Popeye_Card wrote:He only won 3 games that he didn't deserve to. That's only 1 more cheap win than Carpenter (in 32 starts) or Reyes (in 17 starts) had last year.
--P--
Is my logic correct in assuming that a game that has a starter who gets an undeserved/garbage win will always conversely have a starter who deserves to lose and in fact does?
Not completely. For instance, Anthony Reyes posted a game score of 82 in last year's loss against the White Sox, opposing Freddy Garcia who posted a 75.
But in most cases, you pitch over a 50 and you'll win. Pitch lower, and you'll lose. There's a gray area in that 40-60 range where you'll see several no decisions and cheap wins vs. tough losses. But most pitchers form a bell curve right around 50. Better pitchers (i.e. Carpenter) have a bell curve that centers around 60. Poor pitchers (i.e. Jeff Weaver) are around 40.
That's why 50 is the official "dividing line" between good and bad, although the gray area does come into play.
Thus, I usually try to break it down a bit further:
90+ - unbelievable
80-89 - phenomenal
70-79 - outstanding
60-69 - very good
50-59 - good
40-49 - fair
30-39 - poor
20-29 - very poor
10-19 - awful
10 and below - truly awful
I think it's fascinating, too, that a 100-point start is very nearly the best you can do, and a 0-point start is very nearly the worst you can do - starts of 100 points or more - like Randy Johnson's perfect game (100 points) or Kerry Wood's 20K, 0 BB, 1-hitter back in 1998 vs. Houston (105 points) would be historically good, whereas starts like Mark Petkovsek's start against Cleveland back in 1998 (minus-8) is a historically bad start.
Question: I know Wood's 105 is the record for a 9-inning game, but what's the record low? I'm sure there must have been worse starts out there than Petkovsek's game.
Observation: Reyes wound up with a 51, but I'd be hard-pressed to call his start a "good" one. One of the few instances where the Game Score scale has let me down.
For the record, and for illustrative purposes, here's how Carpenter did last season:
Carpenter:
21 starts at 50+, 11 starts below 50. Theoretically, he could have gone 21-11; he went 15-8. In his 21 "50+ starts", Carp went 13-1 with 7 no-decisions; in his 11 "-50" starts, Carp went 2-7 with 2 no-decisions.
So... Carpenter got two "cheap wins" and one "tough loss" - which would have put him at 14-9 had they gone they way they were "supposed to".
But what about those 7 no-decisions in his "50+" games?
In those games, Carpenter allowed just 13 runs (9 earned) in 57 IP, for an ERA of 1.42 - yet had nothing to show for it.
What happened?
The bullpen allowed 11 runs in those 7 games, but that wasn't really the underlying fault, as the Cards still won 5 of those 7 games - the fault appears to be that of low run support early, as many of those games the Cards won after Carp was out of the game (rather like Looper's game the other day) - although I can think of at least two games where the bullpen did indeed give up the tying or go-ahead runs and then the Cards rallied to win the game anyway.
Bottom line may be to go with the team's record when a guy pitches; in Carpenter's case, the Cards won 20 and lost 12 when Carpenter started the game. And that ain't bad.
In this year's case, we're:
4-1 when Looper starts
3-1 when Wainwright starts
2-1 when Keisler starts
1-4 when Wells starts
0-1 when Carpenter starts
0-4 when Reyes starts
Year Ag Tm Lg W L G GS CG SHO GF SV IP H R ER HR BB SO HBP WP BFP IBB BK ERA *lgERA *ERA+ WHIP
+--------------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+--+------+----+----+----+---+----+----+---+---+-----+---+---+-----+-----+----+-----+
1912 20 DET AL 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 8.0 26 24 14 0 7 1 0 0 50 0 15.75 3.27 21 4.125
Without looking it up, I assume that's the famous "strike" game the Tigers played with replacement players against the A's when the regular players struck over Ty Cobb's suspension?
