I may be very well wrong, but I was confused by a stat.
I was under the impression that if a starting pitcher doesn’t complete at least four innings then he was not eligible for the win. Twice already in the preseason I’ve noticed that starting pitchers only go two innings but still earn the win. Are there different rules in the preseaon? (Yes I know it’s all unofficial)
If I’m wrong about this, are there any different rules from pre to post season?
The rules are the same. In early spring training games, though, no pitcher goes more than an inning or two. So you have a starter going two innnings, and a series of pitchers going one inning each. Assuming the team jumped into a lead in the first inning, the rules do allow the official scorer to determine who pitched most effectively and who gets the win. Since spring training wins are meaningless, no one really cares.
It doesn’t happen in the regular season because no team wants to burn through 6-7 pitchers in nine innings. If the starter is pitching well, he stays in. In spring training, the starter can be pitching great, but he comes out after his scheduled innings.
Same in the postseason (though there could be a chance where you did it if, say, it was the 7th game of the series.). However, if it happened, then the official scorer would have to determine which pitcher gets the win.
Five innings in most cases (rule 10.17(b)) unless the winning team plays only five defensive innings, such as in a rain-shortened game, in which case four is sufficient.
The rules are not the same.
Rule 10.17(b) clearly states that the official scorer must designate a **relief pitcher ** as the winning pitcher if the starting pitcher does not pitch a sufficient number of innings. Even if the starter was the most effective pitcher, even if he was the ONLY effective pitcher, he cannot be the winning pitcher of any game in which he does not pitch five innings (or four if the game lasts only five innings.)
The rules in spring training ARE in fact different. Rule 10.17(b) is disregarded in spring training. It’s also disregarded in All-Star games.
There’s another obvious way to tell that rules are different for Spring Training (and All-Star) games: “real” baseball games cannot end in a tie, which many ST games do, and the 2002 All-Star game did (rather embarrassingly) after both leagues ran out of pitchers in extra innings due to the practice of getting everybody in for just an inning or two.