statistics

Garrett Crochet pitched the best start of the year but didn’t get the win. We can fix that.

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The merit method of awarding wins fixes all the injustices that the current method of awarding wins punishes starting pitchers with. The latest of these injustices happened to Garrett Crochet, ace of the Boston Red Sox, last night. He threw 8 scoreless, 3-hit innings before giving up a game-tying solo home run to baseball’s best hitter, Aaron Judge, with one out in the top of the ninth. With only one run of support from his teammates, that tie score made Crochet ineligible to earn a win, as he was removed from the game at that point, and the current rules say the win goes to the pitcher who was the active pitcher when the winning team took its final lead. So the win went to Garrett Whitlock, who retired the two batters he faced in the top of the 10th inning. Whitlock performed well. But who did more to earn the win? The guy who faced 2 batters over 1 inning of work, giving up no runs, or the guy who faced 30 batters over 8 and 1/3 innings, giving up 1 run to a top offense and the Red Sox’ arch rivals?

If you agree with me that Crochet did more to earn that win, then you’ll like the merit method for 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 2 runs that the Red Sox scored in Friday’s game and divide by 9 and 2/3, which is the number of innings the Red Sox were at bat. This gives us the average number of runs the Red Sox scored in each inning, the fraction 6/29. Then we simply credit each Red Sox pitcher with this number of runs for every inning they pitched. And then we subtract from this the number of runs they gave up. This gives each pitcher a number of “Runs Ahead”. Then we give the win to the pitcher with the greatest number of Runs Ahead.

The cool thing about this method is that adding the Runs Ahead of all the winning team’s pitchers always gives you a positive number, and adding all the Runs Ahead of the losing team’s pitchers always gives you a negative number. This method also assigns the losing pitcher as the one with the most negative Runs Ahead value.

Here’s a table showing the numbers discussed above for the Red Sox pitchers in last night’s game. In the first three columns in the table below we see 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.

PitcherIPRCr/IPRCrRRA
Garrett Crochet8 ⅓6/2950/29121/29
Aroldis Chapman⅔6/294/2904/29
Garrett Whitlock16/296/2906/29
Runs Ahead (RA) calculations for Red Sox pitchers in victory over New York Yankees, June 13, 2025

Then you subtract runs allowed (R) from this to get each pitcher’s number of Runs Ahead (RA) for that game. Because Garrett Crochet 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 other Garrett (Whitlock).

I hope someday to convince MLB league officials to change to the merit method for awarding wins. It fixes so many things that are just not right about the current method.

Xander Bogaerts back on pace to reach 200 hits, win AL batting title

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Back on Wednesday morning, I showed that Xander Bogaerts and Miguel Cabrera were hitting at paces that would cause Bogaerts to (most likely) surpass Cabrera for the AL batting title. Though I didn’t mention it at the time, these projections also showed that he’d reach 200 hits even if he sat out a couple of games, and a few more than that if he played all the remaining games. After a pair of low-hit games knocked Bogaerts off that pace, his 3-for-4 performance last night has put him right back on it.

In trying to project future totals using “the pace at which a player is producing right now”, how many games do you use to determine what that pace is? The last 5? The last 10? 20?

I circumvent that question by using all of them … I calculate his pace of production over his last 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. games, then use that pace applied over the remaining number of games to be played to see what final numbers he’s headed for. This gives a big collection of possible final numbers; you then choose one in the middle.

On Wednesday I did that for Cabrera and Bogaerts using their paces of production as established by their last 8, 9, 10, etc. up to their last 20 games. That gave 13 paces of production for each player. I then applied these to their remaining games assuming they’d not sit out any games, and then again assuming they’d each sit out two games. I got these results:

If playing all remaining games
Bogaerts Cabrera
Low 0.327 0.324
Median 0.329 0.326
High 0.332 0.331
If sitting out two games
Bogaerts Cabrera
Low 0.327 0.326
Median 0.329 0.328
High 0.331 0.332

In all but one of these 26 projections, Bogaerts would end up with at least 200 hits.

I just updated these numbers, and now they look like this:

If playing all remaining games
Bogaerts Cabrera
Low 0.327 0.325
Median 0.329 0.326
High 0.330 0.332
If sitting out two games
Bogaerts Cabrera
Low 0.327 0.327
Median 0.328 0.328
High 0.329 0.332

Here are Bogaerts’ projected numbers of hits:

Bogaerts projected 2015 hits
# of recent games used If playing all games If sitting two games
20 204.0 200.8
19 203.3 200.2
18 203.0 200.0
17 203.3 200.2
16 203.6 200.5
15 204.0 200.8
14 205.1 201.7
13 204.9 201.5
12 203.8 200.7
11 204.4 201.1
10 204.0 200.8
9 204.7 201.3
8 204.3 201.0

Longer term projections (based on his last 40 or more games) almost all have him finishing with 200 hits exactly if he sits out 2 games, 203 hits if he plays all remaining games, and a .327 average.

If they play it out, and stay on pace, Bogaerts probably will win the batting title and will get to 200 hits.

Thanks to Baseball-Reference.com for the gamelog data I used for this article.