Some followers of baseball way back in 1869 knew enough to realize that pitcher wins and losses were bullshit. So why has this erroneous habit of attributing victories and defeats to pitchers remained in vogue for an additional 152 years despite the continued improvement in ways of estimating pitching performance?
One of the errors of old-time ball-playing was that of attributing every defeat and every victory to the lack of skill, or an excess of it in the pitchers of the nines. It was never then considered that so long as chances for putting players out were offered off the pitching that the pitcher did his duty, and also that is was only when he was badly punished, that is, when the batsmen made bases off his pitching by clean hits easily, that he could be justly charged with the loss of a game. We have noticed that the erroneous estimate of a pitcher's skill which charges him with the results of bad support in the field, and which credits him with the results of skillful fielding or poor batting, is still in vogue among certain classes of the fraternity, although the condition of things as regards an estimate of good and bad pitching is being improved each season.
New York Sunday Mercury, September 19, 1869 (my emphasis)
Plus, they were pro-shift!
[from Answers to Correspondents] Will you inform me . . .whether a short-stop should change his position when a left-handed striker goes to the bat; and should the second-base man take the position he has vacated?
{Short stop should go to right-short, and second-base man between second base and short-stop's position.}
New York Sunday Mercury, November 21, 1869 (my emphasis)
3 comments:
Two subjects that boggle my mind too.
The pitcher "win" stat is something I figured out as a young child: Yeah, you get the "win" if you give up 20 runs and your team scores 21. And you go 0-20 if you lose 1-0 every game, but, ya know, we still are able to record/recall what happened *besides* just who "won" or "lost"! Duh! Not a revolutionary idea.
And the shift: play where you think they'll hit it, knowing that the hitter has every right to try and hit it where you aren't! I still can't believe the OFFENSE would be the side complaining about this! "Stop leaving half the field wide open for me! How DARE you!"
For decades, baseball people thought walks were garbage. Get the bat off your shoulder, you can't walk off the island, etc., etc.
I suppose they still do, to some extent, since it's not even counted as an at-bat. Which means it's all the pitcher's fault. For the batter, it's like it never happened.
How did no one really understand that if you walked . . . you got on base and you did not make an out! The two best things you can do as a batter.
The pitcher "win" stat is something I figured out as a young child: Yeah, you get the "win" if you give up 20 runs and your team scores 21. And you go 0-20 if you lose 1-0 every game, but, ya know, we still are able to record/recall what happened *besides* just who "won" or "lost"! Duh! Not a revolutionary idea.
And that stupid thought really only works if pitchers throw complete games every single time.
Since they doesn't, it's even more stupid.
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