I started this thinking it was going to be a big deal. I’m now convinced it’s important to do even though it’s a small deal. In my last post, I was discussing Justin Verlander‘s quest for 300 wins and it got me thinking about the 5 inning rule for starters. Let me start by saying that the Win was already a pretty stupid stat — probably the single worst headline stat that baseball has. It’s even worse than Game Winning RBI and they junked that one years ago.
Wins are just about the most team-dependent individual stat we have. They are not only team-dependent, they are absurdly context-dependent, particularly for relievers. If there were a proposal to so with pitcher Wins what we did with GWRBI, I’d gladly sign on. But there is zero chance of that happening. None at all. And while people now have stopped talking about wins for relievers as an index of reliever quality, it is still used for starting pitchers. And if Chip Caray can be relied on for anything, the third out of the fifth inning will terminate a running commentary that usually started about two innings earlier.
But the starting pitcher Win, as we all know, is endangered. I’m not going to dwell on this, because we all know it. Twenty game winning seasons are now rare, Pitchers don’t pitch as many innings. I’ve got graphs to show all this, and I’ll provide them if anyone is interested, but I think everyone already knows it.
So, if we’re not going to kill the Win as a stat, maybe we should expand the definition to include pitching stints by starters of less than 5 innings. I originally did this to see if it would help Justin Verlander, but what I was really surprised to see was just how little change it made. I have recalculated pitching wins for every game in the Retrosheet database on the assumption that the five inning rule is kaput: any pitcher who exits a game with a lead that his team never relinquishes will be credited with a win. Does it make any difference?
The Good Old Days
Let’s start with the old guys. The rule affects them almost not all because they didn’t leave games they were leading in less than 5 innings. Take Walter Johnson. He never got a cheap win as a starting pitcher, and would in fact lose one win for a game in which he relieved a guy who left early. Among others with no cheap wins: Christy Mathewson, Steve Carlton and Gaylord Perry. Phil Niekro had one. Don Sutton had three, as did Tom Glavine. Lefty Grove had four, but he would also lose 5 relief wins. Unless you’re somehow wedded to Roger Clemens‘ 354 wins as a number you’re memorized and cherished, changing it to 356 isn’t going to change your mind about him. Of the old guys, the one with the biggest move is Tommy John, moving up 7 wins from 288 to 295 — still just a smidge short of 300, [PS: Why isn’t he in the Hall of Fame? Somebody remind me.]
The Modern Game
This inquiry started to see if the rule had hurt Justin Verlander. Nope. So far in his career, Justin Verlander has had one game where he came out early with a lead his team never relinquished. Once. It was this game, in which he left with the bases loaded after 4 2/3rds leading 8-6. The Astros ended up winning 9-7. Now you might say that Verlander doesn’t deserve this win. To that, I have two responses: first, that’s a stupid argument. But second, you know who got the win? Héctor Neris, the guy who gave up the other run. After his performance with the Braves last year, he deserves nothing.
And there simply aren’t a lot of pitchers highly affected by this rule at all. And it’s not clear why you should care. Three pitchers would have added 10 wins to their totals: Jameson Taillon, Gio Gonzalez and Jake Odorizzi. Ryne Stanek would have vultured 9 wins as an opener to go with his 21 meaningless wins as a reliever, but we’d have to subtract one win he got for inheriting a win from another starter. So that’s 29 wins instead of 20. Does that make you feel differently about Ryne Stanek?
Even if we ignore the guys stretching for aggregate win glory, it just doesn’t make much difference. In 2025, starting pitchers would have earned an extra 146 wins. The high water mark was 2021 with 175. By way of comparison, no year before 2000 had more than 60, and lots were lower than that. 2005 would have shifted 27 wins. But even in today’s 4-inning starting regime, we get a win change in only about 5 or 6 percent of games.
