It’s 2012, in case you hadn’t heard, and by now I’d think most baseball fans are well aware that a pitcher’s win-loss record is worthless. It’s simply not a reliable way of charting performance. Wins, like RBI, are a function of opportunity, not ability. We know that, on the forefront of our consciousness. But then why does R.A. Dickey’s record of 11-1 give me such a sense of smug satisfaction? And why is Cliff Lee’s 0-4 line troubling Phillies’ fans, and more importantly, the pitcher himself?

Well, because behind the facade, our perception of baseball, like so many things, is rarely guided by the parts that help make us calm, rational, or logical. That much was made perfectly clear over the weekend when Bill Baer, who writes for ESPN and runs the Phillies blog Crashburn Alley, began re-tweeting some “phan” responses to Lee’s most recent performance. You don’t need to scroll through to figure out the message, most involved the pitcher’s name and a certain four-letter word, so I’ll give you one swear-free highlight: @GutterTheGreat said, “I think the man love for Cliff Lee needs to end – don’t give me this run support shit or about the poor fielding.”

Baer, being of sound mind, gave him something a little more in-depth. On Monday, he published an analysis of Lee’s performance, arguing that the pitcher’s woes have not all been of his own design. Baer gets plenty specific and sabermetric, but it’s simple enough to know that when a pitcher goes 10 innings without giving up a run, as Lee did on April 18, he should have at least one win. The article led to a retort from ESPN’s David Schoenfield entitled “Maybe Cliff Lee hasn’t been all that good,” I’ll wager you can figure out what that one was about on your own.

Baer’s piece began with a response to another, more collected tweet. User @alexrolfe said, “what’s weird to me is that the no wins makes people reevaluate lee instead of reevaluating wins. why is that?” You’ll get all the coverage you need on Lee specifically from Baer and Schoenfield, so here’s where I’m going with all this: Indeed, random internet person, why is that?

Let’s start by considering what a win is. MLB official rule 10.17 defines the winning pitcher as one “whose team assumes a lead while such pitcher is in the game, or during the inning on offense in which such pitcher is removed from the game, and does not relinquish such lead.” Of course, the rule is different for starters. In a game that goes the full nine innings, a starter has to pitch at least five to get a win.

You know you’ve got a silly statistic when it’s perfectly reasonable (number-wise) that Jon Rauch can have three wins and Lee none. Yet fans, players, and front offices still give the win-loss record a tremendous amount of undeserved influence. Even if every fan thought the way Bill Baer does, you better believe Cliff Lee would still be pissed off about his lack of a win. If concentrating on getting one is a good way for Cliff to self-motivate, so be it. But it shouldn’t go any farther than that.

There a million different stats and sabermetrics out there, but the Cy Young Award is given to the “best pitcher” in each league. It’s one of the game’s few simplicities. Want the Cy Young? Be the best. That’s it.

In 2004, Roger Clemens won the NL Cy Young because of his 2.98 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, and 218 strikeouts in 214.1 innings pitched. He was the best. Supposedly. We’re sane, we know that wins are entirely out of a pitcher’s control. Clemens was the best so he won the honor, right? In any other year perhaps, but not 2004. That was the year, Ben Sheets‘ line looked like this: 2.70 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, 264 strikeouts and just 32 walks in 237 innings pitched. Along with his 8:1 strikeout to walk ratio, the league’s best by a mile, Sheets outpitched Clemens based on every major pitching stat. He was in fact, though not in name, the best. So what gives?

Well, he outpitched Clemens in every major pitching stat but one, and I think you know which. Sheets had a record of 12-14, while Clemens was 18-4. Yet Sheets’ Brewers went 67-94 that year, while Clemens and the Astros brought home a record of 92-70. Given that, any sane person might consider Sheets’ 12 wins on that miserable squad to be the more impressive count. But the trophy sits on Clemens’ shelf, along with his other six Cy Youngs, and, I imagine, the cream and the clear. Try and tell me wins didn’t influence the voting, or that the best pitcher won.

We like to think we’re living in a more civilized time. Everyone loves to point out that Felix Hernandez brought home the AL Cy Young in 2010 despite a 13-12 record. But 2004 wasn’t all that long ago, and the rabbit hole goes far deeper than awards.

You all know how I feel about closers, and “saves.” Well, I was wrong when I wrote that piece. Don’t worry, the notion of a closer is still ridiculous, but I shouldn’t have said “a save situation is the only time a manager makes a decision based on arbitrary numerals rather than what’s going to help his team win.” Wins will do that too. Imagine this scenario: your team’s up 8-2, the starter’s on the mound with two outs in the fifth when he suddenly gives up four runs that were inarguably his fault, and there are still a couple men on base. Any other pitcher gives up four runs in an inning and he’s getting the hook. But nine times out of ten your manager will leave him in there for a while longer, hoping he can get that third out and be in line for a win. Suddenly, the pitcher getting a win is more important than the team getting one.

Better offense, pitch counts, specialized relievers, and a thousand other changes have all contributed to the ever increasing worthlessness of the win-loss record. But the stat still affects contracts, awards, All-Star selections, fan opinion, and sometimes even a pitcher’s self-worth. It’s 2012, yet there are still those among us who give wins the respect they were due in 1912. To those people, listen closely: wins are a relic of a different era, whether or not it was a better era is entirely subjective, but the present can only be right now. And right now, wins and losses should not be anywhere but the periphery of statistical analysis.

