Quote:
Originally Posted by TitovFTW
Literally every other stat is more important when talking about pitchers. The W-L record of a pitcher tells us nothing at all about their skill level. Cliff Lee didn't win a game until months and months into the season and he had a 1000x better season then Barry Zito and is a 1000x better pitcher. ERA while giving us more insight into a pitchers performance is also useless due to the many different unfair factors that make up the stat. Team defense, ballpark the pitcher is pitching in, inherited runners, exc.
Barry Zito is not a good pitcher. He just isn't. He's not a god awful pitcher but he's just not that good. He had a good performance tonight. Kudos to him.
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I have been a lifelong Giants fan. I was extremely excited to get him from Oakland and extremely disappointed in the first five years of his San Francisco tenure. Besides some glimpses at his former greatness, a few of which I have been at AT&T Park to witness in person, I couldn't wait for his contract to end. This year has been different. He pitched very well all year in 2012. Every pitcher will have some bad games, and he had 3 terrible ones this year. This was very much needed, since Lincecum had a terrible year. His ERA and losses led the NL. That's unacceptable for him, and the team's supposed ace.
It's not like the Giants have huge bats behind them. I'd agree Zito had a bad year if he lost a lot of games, had a high ERA or from watching 150 out of the 162 games had seen other things. He had a good year this year. This year he was a good pitcher. If you ranked the NL starting pitchers from 1-80 on their pitching up until today, he'd be second on the Giants and probably top 25 in the league. That's not a bad pitcher. It just isn't. I don't forget what happened since he came to SF, but I appreciate what he's done, especially this year.