Parity Violation

One of the great comic strips, and perhaps the last great one, Calvin and Hobbes has a story at Slate. It’s actually kind of an online tribute with reprints of some great strips and some commentary. Many, many, more people I know should be familiar with this comic strip. It’s funny, smart, and highly quotable, yet most of my friends have never heard of it. I should start giving the books away as gifts.

Chris Carpenter won the NL Cy Young award today, besting Dontrelle Willis and Roger Clemens. Clemens’s ERA was almost a full run less than Carpenter’s, he had a better WHIP and a better batting average against. Oh, but Carpnter won 21 games and Willis won 22, where as Clemens only won 13. It’s also true that Carpenter is is 2 inches taller than Clemens. Both his greater height and his greater number of wins are about equally relevant.

The Win – Loss record for pitchers has to be the most meaningless pitching statistic in baseball. All it says is the Cards have a better offense than the Astros. What on earth does this have to do with pitching?

Carpenter did have 7 complete games, which is pretty impressive, but still. This notion about 20-game winners having anything to do with anything is silly. Clemens’ 13 wins is merely a testament to the fact the Astros scored 0 runs for him like what, 8 times?

Anyway, not like Carpenter is a bad pitcher but people need to get real about Wins. It’s a dumb statistic.