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No, it's not games won; in fact, for players in general of any team sport like baseball, wins tends to be considered pretty close to irrelevant for measuring individual performance. Notably, Martinez did not lead the league in wins that year, but there was no question to anyone that he was by far the best pitcher in the league. In that era, Earned Run Average (ERA - lower the better) used to be considered the best stats and Martinez had an ERA of 1.74, while the second best in the league had 3.7, with the league average being 4.9.
Since that time, more advanced stats have been developed. For those, Martinez had a Wins Above Replacement (WAR - higher the better - average of all players, not just pitchers is defined to be 0) of 11.7, versus the 2nd place's 6.2, with the league average for starting pitchers at around 2. For adjusted ERA+, which is an ERA-based score adjusted for strength of opponents and size/shape of stadiums and quality of defensive teammates and such (higher the better - average of all pitchers is defined to be 100), he had a score of 291, while second place had 133.
There's no single stat that we can point to as the true productivity of a player in any sport or of a human in any field, but, by most stats that baseball fans consider to reflect that productivity, Martinez was better than the 2nd best by a gap greater than that between the 2nd best and the average. That's where the "average" is among people in the top <1% among all humans or even among all healthy young males.
Sure, but you don't need to understand the how. No one truly understands the how. What matters is the is, and he is (or rather, was).
There's nothing intrinsic about any of this. Productivity is as productivity does. If you want to have some sort of top-down command economy where your judgment is deemed the Correct one in terms of employees in what industries are deemed Valuable enough to deserve Lots of Money, you're certainly free to want that. But, again, arguments against instantiating those wants is written in blood, often the blood of those who wanted it, and of their loved ones.
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