs are about an 8.

BowSowy said:

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You can change it yourself if you go to your profile page

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updated it

Tell me a basic statistic that you think is valuable for pitchers. None of this BABIVORP sequencing **** either. Something most people in the ballpark are going to know.

Harry Dunne said:

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Tell me a basic statistic that you think is valuable for pitchers. None of this BABIVORP sequencing **** either. Something most people in the ballpark are going to know.

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I look at ERA for starting pitchers, and ERA/WHIP for relievers

Harry Dunne said:

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Tell me a basic statistic that you think is valuable for pitchers. None of this BABIVORP sequencing **** either. Something most people in the ballpark are going to know.

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ERA and WHIP for common statistics.

Groundball%, HR/9 (not perfect), K/9, and BB/9 are a little deeper but all easy to understand.

FIP and xFIP are quick and easy to decipher advanced stats that I wish was more mainstreamed. They are both comparable to ERA. They can tell you how "legit" someone's ERA is. For example, someone with an ERA of 2.50, but FIP of 4.80 and xFIP of 4.30 are almost guaranteed to not be able to maintain that 2.50 ERA.

Finally these are deep stats, but easy to understand Swinging Strike % and Average Exit Velocity.

Lastly, a pitch breakdown percentagewise of what the pitcher throws, just to know what kind of pitcher this person is...


All are infinitely more informative than Wins and Saves.

Harry Dunne said:

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Tell me a basic statistic that you think is valuable for pitchers. None of this BABIVORP sequencing **** either. Something most people in the ballpark are going to know.

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So are we saying that if the majority of our society doesn't know about something, then it isn't an effective measure?? If that's our cutoff, then I should just return my degrees.

The entire fact that people don't believe in some of the more accurate statistics is LITERALLY the only thing that provides any sort of competitive advantage for a GM...

I agree with you on all of that and like you say, every one of those is more informative that W/L (especially ERA/WHIP for basic stats), but at the same time none of those alone tells the whole story.

To me it's just a logic problem.

- A useless statistic tells you "literally nothing" about a pitchers performance.
- MOST of the time, a starting pitcher that earns a Win pitched a good game (relievers are another story)
- MOST of the time, a Win is not a useless statistic

I used to be a teacher so maybe I'm used to trying to reach the lowest common denominator (maybe I AM the lowest common denominator!). I just think that wins, even though they are very imperfect, are a simple whole number stat for the average fan and have value in that aspect.

Buck Compton said:

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Harry Dunne said:

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Tell me a basic statistic that you think is valuable for pitchers. None of this BABIVORP sequencing **** either. Something most people in the ballpark are going to know.

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So are we saying that if the majority of our society doesn't know about something, then it isn't an effective measure?? If that's our cutoff, then I should just return my degrees.

The entire fact that people don't believe in some of the more accurate statistics is LITERALLY the only thing that provides any sort of competitive advantage for a GM...

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You're getting it backwards. I think all of those statistics are more accurate and more useful. I'm just arguing that wins are not useless insomuch as they provide some context for average Joe fan.

Also I'm not one of the moron scouts from Moneyball. At this point everyone believes in advanced stats and every GM has a dozen analytics guys. Whatever the new advantage is, it's probably not these stats. It might not even be analytics #pinetar

I just can't think of any other statistic that is less in a players control than W/L record.

That, to me, makes it of little use.

Diggity said:

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I just can't think of any other statistic that is less in a players control than W/L record.

That, to me, makes it of little use.

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Eh... maybe you're right.

Maybe it's just like Boys II Men say - It's so hard to say goodbye to yesterday

W said:

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Diggity said:

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Just goes to show how useless the W-L metric is. People have figured that out now.

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well, I could argue that the current W-L marks of the Astros starters...is very indicative of how they have pitched

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Keuchel leads the AL in losses (6) while posting a 3.43 ERA. Please argue that his record is indicative of how he's pitched.

The result of a game (i.e., a win or loss) depends 50% on run scoring and 50% on run prevention. In an American League park, that's half of the responsibility immediately and irreversibly out of the pitcher's hands.

Run prevention depends in part on the defense. The exact proportion between pitching and defense will depend on the balls in play. So a pitcher may have a plurality of the responsibility, but it's far from a majority.

It gets even worse when a 1-inning reliever is the pitcher of record. That pitcher contributes relatively little to the total run prevention, and therefore even less to the final outcome.

Exhausting, isn't it.

irish pete ag06 said:

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I am pretty sure we agree on what useless means. It literally means nothing about how a pitcher performs. Nothing. I have no idea why people even refer to it anymore. That and the save. On a useless scale of 1-10 those are 10s. RBIs are about an 8.

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I can't decide if its more or less useless than saves. Both stats need to just go away.

astros4545 said:

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k20dub said:

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Game today starts at 5:10. Watch the Astros for 3 hours then switch to the Rockets game right after at 8.

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Why starting so early in Cleveland

Don't those people have jobs

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They're in EST.

Still starting early at 6:10 pm EST

IMO W-L for a starter are pointless. Dallas would be 3-6 no matter how he pitched because he's gotten 0 or 10 runs a start.

Wins are pointless for a reliever. However, I think losses for a reliever have value. To me that shows that they came in during a game they were leading or tied and surrendered the lead. While it is not the most useful for determining their success, it does show me if they are able to keep the lead when pitching.

Saves I value. It is very easy to tell a difference in pitching in the 8th versus the 9th. A guy with lots of saves tells me he's able to pitch in typically the most stressed inning.