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The Mets Are So Bad They Killed the Win
Ace starter Jacob deGrom could very well end up missing out on the Cy Young Award thanks to his team’s putrid offense
By Jared Diamond and Andrew Beaton
Aug. 7, 2018 Wall Street Journal
Baseball’s analytics community has long derided the humble statistic of pitcher wins. The data wonks and eggheads who now control the sport have taken one of the game’s most fundamental numbers, chewed it up and spat out its tattered remains like a bag of sunflower seeds.
But, somehow, the win has maintained its grip in the mainstream. Just look to the 2016 American League Cy Young vote. Detroit’s Justin Verlander that year held the advantage in innings, ERA, strikeouts and just about any other measure. Boston’s Rick Porcello had 22 wins to Verlander’s 16. Porcello won the award, because two voters left Verlander off their ballots completely. Supermodel Kate Upton, Verlander’s then-fiancée and now wife, voiced her displeasure with a decidedly not-safe-for-work tweet, a sexually explicit and profane message that earned more than 126,000 likes. (You can Google it.)
This seas[strike]on, however, New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom may destroy decades of baseball convention and convince even the crustiest baseball purist that the win is useless. He might be the unluckiest pitcher in history.
DeGrom has compiled a 1.85 ERA in his first 22 outings, the best in the major leagues and, entering Tuesday, nearly a half-run better than his closest competitor in the National League, Washington’s Max Scherzer. Thanks to the Mets’ putrid offense, deGrom has a record of 5-7 and a vexing inability—through no fault of his own—to win.
The 30-year-old right-hander has allowed three runs or fewer in each of his last 19 starts, a stretch dating back to April 16, yet the Mets have gone just 5-14 in those games. He has surrendered one earned run or fewer in 14 separate outings this season, only for the Mets to fall in half of them. Five times, he didn’t concede a single run while on the mound and still failed to pick up the victory. It turns out the Mets are so horrible that they’re forcing everyone to rethink the basics of baseball.
There is almost no precedent for anything like this in modern times. Among qualified starters who have posted an ERA below 2.00 since 1920, none has finished the season with fewer than 10 wins. ( Tommy John and Bobby Bolin each went 10-5 in 1968 with ERAs of 1.98 and 1.99, respectively.) Meanwhile, none of those pitchers finished with a winning percentage below .517.
DeGrom, who is scheduled to start Wednesday against the Cincinnati Reds, currently owns a winning percentage of .417, meaning he has a losing record despite a microscopic ERA.
“We just haven’t won baseball games that I’ve been pitching,” deGrom said Friday, after he gave up two runs in eight innings to the Atlanta Braves and still was saddled with the loss. “It seems like whenever I’m out there, we’re not able to score enough to win a baseball game.”
Even though the win is one of the sport’s oldest and most frequently cited stats, its significance has diminished almost to the point of irrelevance to baseball decision-makers in the age of sophisticated data. The reason is simple: The pitcher has limited control over whether he gets a win, since it is also contingent on factors like how much the lineup scores and the quality of his bullpen support.
If deGrom’s season continues this way, it will become the ultimate referendum on the win’s hold over baseball’s conventional wisdom. A pitcher’s primary job is to prevent runs from scoring. DeGrom, undeniably, has succeeded at that objective better than anybody in the NL. The question is whether the voters, the selected members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, could stomach the notion of giving such a prestigious prize to somebody with as few as seven or eight wins.
This has never happened before. No starting pitcher has gotten the Cy Young with fewer than 13 wins, something that has occurred twice: Fernando Valenzuela in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign and then Félix Hernández in 2010.
When Hernández earned the Cy Young Award eight years ago, it seemed like a watershed moment in the phasing out of the “win” as a relevant benchmark for evaluating a pitcher’s productiveness. The next three finishers, Tampa Bay’s David Price, New York’s CC Sabathia and Boston’s Jon Lester, had all won 19 games or more. Nonetheless, the voters considered Hernández’s 2.27 ERA, his 249⅔ innings and his anemic run support with the Seattle Mariners.
Still, doubters remained, most notably the late Roy Halladay, who won the NL Cy Young that season by unanimous decision.
“Ultimately, you look at how guys are able to win games,” Halladay said at the time. “Sometimes the run support isn’t there, but you sometimes just find ways to win games. I think the guys that are winning and helping their teams deserve a strong look, regardless of how good Félix’s numbers are.”
Of the 14 Cy Young winners since that year, 11 led or co-led their league in wins. Only six won the ERA title, showing that wins are far from irrelevant in the baseball zeitgeist.
Supporters of wins argue that the statistic has merit despite its shortcomings because it rewards pitchers for lasting deep into games and keeping his team in position to secure a victory. Yet deGrom consistently does just that. Excluding a May 13 outing, when he left with an injury after facing only six batters, deGrom has averaged 6.9 innings per start.
Scherzer, his main competitor for the Cy Young, had averaged 6.7 innings heading into his scheduled start Tuesday against the Atlanta Braves. And Scherzer has 15 wins—three times as many as deGrom—to show for it. DeGrom has pitched at least seven innings 15 times this season, tied for the most in the majors.
What’s left is an irony. Baseball’s old-school metric is being defied by one of baseball’s only remaining old-school pitchers, capable of pitching deep into games during an age when most starters escape before concession stands stop selling beer. DeGrom has pitched at least eight innings six times, resulting in a grand total of one personal win and just three victories for the Mets. Scherzer has won all four games he has worked at least eight frames.
Whether this is enough for deGrom to win a Cy Young remains to be seen. His manager, Mickey Callaway, concedes that his team’s futility “definitely could cost him something.”
“You start feeling that you’re letting Jacob down a little bit,” Callaway said.
Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com and Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
Ace starter Jacob deGrom could very well end up missing out on the Cy Young Award thanks to his team’s putrid offense
By Jared Diamond and Andrew Beaton
Aug. 7, 2018 Wall Street Journal
Baseball’s analytics community has long derided the humble statistic of pitcher wins. The data wonks and eggheads who now control the sport have taken one of the game’s most fundamental numbers, chewed it up and spat out its tattered remains like a bag of sunflower seeds.
But, somehow, the win has maintained its grip in the mainstream. Just look to the 2016 American League Cy Young vote. Detroit’s Justin Verlander that year held the advantage in innings, ERA, strikeouts and just about any other measure. Boston’s Rick Porcello had 22 wins to Verlander’s 16. Porcello won the award, because two voters left Verlander off their ballots completely. Supermodel Kate Upton, Verlander’s then-fiancée and now wife, voiced her displeasure with a decidedly not-safe-for-work tweet, a sexually explicit and profane message that earned more than 126,000 likes. (You can Google it.)
This seas[strike]on, however, New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom may destroy decades of baseball convention and convince even the crustiest baseball purist that the win is useless. He might be the unluckiest pitcher in history.
DeGrom has compiled a 1.85 ERA in his first 22 outings, the best in the major leagues and, entering Tuesday, nearly a half-run better than his closest competitor in the National League, Washington’s Max Scherzer. Thanks to the Mets’ putrid offense, deGrom has a record of 5-7 and a vexing inability—through no fault of his own—to win.
The 30-year-old right-hander has allowed three runs or fewer in each of his last 19 starts, a stretch dating back to April 16, yet the Mets have gone just 5-14 in those games. He has surrendered one earned run or fewer in 14 separate outings this season, only for the Mets to fall in half of them. Five times, he didn’t concede a single run while on the mound and still failed to pick up the victory. It turns out the Mets are so horrible that they’re forcing everyone to rethink the basics of baseball.
There is almost no precedent for anything like this in modern times. Among qualified starters who have posted an ERA below 2.00 since 1920, none has finished the season with fewer than 10 wins. ( Tommy John and Bobby Bolin each went 10-5 in 1968 with ERAs of 1.98 and 1.99, respectively.) Meanwhile, none of those pitchers finished with a winning percentage below .517.
DeGrom, who is scheduled to start Wednesday against the Cincinnati Reds, currently owns a winning percentage of .417, meaning he has a losing record despite a microscopic ERA.
“We just haven’t won baseball games that I’ve been pitching,” deGrom said Friday, after he gave up two runs in eight innings to the Atlanta Braves and still was saddled with the loss. “It seems like whenever I’m out there, we’re not able to score enough to win a baseball game.”
Even though the win is one of the sport’s oldest and most frequently cited stats, its significance has diminished almost to the point of irrelevance to baseball decision-makers in the age of sophisticated data. The reason is simple: The pitcher has limited control over whether he gets a win, since it is also contingent on factors like how much the lineup scores and the quality of his bullpen support.
If deGrom’s season continues this way, it will become the ultimate referendum on the win’s hold over baseball’s conventional wisdom. A pitcher’s primary job is to prevent runs from scoring. DeGrom, undeniably, has succeeded at that objective better than anybody in the NL. The question is whether the voters, the selected members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, could stomach the notion of giving such a prestigious prize to somebody with as few as seven or eight wins.
This has never happened before. No starting pitcher has gotten the Cy Young with fewer than 13 wins, something that has occurred twice: Fernando Valenzuela in the strike-shortened 1981 campaign and then Félix Hernández in 2010.
When Hernández earned the Cy Young Award eight years ago, it seemed like a watershed moment in the phasing out of the “win” as a relevant benchmark for evaluating a pitcher’s productiveness. The next three finishers, Tampa Bay’s David Price, New York’s CC Sabathia and Boston’s Jon Lester, had all won 19 games or more. Nonetheless, the voters considered Hernández’s 2.27 ERA, his 249⅔ innings and his anemic run support with the Seattle Mariners.
Still, doubters remained, most notably the late Roy Halladay, who won the NL Cy Young that season by unanimous decision.
“Ultimately, you look at how guys are able to win games,” Halladay said at the time. “Sometimes the run support isn’t there, but you sometimes just find ways to win games. I think the guys that are winning and helping their teams deserve a strong look, regardless of how good Félix’s numbers are.”
Of the 14 Cy Young winners since that year, 11 led or co-led their league in wins. Only six won the ERA title, showing that wins are far from irrelevant in the baseball zeitgeist.
Supporters of wins argue that the statistic has merit despite its shortcomings because it rewards pitchers for lasting deep into games and keeping his team in position to secure a victory. Yet deGrom consistently does just that. Excluding a May 13 outing, when he left with an injury after facing only six batters, deGrom has averaged 6.9 innings per start.
Scherzer, his main competitor for the Cy Young, had averaged 6.7 innings heading into his scheduled start Tuesday against the Atlanta Braves. And Scherzer has 15 wins—three times as many as deGrom—to show for it. DeGrom has pitched at least seven innings 15 times this season, tied for the most in the majors.
What’s left is an irony. Baseball’s old-school metric is being defied by one of baseball’s only remaining old-school pitchers, capable of pitching deep into games during an age when most starters escape before concession stands stop selling beer. DeGrom has pitched at least eight innings six times, resulting in a grand total of one personal win and just three victories for the Mets. Scherzer has won all four games he has worked at least eight frames.
Whether this is enough for deGrom to win a Cy Young remains to be seen. His manager, Mickey Callaway, concedes that his team’s futility “definitely could cost him something.”
“You start feeling that you’re letting Jacob down a little bit,” Callaway said.
Write to Jared Diamond at jared.diamond@wsj.com and Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com
