The Baseballsphere Blog

Nathan Eovaldi of the Boston Red Sox is having a great year. He leads American League pitchers in fWAR, and his name has been mentioned as a Cy Young Award candidate.

But an odd streak is hurting his Cy Young chances right now. And that is that every one of his last 6 starts is a “no decision”. That means his record over those starts is 0-0.

If baseball used the “merit” method of awarding wins, however, he would be 6-0 over that span.

6 wins over 6 starts, instead of no wins. That’s a huge difference.

But should he have earned wins for those starts? Was he deserving of any wins in that stretch? And what is this “merit” method, anyway?

The merit method of awarding wins is one I first publicly proposed in 2018 to fix all the flaws in the way wins are currently awarded in baseball. Some of those flaws are severe. I spell out some of these flaws in my original post, “Fixing how wins are awarded in baseball“.

The method focuses on the number of runs scored by each team, just like the current one does, but awards a winner based on which pitcher did the most to help his team win that game. The current method awards it rather randomly to whoever happened to be the pitcher at the time his team took its last lead of the game. This often awards the win to the least deserving pitcher, and can reward relief pitchers for pitching worse. The merit method does away with those problems, and a host of other problems with the current method.

To explain it, a little background helps. There are a ton of pitching statistics in baseball, but for a pitcher, only two matter in determining the outcome of a game: outs recorded, which he wants to maximize, and runs allowed, which he wants to minimize. A merit-based method of awarding wins would do best to incorporate these two numbers, and just these two numbers.

After all, allowing 1 run over 7 innings is a better contribution than allowing 1 run over 1 inning, just like allowing 1 run over 1 inning is a better contribution than allowing 7 runs over 1 inning.

But what if one pitcher allows 3 runs over 7 innings, and another allows 1 run over 1 inning? Which of these pitchers does more to help his team win? We need a way to be able to attach a value to innings pitched, that allows us to compare it to runs allowed, and come up with a single number that determines how much that pitcher did to help his team win.

The merit method does this by crediting the pitcher with a number of runs per inning pitched, adding these up over all the innings pitched, and then subtracting from this the number of runs that pitcher allowed. The resulting number of runs is called that pitcher’s “Runs Ahead”. The win is awarded to the pitcher on the winning team with the greatest number of Runs Ahead for that game. (Likewise, we can award the loss to the pitcher on the losing team with the lowest number of Runs Ahead for that game.)

As for the number of runs per inning to credit that pitcher with in the first part of that calculation? That’s just the average number of runs his own team scored per inning played in that same game.

One nice thing about calculating things in this way is that the winner always has a positive number for Runs Ahead, and the loser always has a negative number of Runs Ahead.

Let’s see how this works in each of the games in Nathan Eovaldi’s 6-game no-decision streak.

The first game of the streak came on August 23, at home against the Texas Rangers. In that game, Eovaldi’s Red Sox scored 8 runs over 10 innings, for a run credit per inning of 8 / 10 = 0.8. In the table below, this rate is used to convert Innings Pitched (IP) into a number of credited runs, for each player who pitched for the Red Sox in that game. From this run credit, we then subtract the number of runs that pitcher allowed, to get that pitcher’s Runs Ahead for that game.

Pitcher	Innings pitched (IP)	Run credit per IP	Runs credited (RCr)	Runs allowed (R)	Runs ahead (RA)	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	7	0.8	7 ✕ 0.8 = 5.6	1	5.6 – 1 = 4.6	No dec (ND)
Adam Ottavino	1	0.8	1 ✕ 0.8 = 0.8	0	0.8 – 0 = 0.8	Hold (H)
Matt Barnes	⅓	0.8	⅓ ✕ 0.8 = 0.27	2	0.27 – 2 = -1.73	Blown save (BS)
Garrett Whitlock	2 ⅔	0.8	2 ⅔ ✕ 0.8 = 2.13	1	2.13 – 1 = 1.13	Win

As you can see, the merit method of awarding wins gives the win to Nathan Eovaldi by a wide margin.

Now let’s look at the second game of Eovaldi’s ND streak. On August 28 the Red Sox played in Cleveland against the Indians.