There is a question of whether this percentage would go higher if the rule were eliminated. We all know of managers who tried to drag the starter to get that critical third out in the fifth inning to preserve his personal chance at glory. But in an era of pitcher injury, my proposal obviously has a net benefit. Pitchers can get removed without risking injury if the situation calls for it. Frankly, given the problems in the game today with the overtaxing of relief staffs, the rule change would probably not impact anything at all. Adding innings of workload to your bullpen is the last thing managers want to so, and the win rule just gives them another hook to hang that decision on.
An Alternative
Just to point out: the real reason that wins are down isn’t attributable to this rule. It’s attributable to the fact that it’s hard for bullpens to hold leads. And maybe you think it’s unfair not to give a pitcher a win who pitches great for 7 innings, followed by a blown save that then eventually leads his team to a win.
If you really still think the rule is worth preserving because, say, you think openers who pitch an inning should never get a win even if their team scores a bunch of runs, then I can propose an alternate rule. Just let the official scorer decide who gets the win unencumbered by the 5 inning limitation for the starter, and/or unencumbered by the rule that leads have to be maintained to have a chance at a win. What’s the argument against that? My only objection, if I were still listening to him, is that it would give something for Chip to gab about for the entire game.
https://x.com/mlbbowman/status/2023108917149213069?s=46&t=WSNPrB2JyUoeKSn2PZsXZg
We can’t have nice things.
It’s like Kershw and Snell. They’ll all be playoff-ready.
Nothing to see here, just 20% of the roster lost to injury before the first pitch of spring training. This is totally normal baseball stuff.
Thank God AA did a great job building the starting rotation thi….oh wait
I was previously excited to learn that Waldrep could throw 5 legitimate pitches. I’m now less excited about Waldrep throwing a bunch of splitters if he can’t stay healthy. Of course, anyone with half a brain could see that Schwellenbach adding 3 MPH to his fastball overnight was not good.
It really seems like the Braves are employing the Dodgers’ approach: get a bunch of guys with elite stuff, even if they can’t stay healthy and let them do whatever they can to be even more effective even if it leads to injury. But have 8-9 SPs for that inevitability.
They basically did this with Luke Jackson. Him spinning off a million curveballs probably didn’t add to his career longevity. But they got what they could out of him and that’s that.
Scorching hot take: The Braves have yet to recover from letting Dansby Swanson and Max Fried walk.
Even hotter: I’m not sure they’ve completely recovered from trading Dusty Baker for Jerry Royster, et al.
Hotter still: I’m not sure they have recovered from trading Darrell Evans for Willie Montanez. I know I haven’t.
I definitely think they have missed the leadership of Dansby and Freddie, without a doubt. I’m not sure what leadership Fried provided, but he was certainly a Veteran Presents.
Considering the fact that Royster essentially replaced Evans at 3B, I think we got a two-fer.
Montanez hit alright in his brief time in ATL, but what I mostly remember was his hot-doggery at 1B. He was a bit of a butcher over there.
Montanez’s BRef page is interesting. As a Phillie rookie at 23, he hit 30 HR with 99 RBI & 67 BB, and he had a slightly below-average range factor in CF. 11 OF errors looked bad, but he also had 11 assists, and the next year he led the majors in OF assists with 15, cut the errors to 5, and had a slightly above-average range factor in CF. He only hit .255 as a rookie, but his BAbip was a low .258. That’s a good player, and he was 2nd in the ROY voting.
Unless there was an injury, after that season he seems to have intentionally sold out his power and walks to try to strike out less & hit more singles. After 30 HR as a rookie, he hit 20 several years later in his only full season in Atlanta (14 home, 6 road), 17 the next year in NY, and never more than 13 any other post-rookie year in his 14-year career. He never again drew more than 60 walks and usually was in the 30s or 40s. He did strike out less, and he averaged over .300 for three years in a row, but it was a pretty empty .300 for a first baseman, which he became during his age-25 season.
After his rookie year, he had a negative bWAR for the rest of his career. He was perceived to have value, though, and in less than three years, he was in three big trades – from Philadelphia to SF for Garry Maddox straight up in May 1975, from SF to Atlanta with others for Darrell Evans & others in June 1976, and from Atlanta to NYM after 1977 as part of a four-team trade that included Bert Blyleven and Al Oliver. In those pre-free agency days, having three teams decide in less than three years that, while still in his twenties, he was worth more as a trade piece than he was to them as a player seems pretty damning (though to be fair, if it was the Phillies organization that was responsible for his trading power & walks for singles, they certainly got that wrong).
