Pythagorean W/L and 9th inning losses.

[CarolinaBird]

I'm wondering if the the Pythagorean way of valuing a roster doesn't take into account how bad the late inning relief might be. For example if a closer was given a 4-2 lead and blows it, allowing 3 runs... all that gets recorded in the Pythagorean is that he gave up 3 runs, not that he may have also had men on second and third and 1 out (for example), and if a full inning was allowed to be played there is a good chance more runs would score.

I understand that the Pythagorean approach is crude... but I can see a bad bullpen skewing this stat, possibly so much that it's totally unreliable (as I think might be the case of the 09 O's).

And if I'm totally uninformed on this issue and there's some free site where I can learn more about baseball, please let me know.

CB