Imrem: Why Arrieta's award is a win for wins
Cubs' ace Jake Arrieta, this season's National League leader with 22 victories, was named the Cy Young Award winner Wednesday night.
In the process, a bit of order was restored to evaluating pitchers.
We're headed toward a day when a pitcher with a losing record will win the award and fortunately for Arrieta it wasn't this year.
The Cy Young doesn't have to go to the pitcher with the most victories, but the sense lately has been that pitchers are penalized for winning.
Well, call me silly but I think victories still matter even if saying so makes me sound closer to 200 years old than 100 years old ... in baseball sabermetrics years, that is.
The pitching victory has been devalued by baseball's new math spit out by computers that I would have trouble figuring out how to turn on.
(This isn't meant as an anti-advanced analytics rant because not even I am dumb enough to oppose something just because I'm not smart enough to understand it.)
Among relevant stats these days are WHIP, WAR and WPA, which combine to determine a player's value in relation to the moon, the sun and the stars.
But when a team earns a "W", it still stands for WIN, which reminds me of something Sparky Anderson said.
One day when he managed the Tigers back in the 1980s, Anderson was pontificating in the old Comiskey Park's visiting clubhouse.
Hall-of-Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, finishing his career with the White Sox, was approaching the hallowed 300-victory plateau.
Anderson noted that when a position player has 3,000 hits or 500 home runs, many of them came in games that his team lost.
However, Anderson added, when a pitcher has 300 victories, every one of them came in a game his team won.
Anderson put baseball milestones into perspective in a way that only a grizzled old baseball man nicknamed Sparky could.
The proclamation was like Al Davis' "Just win, baby," Ozzie Guillen's "Winning is fun, fun is winning," and Vince Lombardi's "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
Today those words would transition into "Just metrics, baby," "Math is fun, fun is math" and "Winning isn't everything, Wins Above Replacement are."
Sparky Anderson's point is well taken: Winning is the name of the game in professional athletics.
Jack Morris, one of Anderson's pitchers with the Tigers, recorded 254 career victories. His won-lost percentage was .577 He started World Series games for three different franchises.
I voted for Morris for the Hall of Fame every year he was on the ballot. He never made it, partly because of sabermetrics.
Morris' career 3.90 earned run average was higher than some would like to allow into Cooperstown.
However, Morris would win 1-0 in 10 innings, as he did for the Twins against the Braves in Game 7 of the 1991 World Series, or he would win 6-5 if that's what it took.
Jack Morris would just win, baby, and isn't that what a pitcher's job is supposed to be?
Back to Arrieta: The Cubs won each of the 22 games for which he was credited with a victory.
Look, there's a value and a place for a deeper depth of statistical gymnastics in all sports and Zack Greinke or Clayton Kershaw would have been a worthy Cy Young winner under any set of sabermetrics.
But Arrieta is a worthy winner ... now please excuse me while I start planning my 200th birthday bash.
mimrem@dailyherald.com