Is the pitcher solely responsible for the win or does some of the credit also belong to the batters? Obviously some belongs to the batters so a statistic that a pitcher doesn't have complete control over obviously not as good as a statistic such as ERA that for the most part is solely the responsibility of the pitcher.

Team is responsible as well. Love the stat that tells you what a teams record is when a certain player plays or pitches.

ERA is not solely the responsibility of the pitcher. Defense plays a role. And while making errors does not statistically affect ERA the defense still plays a pretty big role. Teams making errors give the offensive team more more outs and chances to score earned runs. And those runs scored by runners that get on base, often score because of hits, not other errors...hits that the pitcher gave up. The other piece to consider on defense, is defensive range. Pitchers that have defenders with below average range, give up more hits, and usually more runs, affecting their ERA.

 

ERA is not necessarily a great indicator of a pitchers ability, especially in the mid ranges. Kind of like wins. Pitchers on the extreme low or Extreme high end of both scales are accurately represented by both stats. Pitcher's in the middle are a little tougher.

 

Bottom line is there are flaws in almost all stats.

 

Bolded is true but I would argue that ERA is a MUCH better barometer of how a pitcher is pitching than W/L's.

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Edited July 1, 201511 yr by SomebodySayAyyyy
double post

ERA is not solely the responsibility of the pitcher. Defense plays a role. And while making errors does not statistically affect ERA the defense still plays a pretty big role. Teams making errors give the offensive team more more outs and chances to score earned runs. And those runs scored by runners that get on base, often score because of hits, not other errors...hits that the pitcher gave up. The other piece to consider on defense, is defensive range. Pitchers that have defenders with below average range, give up more hits, and usually more runs, affecting their ERA.

 

ERA is not necessarily a great indicator of a pitchers ability, especially in the mid ranges. Kind of like wins. Pitchers on the extreme low or Extreme high end of both scales are accurately represented by both stats. Pitcher's in the middle are a little tougher.

 

Bottom line is there are flaws in almost all stats.

 

Pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one. Most of the reasons you stated are why Fangraphs and Baseball Reference don't use ERA as part of their pitcher WAR calculations, but more advanced sabermetric stats like FIP and RA9. So many things go into ERA that it's not always a great measure of pitcher skill. As for wins, I haven't looked at a players W/L record in like 3 years ever since i started getting into sabermetric stats for the most part. Pitchers have so little control over them, it literally tells you nothing. I think it's the most pointless stat in sports to tell you the truth. The only thing in Wins favor is that it's easily digestible. You can show a pitcher's win/loss record and people instantly know what it means. I think that's what's keeping the vastly better advanced stats from being the main go to stats is that most people don't understand what they are and where they come from.