On Friday, we ran a poll asking who you’d vote for the AL Cy Young Award. With 5,500 votes in, the votes were decisive, to say the least.

Felix Hernandez captured over 60 percent of the votes, and no one else was even close. Francisco Liriano finished second with just under 11 percent, while CC Sabathia came in third at a bit over 9 percent. Cliff Lee was fourth at 7 percent, while David Price rounded out the top five at just over 4 percent. Clay Buchholz, Trevor Cahill, C.J. Wilson, Jered Weaver, and Jon Lester were essentially non-factors – we probably could have left them off the ballot without seeing any real change in the outcome.

There are a few interesting thing about the results, to me. I was surprised by the measure with which Felix dominated the voting, honestly. As often as the FanGraphs crowd is referred to as “stat zombies”, the perception is that our authors and readers just look at the numbers and make no adjustments beyond what the leaderboard says, yet the guy who dominated the voting doesn’t lead the league in any of the “FanGraphs Stats” – WAR, FIP, xFIP, or WPA.

Cliff Lee is first in WAR, yet finished a distant fourth, as voters presumably held his recent struggles and higher ERA against him. Francisco Liriano is first in both FIP and xFIP, but only 1 reader out of 10 gave him their vote, likely because of his lower innings total and his higher ERA. And perhaps most surprisingly, CC Sabathia finished third, even though he’s not appreciably better than the also-rans in anything other than Win-Loss record.

Sabathia ranks 15th in FIP, 11th in xFIP, and 10th in WAR, yet he did significantly better than guys like Jon Lester and Jered Weaver, who have him beat in most of the “advanced metrics”. Let’s compare Lester and Sabathia, for instance, as both play in the AL East and are the aces of large market, nationally prominent clubs.

BB/9: Sabathia (2.84) over Lester (3.36)
K/9: Lester (9.69) over Sabathia (7.32)
HR/9: Lester (0.59) over Sabathia (0.78)
FIP: Lester (3.09) over Sabathia (3.62)
xFIP: Lester (3.26) over Sabathia (3.86)
WAR: Lester (5.0) over Sabathia (4.0)

Sabathia has the lower walk rate, but Lester’s huge advantage in strikeouts and lower HR rate more than cancels that out. It would be hard to build a case that Sabathia has outpitched Lester based on the numbers above. However, when you look at two traditional metrics, we can see why Sabathia got so many more votes than Lester.

ERA: Sabathia (3.14) over Lester (3.26)
Innings: Sabathia (209) over Lester (182)

Sabathia has a marginally better ERA than Lester and he’s thrown nearly 30 more innings to boot, which is why he’s considered a frontrunner for the award while Lester is never seriously brought up in conversation. Even among our readership, Sabathia dominates Lester with 518 votes to Lester’s 69. While our stats show that Lester has been better, our readers prefer CC’s quantity of innings with essentially the same rate of run prevention, and don’t really seem to care that the difference is almost entirely driven by BABIP.

I would be tempted to chalk this up to the power of the narrative, where people were voting for Sabathia because the media has kept him at the forefront of the discussion, but we see this same rejection of DIPS theory in the vote totals for Hernandez, Liriano, and Lee. Even though you’re spending your Friday afternoon reading FanGraphs, most of you guys still seem to vote along the lines of innings and ERA. To me, that’s interesting.

Perhaps the divide between the traditional media and people who like nerd stats is not as big as the generally perception. In the end, both camps appear to prefer results to process when it comes to handing out awards. The only question now is whether the baseball writers agree that results can be judged without leaning heavily on Win-Loss record as a factor. If they’ve come to the same conclusions as our readers, then King Felix is line for a new crown.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with these Contract Crowdsourcing pieces, but there’s no reason we have to limit ourselves to just estimating free agent wealth. Since it’s the hot topic of the moment, I thought I’d let you guys weigh in on the AL Cy Young race, which is turning into a referendum on the value of “wins” for pitchers. The narrative being told at the moment is that Felix Hernandez is, by far, the most deserving candidate, and that only CC Sabathia’s win total might stop him from winning the award.

