For the first time in what seems like forever, the NL and AL Cy Young Awards went to the guys who most deserved them – Zack Grienke and Tim Lincecum.  But there are still some sportswriters out there who look at wins when evaluating a pitcher’s value or performance.  Like Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Of all the many mysteries surrounding our national pastime, none is more baffling than the rather peculiar obsession by so many who profess a love of baseball who repeatedly try to turn this wonderfully simple game into a mind-numbing, highfalutin’ brain twister.

So someone is going to have to help me on this one.

When did pitching victories become passé?

First off, I love how anyone who approaches the evaluation of baseball players with any type of quantitative analysis whatsoever is ruining the game.  Fuck you, dude.  Ignorance may be bliss, but knowing just how well a player is performing – with the aid of, you know, hard evidence instead of cliches and nonsense found in most newspapers – actually improves most people’s enjoyment of the game.  And if I’m calculating every possible statistic known to man, how does that take away from your enjoyment of the game?  It doesn’t.  It’s people like this who are against gay marriage.

Secondly, does anyone really – I mean really - still think that wins are a good way to evaluate a pitcher’s performace?  A PITCHER HAS NO CONTROL WHATSOEVER OVER HOW HIS TEAM PERFORMS OFFENSIVELY.  At this point, I have to think that writers like Bryan Burwell are just baiting people like me into getting worked up.  They can’t possibly be that dense, can they?