Pitchers and Errors

Errors should be completely erased from baseball lexicon because of the subjectivity involved in doling them out and also the utter ridiculousness of an error. As you probably know, once an error occurs, the rest of the inning doesn't happen as far as the pitcher is concerned. Well, things happen, but any runs that are scored do not count against a pitcher's earned run average so even if four runs score, the pitcher is allowed to keep his precious ERA low.

Since the chances of errors actually being eliminated is low since every television network that shows baseball continually refers to a pitcher's ERA, the way pitchers are effected by errors can at least be changed. My suggestion is to tweak it just a little bit by counting runs that score after a pitcher's error as earned runs. I can understand not wanting to penalize a pitcher for a gaff by his shortstop, but to absolve him of any responsibility for a mistake that he makes is ludicrous.

Today I had to watch as Jon Lieber, pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, fielded a groundball and then promptly threw the ball in the ground, rendering Howard unable to catch the ball and put out the runner at first base. Error for the pitcher. The Braves went on to score three runs in the inning, but none of them were earned and counted against Lieber's ERA. The question must be posed: who else is to blame for Lieber's throwing error but Lieber? So join in my movement to count runs scored after a pitcher's error as earned runs. Maybe that will be a start to erasing the stat altogether.