August 28, 2021 – Boston Red Sox at Cleveland Indians

• Runs scored by offense: 5
• Innings played by offense: 10
• Run credit per inning: 0.5

Pitcher	IP	RCr/IP	RCr	R	RA	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	5⅓	0.50	2.67	2	0.67	No decision
Josh Taylor	⅔	0.50	0.33	0	0.33
Hirokazu Sawamura	1	0.50	0.50	0	0.50
Austin Davis	⅔	0.50	0.33	0	0.33
Garrett Richards	⅓	0.50	0.17	0	0.17
Garrett Whitlock	1	0.50	0.50	0	0.50	Win
Martin Perez	⅓	0.50	0.17	1	-0.83	Hold
Adam Ottavino	⅔	0.50	0.33	0	0.33	Save

This was an extra innings game in which the Red Sox took the lead for good in the top of the tenth inning. The pitcher who pitched in the ninth inning got credit for the win.

The next three games in the streak are similar to this one, in that the runs Eovaldi needed from his team’s offense didn’t show up until it was too late for him to get credit for the win. However, the last game, on September 19, as we’ll see, is different …

September 3, 2021 – Cleveland Indians at Boston Red Sox

• Runs scored by offense: 8
• Innings played by offense: 8
• Run credit per inning: 1

Pitcher	IP	RCr/IP	RCr	R	RA	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	6⅓	1.00	6.33	3	3.33	No decision
Adam Ottavino	⅔	1.00	0.67	0	0.67	Win
Ryan Brasier	⅔	1.00	0.67	1	-0.33
Garrett Whitlock	1⅓	1.00	1.33	1	0.33	Save

September 8, 2021 – Tampa Bay Rays at Boston Red Sox

• Runs scored by offense: 2
• Innings played by offense: 8
• Run credit per inning: 0.25

Pitcher	IP	RCr/IP	RCr	R	RA	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	7	0.25	1.75	0	1.75	No decision
Josh Taylor	⅔	0.25	0.17	1	-0.83
Garrett Richards	⅓	0.25	0.08	0	0.08	Win
Hansel Robles	1	0.25	0.25	0	0.25	Save

September 14, 2021 – Boston Red Sox at Seattle Mariners

• Runs scored by offense: 8
• Innings played by offense: 9
• Run credit per inning: 0.89

Pitcher	IP	RCr/IP	RCr	R	RA	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	5	0.89	4.45	2	2.45	No decision
Darwinzon Hernandez	1⅔	0.89	1.48	0	1.48
Adam Ottavino	⅓	0.89	0.30	0	0.30	Win
Michael Feliz	1	0.89	0.89	0	0.89
Hirokazu Sawamura	⅓	0.89	0.30	2	-1.70
Austin Davis	⅔	0.89	0.59	0	0.59

September 19, 2021 – Baltimore Orioles at Boston Red Sox

• Runs scored by offense: 8
• Innings played by offense: 8
• Run credit per inning: 1

Pitcher	IP	RCr/IP	RCr	R	RA	Result
Nathan Eovaldi	5	1.00	5.00	3	2.00	No decision
Garrett Whitlock	1	1.00	1.00	1	0.00	Hold
Hirokazu Sawamura	1	1.00	1.00	2	-1.00	Blown save, Win
Hansel Robles	1	1.00	1.00	0	1.00	Hold
Garrett Richards	1	1.00	1.00	0	1.00	Save

Eovaldi left the game after 5 innings with 5 to 3 lead. If the relievers had held that lead through the rest of the game, Eovaldi would have gotten the win. But the reliever Hirokazu Sawamura allowed the other team to score their 5th and 6th runs, and the lead was given up. For this, Sawamura was credited with a “blown save” – not a good thing. But, he was also awarded the win. Why? Because his team took back the lead in the bottom of the same inning by scoring 3 more runs.

Had Sawamura given up 0 runs instead of 2, and everything else being the same, Eovaldi would have been credited with the win. But because Sawamura pitched worse than that, he was rewarded with the win.

This is often referred to as a “Vulture Win”. It makes no sense to allow Vulture Wins to even be possible. I think the merit method of awarding wins is the best way of eliminating them.

All data used in this post was collected from Baseball-Reference.com.