Montanez did indeed hit a very empty .300–but the vast majority of folks in baseball in the 1970’s would not have understood that. He was a .300 hitter, and that’s the most important thing!
Before Bill James came along in the 1980’s most people, including FO folks, grossly underestimated OBP and to a lesser extent slugging. Many people thought a 300 avg with lots of singles made one a better hitter than a .240 hitter who walked a lot and hit with power. Darrell Evans accumulated over 19 bWAR in the three seasons before that trade, thanks in large part to walking over 100 times a season and hitting home runs.
I think James once said that Evans is one of the most underrated players in history. The comparison of Montanez and Evans is one of the best examples of the Bill James revolution. No one today would look at the stats and say Montanez was a better hitter than Evans, but I promise you many did back then.
The trade also still stings because Evans went on to play another dozen years after the trade and accumulated another 30 plus bWAR, finishing his career with 58.7.
If you saw Montanez play, you’d also know that his flamboyance rubbed people the wrong way, especially in the 1970s. Back then, managers & teammates probably hated that more than his empty .300. (I did get a kick out of his HR trot — he usually took about 2 minutes to get around the bases.)
And looking at his BRef, woo… he does have a brutal career dWAR…
I def remember him kicking some routine grounders, but the numbers say that he was even worse than Dick Stuart (aka “Dr. Strangeglove”).
To misquote Billy Crystal: “It is better to look good than to field good.”
The San Diego Chicken impersonates Willie Montanez:
I’m really looking forward to Martin Perez being this year’s Griffin Canning. He’ll come in, be mediocre, go elsewhere, pitch well for a little while, and then Braves fans will bitch that we had Cy Young here in Spring Training and we let him walk.
Nobody did that with Canning. He was cheap and better than what we ended up trotting out on the mound for a significant portion of the season. His freak Achilles injury does not vindicate what was a bad roster decision for a team that had lots of injury questions in the rotation and had just let its ace walk.
I agree with Stampton
All kidding aside, I do think the Braves are still reeling from letting Dansby and Fried walk. There was no plan to replace Dansby and while Dansby isn’t an elite hitter, he’s worlds away from Nick Allen and Orlando Arcia. Now, we have $20 million spent on Kim who might have hand issues all season. And, regardless, he’s a free agent. That offensive black hole at SS has cost wins.
For Fried, well, we’re staring down the barrel of a second straight season of a rotation held together by Elmer’s glue and Scotch tape. What a stabilizing force Fried would be.
And, if you want to go back to Freeman, it’s not that Olson isn’t a cromulent replacement, but the prospect expenditure to acquire him could have been used elsewhere.
In my mind, the unwillingness to spend on critical pieces will tell the story of why the Atlanta Braves accomplished nothing memorable in the wake of 2021.
All kidding aside is not my strong suit, but while I agree with you, the question is a relative question. Every team makes mistakes like this, sometimes big ones. Only the Dodgers can make mistakes this big and then just spend their way out of them. Letting Freddie go was more Freddie’s agent’s fault than ours. It was a big game of chicken, the Braves actually had the highest offer on the table and Freddie’s agent refused to swerve. You’re right about the impact, but I don’t see how it could have been helped.
Will the Braves come to regret not resigning Dansby Swanson more or less than the Mets will come to regret not resigning Pete Alonso? A lot of it depends on the trajectory of the next couple of years… ie it is dependent on things not completely in control… or even mostly in control. Once the Braves had punted on the 2025 season, the at bats given to Nick Allen were just filler at bats at the league minimum.
As to Fried, let’s at least wait until the Yankees reach a World Series before we judge (!?!) not paying NYC prices. Age difference notwithstanding, haven’t we gotten everything from Sale that we expected Fried to do? (And I say that even granting Sale’s rib issue.) I do think AA has adopted a portfolio theory for pitching that might yet pay off, as poorly as it performed last season and as scary as the last week has been for Schwellenbach and Waldrep. The advantage of 12 starting pitchers is that you only need to have about four healthy at any time. I grant that you need an ACE(TM) for the playoffs…. but those are still seven months away.
