Last season, Chien-Ming Wang — the Yankees’ gopher-killer extraordinaire — finished second in the voting for the American League Cy Young Award. Of course, he was runner-up in the same sense that Walter Mondale was a runner-up to Ronald Reagan in 1984: Johan Santana won the award unanimously. Wang happened to pick up the few crumbs that were left over, finishing just three points ahead of Roy Halladay, who was in third place. Last year there was just one pitcher in the American League, but that’s not the case this year. When Wang earned his 17th victory on Tuesday, tying him with Boston’s Josh Beckett for the league lead in wins, the susurrant rumbling of “Cy Young” (not too different from that of a particularly anxious form of indigestion) whispered through the concrete canyons of the city.

It is true that a high-win total can send the voting members of the Baseball Writers’ Association into paroxysms of poor judgment. Show the voters 20-plus wins, and they’ll show you a puffy inning-seater like LaMarr Hoyt and tell you he’s the best pitcher in baseball. Alternatively, absent that all-consuming indicator, they’ll bestow a trophy on a Steve Bedrosian (1987) or a Pete Vuckovich (1982). Neither of those pitchers was among the top 10 hurlers in their league — but nobody won 20 games in those seasons. So the writers just didn’t know what to do.

It happens that Wang is one of the 10 most valuable pitchers in the American League this year, but his leading the league in wins doesn’t have anything to do with it. At the team level, the won-lost record is obviously significant. For the individual pitcher, it says almost nothing, because it leaves out the key factor of context. A pitcher can earn a win for going five innings and allowing five runs if his team scores six. He can allow one run in nine innings and lose if his team is shut out. There are good pitchers on bad teams who don’t get the support to post big victory totals. There are good pitchers on good teams who, for whatever reason, go through a whole season without getting good run support. Depending on when a manager likes to hook his starting pitchers, he might get more or fewer decisions. A “win” expresses none of these things — except that the pitcher made it through at least five innings and left the game with a lead.

For an extreme example of how wins can misrepresent a pitcher, look no further than Nolan Ryan during the year that Bedrosian was anointed the National League’s best pitcher. Ryan led the league in both ERA and strikeouts. But because he played for the punch-less Houston Astros, he averaged about 3.4 runs of support per game and finished with a record of 8–16. He finished a distant fifth in the voting, receiving no first place votes.

More recently, in 2005, Bartolo Colon of the Angels picked up the Cy Young Award despite posting an unsightly 3.48 ERA, eighth-best in the league. Colon had a good year. But his won-lost record of 21–8 disguised the fact that his accomplishments were not of the same caliber as that of Santana, who went 16–7 with a 2.87 ERA in more innings. Colon was rewarded because Angels’ hitters gave him six runs of support per start, whereas Santana received only 4.7 (this in a league where the average team scored 4.8 runs per game). Thus the ultimate irony: The Cy Young Award represents offensive excellence rather than pitching excellence.

Wang has been very good this year. He’s the league’s second-best groundball machine after Fausto Carmona of the Indians. He’s often served to pick the Yankees up after a loss, going 9–2 when following a defeat.

Then again, all year long his rotation spot has followed that of Kei Igawa/Tyler Clippard/Roger Clemens. As with so many things relating to wins, this too is a matter of context: If Wang had followed better pitchers, he wouldn’t have had so many opportunities following losses.

Wang’s ERA of 3.68 ranks 13th in the league, and is tied with Justin Verlander of the Tigers (3.67) and Jeremy Guthrie of the Orioles (3.65). In strikeouts, he is approximately 140 off the lead. But a lack of strikeouts is part of Wang’s charm and should not be held against him.

Run support should be, if not held against him, then at least taken into account. There are two full time starters in the American League getting seven runs of support a game, Verlander with 7.6 runs per game, and Wang with 7.1. He has pitched well, and he has pitched within the margin of error the Yankees have given him. But when he wins his 20th game — and with as many as five starts left, he probably will win 20 — it won’t be purely reflective of his skill any more than Guthrie’s record of 7–5, with the same ERA, reflects anything more than the Orioles’ inability to score for him. Guthrie has had 13 no-decision starts. Wang has had three.

In the final analysis, Wang’s wins make an argument for him, but not as loud an argument as that for C.C. Sabathia, John Lackey, Kelvim Escobar, or Beckett, who have the wins and also beat Wang in ERA. That being said, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him win the award. As we’ve seen, when it comes to the award’s voters, a pitcher’s statistical “wins” trump a superior contribution to actual wins every time.

Mr. Goldman is the author of “Forging Genius,” a biography of Casey Stengel.