You are correct that pitchers of the caliber of Pedro Martinez and Randy Johnson have an enormous influence on the results of the games in which they start and that pitching is an important part of a winning team. I do believe the degree of it’s importance is overemphasized though – you can win the game either by scoring more than your opponent or having your opponent score less than you. Personally I believe a balance is required as a base for any good team. If you have a terrible pitching staff you aren’t going to win and the same is true of a terrible lineup. Most of the top teams are usually very good in either pitching or hitting and at minimum decent in the other. The great teams are very good in both.

As for Toronto and Boston, it’s true not many people were predicting Toronto to win unless their young pitching came around. I also believe it would be true that a majority of the people who were picking Boston would not have if they knew Nomar would miss a large portion of the season. The fact that Boston still has a good win-loss percentage is based heavily on the fact that they have played 18 games against Tampa Bay, Kansas City and Baltimore, going 12-6 in those games. In games vs real opponents they have gone just 14-16. It’s true that you have to beat the riffraff to get anywhere, but when a team plays 36% of its games (18 of 50) it’s hard to use their record as an indicator of how good they are. If any positive can come of this for the Sox, it’s that having Nomar out for this portion of the season hasn’t been as damaging for them than if he were to miss the later, and tougher, portion of the schedule.

I’m also not sure why you say the PB ranks don’t value pitching. Earlier posts were attempting to explain why starting pitching stats tended to be higher than expected. Just because the stats are higher than in real life doesn’t make them less important though. People just need to adjust their perceptions of good pitching a little.