Peter Schmuck: Kimbrel’s win on Sunday illustrates need for some statistical updates

I don’t want to pile on future Hall of Fame reliever Craig Kimbrel after Sunday’s ninth-inning meltdown, but the fact that he got credited for a victory after the Orioles’ crazy comeback shows that Major League Baseball needs to realize this is the 21^st century.

Statistically speaking.

The rules governing the statistical records need to be updated to reflect the way pitchers are used in today’s baseball world rather than hanging onto standards that have become largely irrelevant.

The fact that Kimbrel got the win after giving up three runs before recording an out is ridiculous. It might not have been in a bygone era when late-inning “stoppers” worked the final three innings of games, but now that closers rarely pitch more than one inning that makes no sense.

There is a loophole that allows official scorers to withhold the “W” if he or she determines that a reliever pitched “briefly and ineffectively,” but that only applies to a pitcher who throws less than one inning, gives up two or more runs and is replaced by another reliever after his team has reassumed the lead. Clearly it doesn’t apply in a case like Kimbrel’s.

There are a couple of ways this could be corrected. One is simply to change the scoring rules so that the official scorer can list the decision as a “team win.” The other is to allow him the discretion to assign the victory to the most effective pitcher in the game, regardless of role.

I’m guessing that would be a tough sell to the statistical purists, but in that scenario, the win would have gone to one of the setup guys who pitched ahead of Kimbrel or to starter Dean Kremer, who left the game after pitching a solid 4 2/3 innings with the score tied.

Of course, under the current scoring rules, Kremer would not have been eligible for the victory even if the Orioles had been ahead when he left the game and Kimbrel had not blown the one-run save opportunity because a starter must pitch at least five innings to qualify for a win.

That seems a bit outdated, too, in an era that is populated largely by starting pitchers who average between five and six innings per game. The five-inning win rule dates back to a time when starting pitchers routinely pitched into the late innings, threw lots of complete games and generally worked every fourth day.

That explains how the Orioles once had four 20-game winners in the same season and last year there was only one (Spencer Strider) in all of the major leagues. I really didn’t have to tell you that because it’s already so obvious, but it makes the point.

The statistical traditionalists would surely contend that modifying the five-inning rule to allow pitchers to get credit for victories in certain cases – like the Orioles’ strange comeback against the Yankees – would foul the statistical record. But I think it would actually make the single-season and career win totals more relatable to baseball’s storied past and more reflective of the actual performance of the starters of today.

Would that be so crazy?