TTDMS: Five innings for a win
The separate rules for victorious starters and relievers are absurdly different
Starter Alex Wood pitched a masterful game for the San Francisco Giants on April 11. The lefty blanked the Los Angeles Dodgers, allowing only one hit. Final score: Giants 5, Dodgers 0.
“When you get runs early, you want to try to put up zeros on the board,” Wood said after the game. “Just thankful we were able to do that. The pen did a great job. Just a really good team win tonight."
But it wasn’t a win for him.
Manager Gabe Kapler pulled Wood with two outs in the fifth inning. The Giants were up 2-0 at the time, but a pair of Dodgers had reached base on walks. Kapler decided to play the percentages, bringing in a righty, Jakob Junis, to face the Dodgers’ right-handed batter, Will Smith.
Junis preserved Wood’s shutout, yet one of baseball’s arcane rules kept the starter from getting any credit.
“A starting pitcher must pitch at least five innings (in a traditional game of nine innings or longer) to qualify for the win,” says the rulebook. “If he does not, the official scorer awards the win to the most effective relief pitcher.”
The scorekeeper eventually granted the W to reliever Scott Alexander, who bailed Junis out of a bases-loaded jam in the sixth inning. Alexander threw only eight pitches, roughly one-tenth of the 75 that Wood delivered, yet the official record credited Alexander with the victory.
The five-inning limit was officially adopted in 1950, though it had been honored informally through most of baseball’s history.
There was always an element of foolishness behind the stipulation. It was never explained why a starter was required to obtain at least 15 outs to qualify for a win, while a reliever could get snag a W after, in some cases, tossing only a single pitch.
The five-inning rule, in other words, is another example of a TTDMS — a thing that doesn’t make sense. (Click here to read about a previous TTDMS, the stat known as the quality start.)
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The five-inning rule didn’t stir up any controversy when it was implemented in 1950, which certainly shouldn’t come as a surprise. Complete games were common back then.
A sizable majority of all wins in 1950 — 754 of 1,230 (61.3 percent) — were credited to pitchers who went the distance. Thirty-one of those winners worked at least 10 innings in their successful outings. Alex Kellner of the Philadelphia Athletics went 15 innings to lock down a W.
Such durability is a rarity these days. Only 27 winners pitched complete games in 2022. Eleven times as many — 295 winning pitchers — worked the minimum of five innings. Yet the statistical threshold doesn’t take this dramatic change in workload into account.
Many experts argue that the W is an irrelevant statistic for pitchers. “It might be the dumbest stat in all of sports,” argues Matt Snyder of CBS Sports. But if we’re going to keep it, the allocation rule should be adjusted to reflect reality.
Seventy-seven starters worked four and two-thirds innings last season in games that their teams eventually won. More than half of them — 46 of 77 (59.7 percent) — gave up two earned runs or fewer. Yet, for whatever reason, they were removed a single out away from the victory threshold.
And there’s a flip side: Thirty-seven relievers were granted victories last year after delivering no more than five pitches. Four of these winners tossed a single pitch — just one — and came away with a W. The absurdity should be clear to all.
The rulebook instructs the scorekeeper to hand a win to “the most effective relief pitcher” if the starter fails to go five innings. If they wish, the majors can continue to adhere to the spirit of this regulation, though they should excise the workload requirement.
The scorer should be instructed to give the W to “the most effective pitcher” for the winning side, no matter if it’s the starter or a reliever, no matter how many or few innings he might have worked.
If such a rule had existed on April 11, the victory would have been credited to the pitcher who rightly deserved it, Alex Wood.