One MLB Stat That Needs To End

For years now, the nerds have been trying to do away with Wins and Losses for starting pitchers. They say that they don’t really mean much. While I don’t fully disagree with them because it is useless for pitchers like Jacob Degrom, for most starting pitchers, it does matter. Keyword starting.  Relievers, on the other hand, useless.

Why Wins Are Useless

Often relievers are brought into the game to do a job. Whether it be the closer, setup man, 7th inning guy, whoever. The bottom line is they have a job to do. So, when Matt Barnes (just an example) comes in in the top of the ninth to get a save and gives up a home run to tie it, he failed at his job. Now, in the bottom of the ninth, JD Martinez hits a ball to the moon to win the game for the Sox. Who goes into the win column? Matt Barnes. Why are we rewarding him for not getting his job done? He had a job to do, didn’t get it done, but still gets the W. No thanks. I am out on that.

Why Loses Are Useless

Starting this year in extra innings, a runner starts on second base. As a fan, I love this rule. More runs are scoring makes extra innings that much more interesting with so many different ways to score the runner from second. Now putting myself in a player or coach’s shoes, I’d hate this rule. Why? Easy, there are so many different ways for that run to score. Say the first batter of the bottom of the 10th is up. Ottovino throws one of his devastating sliders that the batter swings at, but it just squeezes by Vazquez and goes to the backstop, and the runner advances to third. Next, pitch a high pop-up to the centerfielder, game over. Yes, Vazquez should have caught the ball, but now Ottovino is saddled with the loss even though he really did nothing wrong. See where I’m going with this?

Conclusion

MLB has been flooded with nerds hammering the importance of stats and spin rate and every other sport-killing data out there. Now they have the opportunity to get rid of a useless stat. Wins and losses for relievers need to go. It is useless, and you are rewarding them for possibly failing at their job and, on the flipside, punishing them for doing a good job if they come on in extra innings. I understand you can say, “well, they cancel out” yea, you might be right in the long haul, or you can get rid of them and not have to worry about it. For once, MLB, do a small but right thing by taking that stat out.

-Kevin Perdios (@Perdios95)