Obscure Record Alert

Much hubaloo was incurred over Mike Mussina finally getting a 20 win season. And I understand that. It's about time Mussina get his due as a very good pitcher by posting a stat that does not actually mean anything. But while we're talking about stats that don't matter, I'd like to point out that the losing pitcher in this game, Daisuke Matsuzaka, also did something interesting. In the book The Bill James/Rob Neyer Guide To Pitchers, (which is truly an excellent resource, by the way), Bill James writes an essay about "unique records". Basically, when Bill James mows his lawn, the way he remembers how many feet he has to do is by associating the square footage of his yard with a pitcher's won lost record from some year. (and you thought you were a baseball nerd). So, sometimes, there are no won-loss records that match the situation. So he did this whole study about won-loss records that are "unique", in that they've only been done once, and most common won-loss records, and so on. At the end, he says which ones are still unclaimed. One of those is 18-3. Yesterday, by losing to Mike Mussina, Daisuke Matsuzaka finished his season 18-3, thus becoming the first pitcher to do so. Considering Bill James works in the Red Sox front office, we can assume he knows about this, and you can make all these conspiracy theories about how he manipulated it so that it'd turn out that way. Does this mean anything in terms of Dice-K's ability? Not really. Is it kind of interesting? Yeah.