I am so cool. And still tired from last night aaaagh.
Anyway, I was reading some article and I was reminded of how dumb pitcher wins are. A lot of times, there's a very, very strong candidate for the HOF who never had a MAGICAL TWENTY-WIN SEASON so this disqualifies them for the HOF. Whenever people point out that pitcher wins are a really silly stat, the dumb writer usually responds to their point with "Oh, I wasn't aware that you didn't have to win games to get into the playoffs." Yeah, that's team wins. Pitcher wins don't mean that much.
Let's look at the last four dudes to win 20 games, all from 2008 since no one did it in 2009:
Roy Halladay TOR
Cliff Lee CLE
Mike Mussina NYY
Brandon Webb ARI
Now don't get me wrong, those four guys had excellent years. The way today's game is, I don't think you could be bad, or even league-average, but on a fantastic team, and win 20 games. It's not that simple. But let's face it, you're probably a really good pitcher or at least one that had a fantastic year if you win 19, 18, or 17 games, too. Why this arbitrary "20 games" thing? But anyway.
But the more important point: now, what did all these guys' teams have in common? Oh that's right, they didn't make the playoffs in that year. These guys got an elite number of individual wins but they couldn't carry their teams into the playoffs, because the 24 other guys on the roster weren't good enough that year to take them there. And that's that.
