re braves pitching updatedir sbp acad drake edu said in article adobe com snichols adobe com sherri nichols writes every single piece of evidence we can find points to major league baseball being offense defense a run scored is just as important as a run prevented of course a run scored is just as important as a run prevented just as a penny saved is a penny earned enough with the cliches it s not a cliche and unlike your comments below it s not a tautology it needn t have been true if every pitcher in baseball were essentially the same in quality i e if the variance of pitching ability were much smaller than the variance of batting ability then scoring runs would be much more important than preventing them simply because the ability to actively prevent runs would be much weaker my point is that if the braves starters are able to live up to their potential they won t need much offensive support if that s your point you should have said so what you in fact said was pitching and defense win championships and later pitching is the essence of baseball neither of which says what you are now claiming was your point and neither of which is true it seems to me that when quality pitchers take the mound the other teams score less runs the team that scores the most runs wins and you accuse sherri of mouthing cliches this puts the team with the better pitching at the advantage providing they can stop the opposing team from scoring runs a low scoring game would clearly benefit the braves it s not clear to me at all that this is true in high scoring games the team with the better offense wins a high percentage of the time in low scoring games the split is essentially regardless of team ability they should have many low scoring games due to their excellent pitching and below average hitting on the flip side if you had a starting lineup of great offensive players i would be arguing that this team would not need great pitchers i thought you said pitching and defense win championships and pitching is the essence of baseball david m tate dtate pitt edu greetings sir with bat not quick member iie orsa tims sabr hands not soft eye not discerning and in denver they call you a slugger the big catullus galarraga and compare you to my own mattingly
