There used to be a lot of big trees in my neighborhood. Every so often, somebody from city government will show up at a neighbor’s door and tell them that the beautiful tree in their front yard has a blight, or an invasive bark beetle, or drought damage—the point is, the tree is sick and has to be removed. A few weeks ago this happened to one of the last big trees on my block. At 7:30 on a Saturday morning, a tree-removal crew came and, over a few hours, methodically took down a gorgeous 40-foot pepper tree.
The telephone lines around where the tree used to be are made up of two insulated cables wrapped in a tight spiral around a rigid metal coil. Trees growing up against phone lines will sometimes sneak a little branch in between the insulated cables. As the little branch grows bigger it will tug the cables away from the coil, leaving some mangled slack.
When the pepper tree was gone, it left a lot of empty space that looks like nothing, plus a little empty space—the space in between the phone cables—that actually looks like something. It’s the proof a tree was once there:
That is NOT a metaphor for Nationals pitcher Patrick Corbin, to be clear. It might be a metaphor for the kinds of reminders of the 2019 World Series that a Nationals fan will see this year—Soto jerseys worn by fans at Nationals Park, Max Scherzer’s name on all-time team leaderboards, highlight clips of Howie Kendrick, etc. Residues of important things gone. But let’s keep going.
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When we used to pay a lot more attention to pitchers’ win-loss records, you’d sometimes hear that a pitcher had to be pretty good to lose a lot of games. That is, to lose a lot of games, a pitcher needed to pitch a lot, and he needed to have his manager’s trust—he had to continue to get lots of starts despite all the losses, he probably had to have a longer leash to go deep into games and get all those decisions, there needed to be indefinite hope that he’d be better than the alternatives, etc. This truism holds up, generally. For instance, here’s perhaps my favorite fun fact of all-time:
Phil Niekro, from 1977 to 1980, led the National League in losses all four years. He also led the majors in WAR during that time period.
If you look at the major league loss leaders over the past five years, there are some great pitchers near the top. Luis Castillo is third. He has 41 losses, and he was very smart folks’ pre-season pick for Cy Young this year. Sandy Alcántara is fifth. He has 38 losses, and the sport’s eighth-best ERA in that time. Aaron Nola is sixth. He has 37 losses and the most innings thrown in the period.
There are exceptions to this rule. Jordan Lyles is second, with 47 losses. He’s not very good, just a vagabond who has smartly latched onto rebuilding teams with holes in their rotation and no ambition. Even Lyles’ luck in this regard ran out this year, as the Royals demoted him to the bullpen, demonstrating the principle at work: He wasn’t good enough to lose anymore.
37 losses, 38 losses, 41 losses, 47 losses. Then there’s Patrick Corbin. In the past five years, Patrick Corbin has lost 60 games.
The pitcher with the most wins in the past five years has 2 percent more than the pitcher in second place. The pitcher with the most strikeouts has 3 percent more than second place. The hitter with the most homers has 3 percent more than second place, the hitter with the most RBIs 5 percent more, the hitter with the most runs 5 percent more. Corbin is 28 percent beyond the second-place loss-taker.
He finished third in his league in losses in the short COVID season, then he led the league in 2021, 2022 and 2023. He’s 0-3 this year, with the National League’s worst ERA+, yet also the 16th-most innings pitched. There’s little doubt that he’ll make his next start, and quite likely 25 more after that.
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So you don’t necessarily have to be pretty good to lose a lot of games. In Corbin’s case, he had to have once been pretty good. In 2019, before the losing began, Corbin got Cy Young votes. He wasn’t the Nationals’ ace, but he would have been the ace on many teams.
In Game 7 of the World Series that year, Max Scherzer started for the Nationals. He was compromised by a neck injury and labored through five innings. When he left, thje Nationals was trailing 2-0.
Corbin relieved him. This is one of the most dramatic situations major league baseball produces: A great starting pitcher coming on in relief during a must-win postseason game. Corbin’s performance wasn’t as dramatic as Randy Johnson’s in 2001, or as legendary as Madison Bumgarner’s in 2014, but it was huge: He thew scoreless sixth, seventh and eighth innings, as the Nationals took the lead and went on to win the game/Series. Corbin got the Game 7 victory. By Championship Win Probability Added, he was the third most consequential National in the Series, behind only Soto and Kendrick.
That was the first year of a six-year contract Corbin had signed with the Nationals, and it was the last time—to date—that the Nationals would be any good.
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