Tanner Houck pitched most of the innings for the Boston Red Sox in Friday night’s 7-5 win over the Detroit Tigers. (Here’s the box score.) He gave up no runs, and left the game with a 4-run lead. So they should award him the win, right?
Except that they didn’t. Because the 74-year-old rules for awarding wins often give them to less deserving pitchers, as they did in this case. The rules award it to the pitcher who was pitching when his team took its final lead, even if that pitcher pitches poorly. This system often gives a pitcher a win because he pitched worse than he might have, as it did last night. If the Red Sox’ closer Kenley Jansen had kept the Tigers from scoring, Houck would have gotten the win. But because he allowed the game to become tied, and then his team took the lead for good the next inning, he got the win (and the “blown save”).
Earning the win in this way is called a Vulture Win. It’s the worst of the seven reasons why (in my estimation) the current method of awarding wins to pitchers is flawed, and needs to be replaced. (That’s a list of reasons I haven’t yet blogged about, though I really should. At least I list some of them here.)
There is a way to fix this. There is a way of awarding wins that gives it to the right pitcher. I call it the merit method of awarding wins. I explain the method in my post The how and the why of awarding wins to pitchers by the merit method.
Using that method, we take the 7 runs that the Red Sox scored in Friday’s game and divide by 10 (the number of innings the Red Sox were at bat) to get the average number of runs they scored each inning (7/10, or 0.7). We then credit each Red Sox pitcher with this number of runs for every inning they pitched. We see this in the first three columns in the table below, IP, RCr/IP, and RCr, which stand for Innings Pitched, Runs Credited per inning pitched, and Runs Credited, respectively. You get the third column (Runs Credited) by multiplying together the first two.
| Pitcher | IP | RCr/IP | RCr | R | RA | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T. Houck | 6 | 0.7 | 4.2 | 0 | 4.2 | |
| Bernardino | 1 ⅓ | 0.7 | 0.933 | 3 | -2.067 | |
| J. Slaten | ⅔ | 0.7 | 0.467 | 0 | 0.467 | Hold |
| K. Jansen | 1 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 1 | -0.3 | Blown save, win |
| C. Martin | 1 | 0.7 | 0.7 | 1 | -0.3 | Save |
Runs Ahead (RA) calculations for Red Sox pitchers in victory over Detroit Tigers, August 30, 2024
Then you subtract runs allowed (R) from this to get each pitcher’s number of Runs Ahead (RA) for that game. Because Tanner Houck had the highest number of Runs Ahead for the winning team, he would be awarded the win by the merit method. But by current rules, the win went to the guy who blew the save. (Nothing against Jansen, he’s been great for the Red Sox. I just have something against awarding wins they way it’s currently done.)
There a couple of cool things about this method that happen when a whole number of innings is played. One is that when you add up all the Runs Credited (RCr) for each pitcher, you get the number of runs your team scored in the game. Even better, when you add up all the Runs Ahead (RA), you get the margin of victory (in this game, 7 – 5 = 2). So Runs Ahead is like the part of the team’s margin of victory that that pitcher is responsible for. As you may notice, some of these numbers are negative. And when a team loses, there are always some pitchers with a negative Runs Ahead (and when a team wins, there are always some with a positive RA). You can use the merit method for assigning the losing pitcher, too – the pitcher on the losing team with the most negative RA. And so, the winner always has a positive RA, and the loser always has a negative one.
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