Wins vs Innings Pitched

A couple of days ago, MLBNetwork had an interview with the members of the Phillies 5-man rotation. Fittingly, they had John Smoltz conduct the interview, since he was a key member of the 90’s Braves rotation.

One question in particular, which he asked each of the five members, stood out to me. He asked “Of these three statistical categories (Wins, Innings Pitched, and ERA), which one means the most?” Halladay, Lee, Oswalt, and Hamels all chose Innings Pitched, while Blanton went with Wins. I thought it was interesting that the 5th man, clearly the outsider of the group, went with a different choice.

This isn’t a knock on Blanton, who has been a slightly above average pitcher (I have him at 71-70 adjusted W-L for his career). But I don’t think anybody is putting him in the class of the other four members.

Just as Smoltz said, there are no wrong answers. And you can’t certainly can’t disagree with Blanton picking Wins, since that should be the ultimate goal for every player. In fact, if I were a pitcher, I may very well have made that my choice. But it was the choice of the other 4 that got me thinking.

It seems as though a lot of baseball fans think of Innings Pitched as a “playing time” stat such as Games Played or Plate Appearances. But in fact, IP x 3 is the total number of successful outs recorded while you are on the mound. Obviously, the better pitchers will record more outs than the rest. If you put me on the mound, I could face 50 batters and record zero outs, but my playing time certainly wouldn’t be “zero”. We wouldn’t calculate a hitter’s playing time by times on base, would we?

So when four of the game’s best starters choose Innings Pitched as the most important number, you really can’t argue. The more efficiently a pitcher can record outs (less base runners, less pitches thrown), the more Innings Pitched they will have. This, in turn, will give the pitcher a better chance of the ultimate goal, Winning.