Of course, Felix isn’t blowing the field away like Josh Hamilton is in the MVP race. He’s had a great year, but he’s not the only pitcher having a great year. You can make an argument for pitchers other than Felix without resorting to craziness. So, I figured we’d put it to you guys. If the season ended today, who is your American League Cy Young Award winner?

Since a young age, pitchers have had it drilled into them that the best pitch they can throw is strike one. Hitters take a vastly different approach when behind in the count rather than ahead, and so the first pitch of an at-bat is almost always the most important one. Because they want to get ahead in the count, most pitchers throw first pitch fastballs, as it’s the pitch they are most confident that they can put in the strike zone.

Well, Sean Marshall is not most pitchers – at least not anymore. He followed the traditional first pitch fastball model for the first few years of his career, throwing it 64 percent of the time in 2006 and 56 percent of the time in 2007. He was moved to the bullpen in 2008, and dropped his first-pitch fastball usage down to 44 percent, though it was still the pitch he used most often.

The last two years, though, it has lost its prominence, thanks to the addition of the ever popular cutter. Last year, he threw a first-pitch fastball just 23 percent of the time, and this year it’s down to 18 percent, half as often as he throws a first-pitch curveball. He’s also more likely to throw a cutter (27 percent) or a slider (19 percent) on the first pitch of an at-bat.

Despite pitching backwards, Marshall has actually thrown more first pitch strikes than he did when he was featuring his fastball – 57 percent this year. He’s achieving the goal of getting ahead of hitters, but he’s just doing it with off-speed stuff.

Even when he falls behind 1-0, he still doesn’t throw the fastball. He bags the curveball for the most part, but throws a lot of cutters and sliders. Even 2-0, he only throws 26 percent fastballs, sticking with the two softer pitches he feels he can throw for strikes. He finally relents on 3-0, throwing the fastball 86 percent of the time, but given how often hitters have the take sign, he knows its not all that likely to be chased. On 3-1 counts, he rarely throws it.

Besides the 3-0 count, the two times Marshall is most likely to throw a fastball? 0-2 and 1-2, when he’ll throw it 41% and 42% of the time, respectively. He’s still more likely to throw his curve in those counts (he scraps the other two pitches), but he features the high fastball as a strikeout pitch, along with his big curve. Interestingly, however, when the count is 2-2 or 3-2, he again goes away from the fastball.

It’d be interesting to see if he would keep pitching like this if the Cubs moved him back to the rotation next year. He’s defying nearly every established pattern of pitching, and it’s worked, as he’s become one of the game’s best left-handed relievers. Could he pitch backwards for six or seven innings? I’d be curious to see if he could do it.

For lefties with pedestrian fastballs but good secondary stuff, this very well may be the most efficient style of pitching, at least while everyone else in the game is pumping fastballs to start off every at-bat.

Well, we have our first Contract Crowdsourcing result that really surprises me. The votes are in, and you guys think that Victor Martinez is in line for a a pretty sweet deal.

Average length: 3.60 years
Average salary: $11.77 million

Median length: 4 years
Median salary: $12 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.88 years
Standard deviation, salary: $2.84 million

Martinez is a good player, no doubt, but I had him at something like 3 years, $30 million, and I could even see the last year not being guaranteed. Catchers age in dog years, and at 31, Martinez probably doesn’t have a ton of good baseball left in him behind the plate. He could extend his career by moving to first base, but the production isn’t enough to make him much more than an average player there.

I like Martinez, but there’s no way I’d give him 4 years and $48 million this winter. Even 3/35 is a bit steep for me, and that’s the low end of the mid-range projection for what he’s going to get. How much longer can we realistically expect major league managers to put him behind the plate? A year, maybe two? A four year deal basically guarantees that the back half of it will be a significant overpay, and you’re not even sure you’ll get much of a bargain up front.

I’d imagine that the crowd will be more accurate in estimating future contracts that I will be, so now I won’t be too surprised if he gets something close to the deal that you guys have projected. I just wouldn’t want to be a fan of the team giving out that contract, though.