Closer. It’s one of the toughest jobs in baseball, in all of sports even. Or so we’re led to believe. What is it about getting three outs in the ninth inning that’s so different from getting three outs in the seventh? Why do managers make situational decisions in the seventh (e.g. bringing in lefties to face lefties) but insist on using their pre-assigned “closer” in the ninth? What if the situation in the seventh is far more dire than that of the ninth (e.g. if the three, four, and five hitters are due up or the bases are loaded)? Why isn’t the best pitcher on the mound in the biggest spots?

I’ll tell you why: saves, the only statistic that changes the way the game is played, as well as the way it’s financed. A save situation is the only time a manager makes a decision based on arbitrary numerals rather than what’s going to help his team win. The only time he’d do it on purpose anyway. To quote Michael Lewis in Moneyball:

The central insight that led [Billy Beane] to turn minor league nobodies into successful big league closers and to refuse to pay them the many millions a year they demanded once they became free agents was that it was more efficient to create a closer than to buy one. Established closers were systematically overpriced, in large part because of the statistic by which closers were judged in the marketplace: “saves.” The very word made the guy who achieved them sound vitally important. But the situation typically described by the save—the bases empty in the ninth inning with the team leading—was far less critical than a lot of other situations pitchers faced. The closer’s statistic did not have the power of language; it was just a number. You could take a slightly above average pitcher and drop him into the closer’s role, let him accumulate some gaudy number of saves, and then sell him off. You could, in essence, buy a stock, pump it up with false publicity, and sell it off for much more than you’d paid for it.

Before I really get started I suppose I should give full disclosure. I’m a Mets fan, woe be upon me, and that’s why this stuff’s on my mind. For some reason Terry Collins insists on calling Frank Francisco his closer. Frank Francisco, he of the 8.59 ERA and 2.05 WHIP. He of the three losses, 14 earned runs, eight walks, and 22 hits in just 14.2 innings pitched. He is our closer, and nobody else. All those questions in the first paragraph, yeah, I’ve been shouting them at my television over the past few days.

Yet it’s not those numbers that most horrify me, it’s these: two years and $12 million, or Frank Frank’s contract. It’s because of them that Francisco remains in his position, “for now.”

Like so many other closers, Francisco has but one man to thank for those numbers. That man is Jerome Holtzman, the sportswriter who invented the save in 1960, leading to it becoming an official statistic in 1969.

There was a time when the best relievers were called “firemen,” and they pitched when they were needed most. Bases loaded with one out in the eighth? That’s fireman time. Closer time is the ninth inning, with a three run lead and nobody on base, which has lead some to call it “the most overrated position in sports.”

Those who believe in the sanctity of the closer will tell you the ninth inning is different, there’s more pressure, it gets in your head the way no other inning can. To them I say this: bullshit. Dave Smith of Retrosheet conducted a study of late-inning leads from 1944 to 2003 and an additional 14 seasons prior. He found that regardless of strategy, teams that enter the ninth inning with a lead win 95 percent of the time. The figure doesn’t even vary all that much, the high was 96.7 percent (1909), while the low was 92.5 percent (1941).

Granted, those figures apply to any lead, not just “save situations,” so they’re not really relevant to this discussion, right? Wrong. Smith calculated the figures for those scenarios as well, and they’re not all that different. Going into the ninth inning, a team ahead by one run wins 85 percent of the time, if they’re two runs up it’s 94 percent, and a three-run lead gets you 96 percent.

The problem for most teams is that they obsessively save their closer for the ninth, he might go a week without seeing action during a losing streak. As a result, they lose in the middle innings. The Mets have the exact opposite problem. Their fireman situations often come in the ninth inning, but only because Francisco creates them. They save the guy they think is their best reliever, because he’s making the most money, and waste better pitchers like Bobby Parnell, Tim Byrdak, and Jon Rauch in the middle innings. Now, the Mets think Francisco is their best for a reason, and maybe he is. But he’s not their best right now, and until he is there should be someone else on the hill in critical situations, regardless of what inning it is.

Giants 5, Braves 4
Quick, name the team with the best record in baseball. The Yankees? Sorry – they’re currently only .500. The answer would be the Giants, who have begun the year 4-0 after coming from behind to the beat the Braves 5-4 in 13 innings on Friday. Quick, name the hottest hitter in the league right now. If you said Albert Pujols, then punch yourself in the ear because you’re wrong. If you said Edgar Renteria, you’re right, but you probably only said that to be a wiseass – so the jokes on you. Renteria is batting an astonishing .688 to start the year after going 3-for-5 with a game-tying two-run home run in the bottom of the ninth, which helped San Fran erase a 4-2 deficit. I don’t know how Pablo Sandoval slimmed down and stole Renteria’s jersey without anyone seeing, but there’s no way that’s the real Edgar Renteria.

Rangers 6, Mariners 2
Nelson Cruz abused the Mariners on Friday, going 3-for-4 with a solo homer, two RBI and two runs scored in the Rangers’ 6-2 victory. Seattle is hitting .199 as a team and was 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. It was the club’s fourth straight loss and making matters worse, it was revealed that Cliff Lee might not come off the disabled list until May now.

Royals 4, Red Sox 3
It’s early, but you know things are bad in Boston when they’re losing to Kansas City. Rick Ankiel (yes, that Rick Ankiel) hit a go-ahead two-run single off Daniel Bard in the eighth inning of the Royals’ 4-3 win over the BoSox on Friday night. It was the fourth hit of the night for Ankiel, who also hit a solo home run and drove in three runs. Not a bad night for the newcomer, who helped sent Boston spiraling to a 1-3 start.

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