Tigers On The Beach: A Detroit Tigers Off-Season Weblog

Bonderman Can Win 20 - Detroit News, 10/10/04

When I first saw this article from Lynn Henning show up on my computer screen this morning, my first one-second blush was a little nervousness. I thought perhaps we might be seeing an article in which Bonderman would be promoted as someone who could win 20 games all by himself, regardless of his teammates. Many baseball writers author such articles from that position, spoken or unspoken.

I have an issue with using win-loss records to assess pitcher effectiveness. That is, I don't believe they should be used at all, and they are exceedingly misleading because wins and losses are not the pitcher's sole responsibility. All the pitcher can do is pitch well and try to keep runners from reaching base by making them hit their pitches, whether out of the zone or off-speed, so batters hit the ball in suboptimal ways to create easier fielding chances, or not hit the ball at all and strike out. Despite what some people would have you believe, a pitcher has absolutely nothing to do with how much offense his team generates while he's pitching, nor can he controls how effective his relievers are in maintaining his leads or preventing his bequeathed runners from scoring. And that's at the core of my belief about win-loss records as a measure of pitcher effectiveness.

Here's my favorite example: given the following records, which pitcher would you have rather had on your team in 1987, A or B?

Pitcher A: 211.2 IP, 154 H, 87 BB, 270 SO, 2.76 ERA, VORP 55.8
Pitcher B: 229.2IP, 250 H, 86 BB, 123 SO, 4.39 ERA, VORP 24.0

You smart people probably know by now that Pitcher A is Nolan Ryan, who led the league in ERA that year with an 8-16 record, while Pitcher B is Shane Rawley with a 17-11 record. Look only at W-L, you'd never have taken Ryan over Rawley. But because Ryan got piss-poor run support from his Astros teammates, and Rawley got among the best support from his bullpen in the league, the W-L records are what they are.

Therefore, I was pleased then to see that Henning did qualify that Bonderman could win 20 on a good team, rather than willing himself to 20 wins all on his own. The question is whether Henning is speaking from a rational position, or whether he's drinking the Kool-Aid.

It is true that Bonderman does rank third among starting pitchers in the AL for K/9, and for a 21-year old, that is very impressive. He does have great baffling stuff, and his ability to control that will be key. He has shown some spottiness on that front so far, walking 3.6 batters per 9, and he does have a bit of a gopher ball, placing in the middle-to-bottom among starters on both fronts.

On the flip side: the kid is only 21. Very few 21 year-olds have pitched even this effectively at that age, and some of the names of those who did include Kerry Wood, Frank Tanana, Nolan Ryan, Sam McDowell, Bob Feller, Dennis Eckersley, Tom Gordon, Hal Newhouser, Vida Blue, Dan Sutton and Jose Rijo. Very few schlubs in that group.

So, all in all, I agree with Lynn Henning: given a good team, it is not impossible for Jeremy Bonderman to win 20 games as early as next year.