A reliever who blows a save should not get the win!

The BBQ Pit
1

It happened again yesterday. With the Red Sox up 4-1 in the ninth, the once-reliable closer Keith Foulke came in and promptly let Oakland get 4 runs and the lead. But Octavio Dotel fortunately grooved one to Varitek in the bottom of the inning and Boston got the win anyway.

And so did Foulke. Not Matt Clement, who’d worked the first 7 and done very well, but has nothing to show for it. No, the win went to the guy who had done his best to get a loss.

It ain’t fair. Starters get discriminated against. They have to go 5 full innings to qualify for a win, but a reliever can get one without even throwing a pitch. But the real injustice is allowing a reliever who blows a save to get the win anyway. The BS should disqualify him from that, with the win going to the guy who would have had it if the closer had actually closed. And what good is the 5-inning rule, anyway? Whose rights does it protect?

Foulke owes Clement. Owes him big-time. Only the fact that this happens all the time in baseball should keep Clement from being pissed.
Change the rule, MLB. It’s time.

2

I’m against changing statistic rule about what constitutes a win. I don’t fancy going back and refiguring the pitching stats from the beginning of time. If a reliever vultures a win out of a blown save now and again, so what? W-Ls aren’t the definitive way to measure a pitcher’s effectiveness anymore so what does it matter?

3

Frankly, I think they should just ditch the win and save rules entirely. Too arbitrary and useless in figuring out who is the better pitcher.

4

Exactly. You don’t care about a closer’s win-loss record, you care about his effectiveness in saving games.

5

As opposed to the arbitrary decision of the official scorer? I don’t see any problem with the rules; good and bad even out in the long run.

6

I think the official scorer thing is dumb, too. Errors, wins, losses, save…out with it all. There’s better stuff out there nowadays.

7

I concur about unbalance of giving a W to a pitcher who blows the save. But IMHO, middle relievers are the real firemen & have the most to gripe about. Closers get the glory, stats and larger paychecks - MR’s get inherited runners and sore shoulders.

8

So, what happens in a case like Foulke’s yesterday?

I know he gets the Win, but does it also count as a blown save on his stats, or is that out the window too?

9

Balls and strikes are old hat too. Hell, just do away with runs, the winner of the game can be decided by phone-ins to a 900 number. :smiley:

10

Nope, he gets both the blown save and the win.

11

Thanks.

12

Just out of interest, what “better stuff” are you thinking of?

13

ERA, WHIP, VORP, etc. Along with peripherals like K/9, K/BB, etc.

14

Please don’t make me stop following baseball just because I wasn’t a math major.

15

You don’t need to understand how to calculate them. Just understand that the higher a pitcher’s VORP the more valuable he is.

16

Er, what the hell are WHIP and VORP?

Remember, i’m an immigrant furriner who’s still getting used to your funny sports.

I agree that ERA, K/9, and K/BB make more sense than things like wins, because those statistics don’t depend on how good your team’s batting lineup is. You could be the greatest pitcher ever, with an ERA of 2.1, but if your hitters can’t score more than two runs a game you’re still not going to get many wins.

17

WHIP is walks + hits/inning pitched. I don’t know what VORP is.

18

VORP

19

This also happened with Ryan Dempster yesterday, blowing the win for Prior, then winning the game after blowing the save. I agree with most of what’s been said already, though, about wins/losses, etc… although at the end of the year, looking at Cy Young Voting, etc, accumulating 20 wins is a nice feat, hard to do, and many good pitchers never get there because of crappy closers.

I personally think that WHIP is one of the best measures of a pitchers greatness:

It is (Walks + Hits) / Innings Pitched. The lower, the better. Under 1.0 is great.

Essentially, you could have a pitcher that walked no one (ala Greg Maddux) but gives up quite a few hits… his WHIP would be close to somebody like Kerry Wood, who gives up very few hits, but walks a whole bunch of guys.

Finding a pitcher who does both well (controls walks and hits) is hard to find. I think that Jason Schmidt usually has a low WHIP (I haven’t looked) as he has dominating control and simply doesn’t give up many hits.

Much better indication of how good a pitcher is… Strikeouts per inning ratio is good too, over a long period of time…

20

Thanks folks. Some of my baseball ignorance has been fought (although there’s still plenty left to fight).