When Wins Matter

One of the traditional baseball statistics most eschewed by modern sabermetric types is pitcher's Wins (and, implicitly, losses). Like Runs Batted In and Runs Scored, these constitute assigning credit for a team accomplishment somewhat arbitrarily to an individual player. There's just so much confounding the causal link between individual performance and the statistical record that the latter is a really terrible tool for measuring the former. It's just not hard for even a mediocre pitcher to put up 15+ wins on a really great team, especially if it's a great offensive team, and conversely even a great pitcher can have a hard time getting much above a .500 record on a poor team. You want to look at things like the pitcher's ERA, or even to go beyond that in looking only at those things that are most under a pitcher's control.

But I think there are cases when the Win is a very good way to measure a player's performance. Take last night's Mets game, for instance. They were playing the Twins, in Minnesota, in fact. The Twins recently acquired an open-air stadium, and in April in Minneapolis that can lead to games being played in some odd weather. Specifically, when the game began it was snowing. The Mets put up five runs in the first inning against Twins starter Vance Worley. Then Jon Niese gave up a couple of runs in the bottom of the first. Then the Mets put up five more in the top of the second, against Worley and a relief pitcher who came on with 0 outs in the inning and went on to pitch into the sixth. This was, rather clearly, a day on which it was going to be difficult to pitch well, due to the weather. In such a situation, with a huge lead in his pocket and in tough conditions, I would assert that what mattered was not so much that Niese pitch well in the conventional sense, i.e. prevent runs from scoring. No, what mattered was that he get the win. Go five innings, don't cough up the lead, and get into the clubhouse giving the bullpen only a moderately large amount of work to do. And he did just that, putting up zeroes in the second, third, and fourth innings before surrendering three runs, one earned, in the bottom of the fifth. Then the bullpen came on, shut the Twins down, and the Mets won the game. Mission accomplished.

Niese didn't have a particularly good line last night. He pitched five innings, he gave up five runs, three earned, while walking four and striking out just one. But he got the win. And he got the win by handling the adverse conditions better than the opposing team's starter. In these specific circumstances, that's really all that matters, even though usually you want a lot more out of your starter than just eking out a nominal Win. Jon Niese didn't pitch particularly well last night, but he did what he needed to do, and both he and the Mets were rewarded with a victory.