Yesterday, the news came out that Victor Martinez had rejected a two year contract extension that the Red Sox had offered, and is now set to test free agency. In the words of his agent, Alan Nero, he’s looking for a place where he can sign “for the rest of his career.” Clearly, Martinez sees this as his last big contract, and he wants to get a deal for as many years as he can.

It will be interesting to see how the market for Martinez shakes out. He’s still one of the best catchers in baseball, posting a +2.8 WAR so far this year. He has a career average of +3.96 WAR per 600 PA, and outside of a miserable 2008 season, he’s consistently been an offensive force from a position where not many teams get a lot of punch. However, he turns 32 right before Christmas, and catchers don’t generally last beyond their mid-30s, and many break down at the point in their career that Martinez is approaching. He’s never been considered a good defender to begin with, and given his age, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were several teams interested in him as a first baseman, not a catcher.

Of course, at first base, he loses the scarcity part of his value, which makes up for a big chunk of what he brings to the plate. He can still help a team at first base, but the bat isn’t nearly as valuable there. The ideal solution is a compromise, with Martinez splitting time at both positions, reducing the wear and tear on his body while still keeping his bat in the line-up fairly regularly. But, what kind of contract will teams offer a part time catcher, part time first baseman headed into his decline years?

My guess is that he ends up somewhere besides Boston. I doubt they’ll guarantee him the years he appears to be looking for. Will he find them somewhere else?

When Joe Posnanski, Jayson Stark, and Rob Neyer all weigh in on a topic within a few days, odds are pretty good that there’s something of interest there. Odds are also good that most all of the points worth making have already been spoken for, as those three are among the best on earth at discussing issues relating to baseball. And so, when they all tackled Carlos Gonzalez over the last few days, I figured they’d touch all the bases. However, while they did a good job of discussing most of the issues, they left out one pretty important piece of the discussion, and that’s where I’m going to throw my hat into the ring.

Gonzalez is having a great year, certainly. No one will argue otherwise. His .423 wOBA is among the best in the league, and he’s spent a significant amount of time in center field this year. Offense from an up the middle position is extremely valuable, and his bat has been more than adequate even when he’s playing one of the corner spots. Of course, when discussing Gonzalez’s performance, it is impossible to talk about the numbers without also mentioning Coors Field. Posnanski tackles the issue of his home/road splits with quite a bit of depth, and does a good job of explaining why you shouldn’t just look at his road numbers and treat them as his true talent level, assuming that the entirety of the difference should be attributed to the park.

However, there’s another piece to park effects that goes beyond trying to figure out what a guy would have done in a neutral environment, and for the purposes of MVP votes, I’d argue that it’s even more important – the value of a run in a specific environment. Put simply, a run in Colorado is worth less than a run in other places.

The name of the game is to win, of course. You win games by outscoring your opponents, whether its 1-0 or 11-10. Anyone who has watched a game in Denver in San Diego will tell you that the park has a pretty significant influence on whether a game leans more towards one side of that spectrum than the other, and Colorado is notable for promoting offense. It is still the best place to hit in baseball, and because of that, the average game in Coors Field will see more runs scored than in other parks.

That makes each individual run less valuable in helping a team win. If the Rockies need to score six runs at home in order to win, a home run – which has a league average run value of 1.4 runs – by Gonzalez gets them 23.3 percent of the way there. The Padres, for instance, only need to score four runs in order to win at home, so a home run at Petco by Adrian Gonzalez, worth the same 1.4 runs, gets them 35 percent of the way to their needed total. A run in San Diego, or anywhere really, is worth more than a run in Colorado because of the run environment.

This is why we have to adjust the raw numbers before we compare players side by side. The goal is to win games, not to accumulate counting stats, and each individual hit does not have the same effect on winning a game for each player. This is why Carlos Gonzalez’s .423 wOBA is worth 39.2 runs, while Adrian Gonzalez’s .388 wOBA is worth 37.4 runs. Their raw offensive numbers are quite different, but their actual value is essentially the same. Offensively, the two Gonzalez’s are having equivalent seasons – that reality is just obscured by the parks they play in.

