The most mis-leading statistic in baseball IS....

BigtenBoy

very good point...I will throw in Wang should be 8-0......Anyway, thats why I found it ridiculous that the biggest measuring stick for handing out the CY YOUNG is WINS.......More times than not, its the guy that reaches 20 wins that would win it over the guy that wins 16 but pitched like he should have 23...

Duck

Youre right about Peavy, and thats happened a couple of times....And Roy Halladay should be the clear cut co-fav with Cliff Lee right now for Cy Young...Deserves a much better fate

Good point paydirt

Yeah I think the ERA of middle relievers and record of middle relievers is misleading because of the way the losses, wins, and earned runs are scored.

I just think since wins are looked at more often it is the more misleading stat in baseball. Wang should be 8-0 and Aaron Harang has all quality starts and is 2-5....yikes. The offense just hasn't showed up for him.

The Cy Young award should not focus on wins as you mentioned...but on the overall season of the pitchers.

Holds should get more pub...and are often more important than saves (especially those 3 runs saves when the closer comes in with no one on base). The old time closers wouldn't even call that a save...

PLEASE paydirt....you Yankee fans with your Joba-humping, it's sickening...the guy has pitched 41 IP in his career...the first 30 IP he posted .29 ERA...the last 11 IP he's at 4.09 ERA.  I guess Joba's exposed too?

I personally think Joba's a better pitcher, but it's close, and Okajima has 47 more IP to his name.  Let's not retire his number yet, I know that's a tough task in Yankeeland.

Another misleading stat is the win-loss record for middle relievers. I'm waiting for the Red Sox fans to tell us that Joba is 1-2 and Oki is 1-0. If you look at Oki's record you would think he's dominant with a 1-0 record and a 0.93 ERA. The more relevant stat should be the "Hold" and games blown.

Actually the Joba thing they've already started posting.  I guess they need something the way the Sox are spinning out of control, the house of cards will fall soon.

I think the hold is crap also though.  Say Okajima comes in and it's 5-2, when he leaves it's 5-4, he gets the hold.  Now the closer or the next guy has no room to work, if the closer comes in at 5-2 and leaves at 5-4 at least the game is over.  For a true hold the middle reliever should be required to give up zero runs, also for a hold, the reliever only needs to get one out.  It's just as misleading.  Blown saves is big, the Red Sox have blown 40% of their opportunities (they have 12 sv with 20 svo) the Yankees by contrast have converted 12 of 14, the best percentage in baseball)

Sorry this part was a previous post.

OK

Lester's ERA is lower, but not by much, and since he's walked about 5 times the amount of guys Moose has, I'll give you that one. 

Dice-BB has a lower WHIP than Moose despite having 30 walks to Moose's 6.  That's because he's only let up 28 hits to Moose's 52.  Overall he's been the better pitcher.