The worst statistic in sports

I really wish that they would stop keeping track of the win/loss record for pitchers. In order for a pitcher to score a win, they must  leave the game with the lead and the team must keep that lead through the rest of the game. They also need to pitch for at least 5 innings if they are the starting pitcher, which is very doable for most starting pitchers throughout the league. If they are a relief pitcher, they just simply have to have the lead when they leave the game and when the game ends.

So it serves no purpose at all. It is, in my opinion, the most worthless statistic out there for any sport. The only reason I can see to keep track of how many wins/losses a pitcher has, is to show how good or bad of an offense they have backing them up, but there are offensive stats just for that. Just because a pitcher has 21 wins, (like Max Shcerzer did last year) doesn’t make him the best pitcher. On the flip side, just because a  pitcher only has 9 wins (like Matt Harvey did last year) doesn’t make him a bad pitcher. In fact the guy with only 9 wins last year did better with the guy with 21 wins. How is that, you ask?

Last year, Matt Harvey had an ERA of 2.27, a WHIP of 0.93, a 9-5 record through 26 starts, and 178.1 innings pitched for the Mets. Max Scherzer had an ERA of 2.90, a WHIP of 0.97, a 21-3 record through 32 starts, and 214.1 innings for Detroit. On average, both guys lasted about 6.2 innings per game. Harvey was 3rd in ERA and 2nd in WHIP throughout the league. Shcerzer was 11th in ERA and 3rd in WHIP throughout the league.

So we can clearly see that Harvey had better numbers on the mound for the Mets, but how is it that he only came up with 9 wins while Scherzer end up with 21 wins? Well it’s like I said earlier, it all comes down to the the offenses that back these pitchers up. Last year, Detroit was 2nd in the league in runs scored with 796 runs. The Mets were all the way down to 23rd in the league with 619 runs.  That is a 177 run difference. Detroit helped out Max Shcerzer with an average 5.59 runs per start. It was the 3rd best run support in all of baseball last year. The Mets only gave Matt Harvey 3.65 runs per start. It was ranked 64th in all of baseball. Clearly Max was able to benefit from the extra runs that Detroit was able to give him and that alone was what allowed Max Shcerzer to pick up the “most wins in baseball” last year.