Why Wins is a Bad Statistic, Part 1

Whenever evaluating pitchers, most commentators, fans and managers tend to look at the player's wins and losses to see if they were good or not. Although this trend is beginning to fade (as seen by King Felix's Cy Young in 2010), wins still hold a lot of weight. To be honest, however, they very often are fairly bad indicators of pitcher performance. Take Sid Fernandez and Dwight Gooden for the 1990 New York Mets. El Sid went 9-14; Doctor K went 19-7. Who had the better season? Most people would say Gooden; they would be wrong. Fernandez's ERA was 3.46 (ERA+ of 109), while Dwight's was 3.83 (ERA+ of 98). What caused such a large disparity? Find the answer below the fold:

Bracket Update

For my second bracket (Through the Syracuse game)

My NCAA Bracket

http://games.espn.go.com/tournament-challenge-bracket/en/entry?entryID=565779

Why we'll never see another 30 game winner

Two years ago, many people were saying that Ubaldo Jimenez had a shot at winning 30 games. Looking back on it, this claim was implausible on so many different levels. People who didn't like Ubaldo's chances cited the declining number of IP/GS as a reason why this wasn't possible. However, even that does not actually explain why. The real reason is the decline in the number of starts in a season. Taking a look through the yearly leaderboards reveals that there hasn't been a pitcher to reach 36 starts since 2003, a 37 GS pitcher since 1991, and a 40 GS since 1987. Based on that logic, we would assume that a modern league leader would get 35 starts. In order to win 30 games in 35 starts, one would require a W/S% (win/start %) of .857. According to baseballbypositions.com, the last pitcher with a W/S% that high was Lefty Grove in 1931 (incidentally the second-to-last 30-win season). To put some more perspective on this, let's take a look at the most recent 25-game winnners (since 1969) and their number of games started:

MLB All Time All Stars

Today I decided to make an all time all star team for Major League Baseball. This includes all players from 1871 to the present day. I made this team using baseball-reference.com's Wins Above Replacement and MLB's all star selection procedures. I put 2 players each at C, 1B, 2B, SS and 3B, 6 outfielders, one DH, 5 starting pitchers, 3 relievers, and 9 other bench/bullpen players, for a grand total of 34 players. (See team after jump)