Value of Wins in Fantasy Baseball

Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

The win. No stat has taken more of a beating over the years than the win. In the eyes of many baseball people, the value of wins seems to be microscopic. On the surface, it makes sense.

• Pitchers have little (National League) to nothing (American League) to do with the run support, and obviously runs are necessary for a win. So a pitcher can allow 5 runs in 5 innings and if the other pitcher is worse than him, still pick up a win. Meanwhile, someone can allow 1 runs over 8 innings and take a no decision, or even a loss.
• Pitchers don’t complete games anymore. So, even if a pitchers throws well and leaves with the lead, his bullpen is still responsible for holding the lead, having to record possibly 15 outs.

Again. On the surface, ignoring wins makes sense. The exception is, of course, that fantasy leagues mostly count wins as one of the five categories. So, you can’t completely ignore them. But looking a little deeper, or if your league counts something like quality starts instead of wins, can we learn anything from how many wins a pitcher has?

Obviously you have to judge pitchers on a case-by-case basis. But from a general sense, I was actually a little surprised by the results of the research I did. Looking at the average fantasy stats of the Top 10 winning pitchers (plus ties), and the next 10 (plus ties in each of the last five seasons, the gap was actually not insignificant.

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The time to really devalue wins would have been after the 2010 season. Many of the top winners produced fairly ordinary strikeout totals, and if you remember, that was the year when Felix Hernandez (13 wins) beat David Price (19 wins) and C.C. Sabathia (21 wins) for the American League Cy Young Award.

Towards the end of that season, so many of the new-age stat people were so upset thinking that C.C. would win that award before the voting was even announced. I’m convinced those people had anger stored up for a few seasons and finally released it when Miguel Cabrera beat Mike Trout for the AL MVP Award in 2012 and 2013. I don’t have a problem with that thought, I actually don’t even disagree with it. But to hear some of these people talk, you’d think that Miggy had the skill of nothing more than an average high school player. But I digress.

All of the flaws about the win are true. Someone can throw a great game and take a loss or no decision because of no run support and/or a poor bullpen, while someone can throw poorly and pick up a win if his team’s bats are on that day.

When it comes to a given start, or evaluating a few pitchers, it may be true. But if you’re searching the free agent pool looking for a new addition, don’t over-think it. Start by looking at the wins and then judge each pitcher individually.

Remember, we live in an era of expanded bullpens. Teams often carry 12 or even 13 total pitchers on the staff, leaving only a few hitters on the bench. If a pitcher is having a bad day, most managers won’t allow him to stay in the game for the five innings needed to pick up the win.

Things like pitch and innings counts have absolutely overtaken baseball. Don’t try to argue it, you’ll lose. You may be able to argue that it’s made the game better (I’d vehemently disagree if you felt that way), but we’re just two years removed from the team with baseball’s best record shutting down their best pitcher in the last few weeks of the season, keeping him from pitching in the playoffs.

So if you’re winning a lot of games, you’re going deep into games, meaning you’re probably not throwing many pitches. By extension, the fewer runners a pitcher allows means that more often than not, he’ll prevent runs from being scored.

Again, there are absolutely individual exceptions to this. We had the aforementioned King Felix example. Last year, Clayton Kershaw had one of the best seasons in recent memory and won a fairly modest 16 games while two years before, he had a slightly higher ERA and WHIP for an inferior Dodgers team and won 21. It’s not a perfect stat, such a thing does not exist.

Having said that, if you completely ignore wins, you’re not only shortchanging yourself in a league that counts wins, but making finding new pitchers much more difficult. If you have a specific guy in mind, go for it. But if you’re doing a general search for a new starting pitcher or two and trying to figure out where to start looking, don’t underestimate the value of wins.