If you look at each decision close up, it makes sense. If you take a broader view, we could’ve taken a very different course.
If we give Freddie the contract length he wants, he probably signs, and maybe the final year is a bad deal but he played his whole career for us at a discount.
If you sign Fried early you don’t have to outbid the Yankees.
If you don’t trade for and then pay Murphy, you can cheap out at catcher with Contreras and Langeliers and use the savings to pay Dansby.
AA owns a constellation of moves that to date appear to have gradually run a fledgling dynasty into the ground. I am still hopeful about this coming season, mostly because of the emergence of Baldwin and the young pitchers, even though it’s anybody’s guess if we will have a rotation.
I agree with most of the people here that pitching is the most important part of the roster. We had a dynasty in the 90s because of great pitching (yeah, I know they’re in the HoF) and we mixed and matched the hitters around it. It broke down when the pitching ended. As long as we had the top three, we were always winners…… The Braves of the 70s and later 80s had plenty of hitting but lousy pitching.
I would point out that despite the issues being taken with team construction philosophy here, the Braves have the second-highest current probability of World Championship on Fangraphs https://www.fangraphs.com/standings/playoff-odds/fg/mlb and the leading team follows a strategy that would be impossible for the Braves to match. Since the percentages are based entirely on current roster construction, how bad could the errors be? That’s why I say you have to assess this relatively to what other teams have done… everyone has similar errors of planning/assessment/execution or worse. That, or the Fangraphs estimates are worthless. If your response is that the Braves’ probability ought to be 11.2 percent, not 9.3 percent, but-for letting Fried walk, then I’d agree with you, but you can’t just reverse the errors — you need to reverse the Sale trade as well, for example, which nobody else managed to make.
I am very skeptical of those numbers because of our rotation health but I would jump at an 11% chance for sure. These questions are going to recur until we hoist another trophy, and at that point, I won’t complain about post-2021 roster management. As long as we have early playoff exits or playoff misses, the questions will rattle around in many of our noggins as to the sagacity of management decisions. I understand your position, and AA seems like a very smart guy. We could do much worse. But if we continue our descent, I will wonder if he was a bit too rigid and a bit too smart for his own good.
I remember those probabilities last year, too. I can think of few things about which I give less of a crap at this point.
As Chris Farley as Matt Foley would say, “That and a nickel will get you a hot cup of JACK SQUAT!”
We are all disappointed in the post-2021 Braves. The quick playoff exits sting, and the abysmal 2025 season leaves a bad feeling going forward. But as to the roster construction issues we’ve been discussing here, I think it’s still too early to draw firm conclusions.
The Braves have the third most wins in MLB since 2021, with 370, even including last season’s low total (and they are behind the Astros by just a single run). I’m cautiously optimistic that 2025 was an aberration and that 2026 will look more like 2022-24. OTOH, another sub-.500 season and I will agree that the potential dynasty fell short. The health of the rotation is such a huge question mark that the range of possible outcomes in 2026 is very wide. At least as big a concern for me has been the regression of Albies, Harris, and Riley. Ozzie may be pretty much done, but the Braves really need MHII and Riley to produce more like 2023 than 2024-25. And for Ronald to stay healthy.
On the specific decisions AA has made, the jury is still out on those as well. Olson has accumulated slightly more bWAR than Freeman in the last four years, and he is likely to earn a lot more than Freddie over the next 3-4. The one that looks the weakest in hindsight is the trade for Murphy and letting both Contreras and Langeliers go in trades. But fortunately, at least for now, Baldwin’s unexpected development minimizes the negative consequences there.
Ian Anderson, who was not under contract, tore his shoulder labrum during a pitching workout this offseason. What a shame. His odds for getting back to MLB look slim at this point.
Yup, hate to hear it… but he does have a WS ring & it’s not like he didn’t contribute.
