I think wins are way more valuable a measure of pitcher quality than the save.

A reliever should have to face the tying/losing run to qualify for "saving" a game.

Perhaps starters should get a "game pitched to a lead after seven", or some such certification for their efforts.

Or, maybe, we could accept that it all evens out -- more or less -- over the course of a long career. The truly great pitchers will win their share of the time. And the "just-good-enough-to-not win" won't.

Any proof in the pudding there? After all, there are plenty of pitchers who still managed to win a truckload of games for lousy teams.

Look at Walter Johnson. The Senators managed just 10 winning seasons during his 21-year career. And most of the time, he was the one that put them over the top.

Cream rises to the top.

ERA was introduced for a very good reason. Its was apparent even long ago that pitchers on better teams would rack up wins even if they weren't that good while better pitchers on poorer teams might not win that often. ERA would rectify that and then you could see who the better pitchers really were regardless of how good or bad the teams they were on. How that could escape someone at this stage of statistical baseball evolution is rather odd.

Also, we don't always care about predicting future performance, sometimes we want to evaluate the performance that already happened. Still, though, Wins don't necessarily describe that very well either.

I really don't get the 300 win fetish. On the one hand, writers talk about how we'll never see 300 again, which is bs, in my opinion. It's getting rarer and it may die out one day if the game keeps changing in the direction it is now, but it's still quite possible for a guy with a 20+ year career on mostly good teams to win 300. OTOH, lots of pitchers from the 50s and 60s are in the hall with well under 300 wins, back when it was supposedly so much easier to do. But suddenly if you start your career in the 70s or later, 280ish isn't enough? What? I wouldn't vote for TJ or JK personally, but there are lesser pitchers with fewer wins in the hall from previous eras when it was supposedly easier to accumulate wins.

So if it's so hard now to get 300, why don't we cut some guys who almost made it some slack? and if it isn't, then stop talking about how Glavine will be the last one ever.

dude really how old are you? seriously. What if pitcher B's team DIDN'T score them runs? Dude come on. No better yet what if those runs scored were errors caused by the fielders? so on and so on.

I'm open for debate and all but there actually HAS TO BE ONE. If youre just here to start stuff then say so but really....

a pitcher depends on the offense to win him games. His wins and loses will depend solely on the amount of runs he limits a team to and the amount of runs his team can score.

there's no special trick or "little things" a guy does to win games. that just down right 1909 baseball talk.

but if you don't like stats I feel you in that. But its fans like you who read money ball and missed the whole point. Money isn't the face of sabermetrics. To me the A's use sabermetrics to DEVAULE a players ability so they won't have to PAY THEM. they say stolen bases aren't good...the A's say this not sabermetrics. Why? Because a guy like scott podesidkintwsnos (yeah i can't spell his name and i don't care to) will ask for 10 million for doing nothing more than stealing bases.

you and joe morgan missed the whole point.

"If he gets beat, he was not the best pitcher on the field that day. I know I'm in the minority on this one"

yes you are because there's no logic to your thoughts. None what so ever...NONE. Here's a thought look at Cain's league batting average against.

it tells you all you need to know. they don't get much hits off of him. he's losing game 2-1...1-0.

really I don't like to put people down but really I have to ask...how old are you? because your logic was 3rd grade.

You can easily and extremely accurately assess how good the 3.00 ERA pitcher is; what more can you ask for than a prediction of how many runs a pitcher will let up?