Quote:
Originally Posted by cgjackson222
Some Billy Wagner Fun Facts (from the George Will Opening Day quiz from 2022):
1) Wagner has the lowest WHIP among pitchers with at least 900 innings in the live-ball era. (0.998 — fewer base runners than innings)
2) Wagner has allowed the fewest hits per nine innings since 1900 among pitchers with at least 900 innings. (5.99)
3) Wagner has the best strikeout rate per nine innings in MLB history among pitchers with 900 or more innings. (11.92)
4) Wagner is the only pitcher of the live-ball era, with a minimum of 750 innings pitched, against whom hitters batted below .200. (.187)
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All true, but, Wagner in his career pitched 903 innings over 853 game appearances. In other words, he barely had to pitch more than 1 inning at a time, didn't have to worry about pitch counts, getting tired, or the like. Didn't have to be concerned with batters seeing him a second, or even third time in the same game, and so on. Take any great starting pitcher in the history of baseball, and tell them they only need to pitch one inning at a time, and see how good they would be. Those are great stats, but they are also virtually meaningless in the context of comparing them to how most MLB pitchers were used, especially those back in the earlier days. Can you imagine a Bob Feller or Walter Johnson if they only were asked to face batters for one inning every time they pitched? Relief/closer stats should never be compared and brought up in regard to starting pitchers, They are two entirely different positions and situations. At least they were more so until modern baseball has starting pitchers barely going over 6 innings anymore it seems. Managers today tend to leave starters in just long enough to qualify for the win, and then seem to go to their bullpens as fast as they can in many cases. You want to talk about stats that should have an asterisk next to them, just look at all these stats you listed for Wagner. Now if you were to more accurately state his standing for these stats compared to just closers/relief pitchers, then I think you are being much more fair and accurate. And even someone like Dennis Eckersley, who was both a very successful starter and relief/closing pitcher, his stats should be split, and the starter and closer numbers presented as completely separate records/statistics for him IMO. Just another failure on the part of statisticians and other so-called baseball historians to give proper credit, and accurately account for and reflect the very different contexts that existed throughout the different eras, and over the entire history, of baseball. Instead, they seem to have developed and follow a system and metrics based more on the modern game of baseball, and how it is played, allowing an extreme and unfair bias to exist in the manner and way things are often measured and compared, all seemingly more overall tilted for and towards the modern players.
And here's another fact I don't think statisticians and historians properly account for or take into consideration either. Ever notice how teams tend to only bring in their closers if they're leading the game at the end? Starting pitchers don't know if the other team's batters are going to have a good day at the plate or not. They have to face them if they end up being hot or cold that particular day. But if a closer typically only gets brought in when his team is ahead, that tends to indicate that the opposing batters maybe weren't having such a hot day at the plate after all. Think about that, because I don't think modern statisticians ever have, or have effectively figured out how to properly measure and reflect how what looks like to me as an absolutely positive built-in bias just for closers, is accounted for when comparing them to all other pitchers.
To maybe put it into and look at it in another way or from another perspective, how do you think a team's starting ace pitcher's stats would look if they were only started against teams with losing records, over the entire season? Food for thought.