He’ll always have a great WS line that goes: 1-0, 5 IP, 0 R, 0 H.
And he did inspire me to go back & listen to some Jethro Tull records.
Isn’t Anderson also the possessor of or close to the record for the lowest career postseason ERA for a pitcher with his number of postseason starts or more? He has 1.26 in 8 starts, though only 35.2 IP, so he probably should be compared to pre-1980 pitchers with 5 or more starts.
Second to Christy Mathewson: https://www.sports-reference.com/stathead/tiny/2pazE
https://x.com/mlbbowman/status/2024182374515282046?s=46&t=WSNPrB2JyUoeKSn2PZsXZg
Suuuure, Bowman.
AA in October 2024: Expect payroll to rise! (It didn’t.)
AA in recent months: We’re going to add a front-line starter! (He hasn’t).
And its “extensive” managerial search led them to … the guy who was in the dugout, who never came within 10 games of .500 in his previous stop (and then immediately after leaving, that club went to two-consecutive postseasons)?
This organization is not to be trusted.
Did our payroll really not have a net increase? Gracious, what a joke.
Yep. $225MM payroll at Opening Day of 2024; $202MM for Opening Day one year later. But they added six new buildings!
It’s shaping up to be a pivotal season. If you guys follow Hammer Territory, they’re pretty even-keeled commenters on the Braves. They don’t get too high or too low, focus a lot on the big picture, etc. They’re not your anonymous accounts on Twitter screaming at Mark Bowman over anything and everything, but I’ve noticed there’s some budding skepticism among those guys with regard to the direction this franchise is going, and I think that reveals some real discord in the fanbase.
Some commentary with an invitation to comment.
I am curious if anybody has a reasonable medical reason how 2 pitchers can report to spring training with “loose bodies” in their elbows without that having already been discovered.
I do not know if there are perceived or actual risks to MRI procedures. I know you can’t do 2 MRI’s on one day because the remaining electrical disturbance clouds the results. It seems to me that EVERY major league pitcher should shut down at end of season and in 2 weeks get an MRI. Then, if there are bone spurs or loose bodies you step up and get them resolved. ALSO, you do a full inspection by arthroscope while you have it open. As noted below, minor problems in unusual places aren’t necessarily obvious on the MRI.
For healing to meet the standards necessary to take the strain that Major League pitchers endure OBVIOUSLY has to mean more rehab and longer limits. But I had a shoulder arthroscope procedure about 7 years ago. Despite a CT and MRI, only when doing the “clean out” did my surgeon discover a frayed bicep tendon on the arm end (on the shoulder end that is “rotator cuff” surgery). He put me on light motion for 4 weeks and in 5 days I had a VAST reduction in pain. So, it seems like to me that Waldrep could have been checked in November and be ready to start throwing.
Also, on Schwellenbach, when they did testing to confirm healing, how did they not find “loose bodies?” Did they do X ray only (and no mri)? If that was for you or I, maybe the MRI was not justified, but for a Major League pitcher?
John Gil (pronounced heal) is generating buzz (pnut says Betemit’s build and Furcy’s game). He is our highest rated prospect on this report:
So obviously he is the Gila Monster. Or maybe he is Mr Grinch (you really are a Gil). Exciting to actually have a middle infield prospect that is projectable. He should start at AA, just 19
New Post
I’ve been out of the country and not reading, but I want to come back to the topic of this post.
I’m fully onboard with the common knowledge that the Win is a flawed statistic and not relevant in pitcher evaluation in any meaningful way. However, I also believe that there is some value in any piece of information, if you understand it in context.
I think over the course of a long enough career, that there is some meaning found in pitcher Wins, and it’s largely in how it describes the evolution of pitching. We understand why Tom Seaver had fewer wins than Cy Young, and we understand why Jacob deGrom has fewer wins than J.A. Happ.
In my mind, if we change the definition of the Win to fit the modern game then it doesn’t have any usefulness at all. The hard truth is that starting pitchers are simply not as valuable as they used to be, and the career win is one way to reflect that.