The "Wins and Losses" Farce

One of the key metrics for evaluating a pitcher in baseball is their record of wins and losses. It is essentially an accounting of how many runs opponents scored off the pitcher and his 8 defensive teammates relative to the number of runs the pitcher's 9-man batting order scored during the time when the pitcher was in the game. If it sounds like the pitcher plays only a fractional part (albeit an important fraction) in the final outcome, that is because it is so.

So why do we continue to track and consider this statistic as important? Obviously, good pitchers on poor teams can out-perform bad pitchers on strong teams and have an inferior Win/Loss record. It makes no sense.

Unless you look at it in relative terms.

Relative to the trend of looking at Win/Loss records for NFL quarterbacks, rating pitchers on that measure seems comparatively brilliant. Of course that is only due to the unfathomable absurdity of hanging a win or a loss for a 53-man football team on one player.

It is all over the news today. With last night's win over the Packers, Favre has become the first QB to defeat all 32 active NFL football teams in his career. I guess he did it all by himself. Forget the fact that the Vikings held the Packers to zero points through three trips to the red-zone and had 3 take-aways in the game. Forget the special teams play. Forget football's best running back, Adrian Peterson, who drew a stacked box all night and opened up the passing lanes for a talented core of Vikings receivers. Forget all the coaching, and scheming, and game-planning, and play-calling. Favre did it alone.

How can smart guys, who played the game and then became analysts, spew this crap? I can tolerate it in baseball because sometimes a pitcher throws nine innings of excellence and deserves recognition as the key contributor to a win. But in football, I cannot abide this emerging trend.