It isn’t about what they would have done in other parks – it’s about how many runs it actually takes to win a game in the park they currently play in. Even with the park adjustments, Gonzalez is still an MVP candidate, and if he keeps hitting the cover off the ball in September, he’ll have earned his way onto the ballot. However, we have to keep in mind that his raw performance has to be better than everyone else in order to have the same value, because he’s playing in an environment where runs are pretty easy to come by, and therefore, each one is less valuable.

The crowd has spoken, and Derek Jeter will not be getting anything close to the 5 year, $100 million deal that was rumored before the season. His relatively poor performance this year, combined with his age, has the crowd thinking that settle for a deal that pays him about half of that.

Average length: 3.38 years
Average salary: $14.91 million

Median length: 3 years
Median salary: $15 million

Standard deviation, length: 0.82 years
Standard deviation, salary: $4.20 million

While our first two subjects both had standard deviations of just under $3 million in salary, Jeter blows that out of the water. There’s a huge difference of opinion over what his annual salary will be, though most everyone agrees that he’s looking at a 3 or 4 year deal. Salaries range from as little as $4 million all the way up to the maximum of $25 million, with each number across the board being fairly represented. Some people clearly think that Jeter will get paid for what he has been, while others feel that he’ll end up getting what the market will bear, and that it won’t be kind to a 36-year-old coming off a bad year.

In the comments, someone made the comparison to Chipper Jones, and I think thats a good one. Like Jeter, he’s a one organization guy, and both parties wanted to see him end his career in the same uniform he has always worn. The Braves gave Jones a 3 year, $42 million deal for his age 37-39 seasons, though his age 36 season was significantly better than what Jeter is putting up right now. On the other hand, the Yankees have more money than the Braves and Jeter probably has more perceived intangible value.

The Chipper contract looks to be a pretty good template for the Yankees to use, and it’s right in line with what the crowd thinks he’s going to get. 3/45 – it’s probably less than what Jeter was hoping for, but about what he deserves. It’s a fair deal for both sides.

Well, this one should be interesting.

Derek Jeter is widely expected to re-sign with the New York Yankees when the season ends. A lifelong Yankee, it’s nearly impossible to imagine him going anywhere else. He is keenly aware of his legacy, and he has little to gain from ending his career in any other uniform. Given his place in their history, he almost certainly has more value to the Yankees than he does to any other franchise as well. The question, though, will be how much that value actually is.

Jeter is 36 years old and in the midst of the worst season of his career. There’s no shame in that, as he’s already sustained a high level of performance beyond an age where most players are capable of playing at his level. If his struggles in 2010 are indicative of the beginning of the end for Jeter as an elite player, that would be a fairly normal progression, and we’d expect him to settle for a short-term contract that reflected that he was nearing the end of his career.

However, we simply can’t jump to the conclusion that this really is the beginning of the end. A year ago, Jeter had one of the best seasons of his career, and it is rare that a player’s skills decline this quickly. In fact, if we look at his underlying numbers, the decline doesn’t appear to be that dramatic at all.

2010, Career:

BB%: 8.1%, 9.0%
K%: 15.6%, 16.9%
ISO: .109, .140

He’s both walking and striking out a little less than his overall career averages, and while his power is down slightly, it’s not like he was ever a guy who counted on driving the ball to produce value. The real areas where his numbers vary significantly from his established norms are the following two areas:

GB%: 65.8%, 56.9%
BABIP: .297, .356

He’s always been a groundball guy, but this year it’s been extreme. He leads all major league hitters in groundball rate, and it’s not even close – Elvis Andrus is second, five percentage points behind Jeter. And yet, even though ground balls have a higher rate of becoming hits than fly balls, Jeter’s BABIP is the lowest of his career, and by a large margin. Before this year, he’d never posted a mark below .315, and he has more seasons with a BABIP over .350 than under that mark. While BABIP is a high-variance statistic, even for hitters, Jeter has a well-established skill at producing above the league average. That just hasn’t translated onto the field this year.

Odds are pretty good that Jeter’s going to hit better next year than he has this year. He’s probably not done as a good major league player. However, he will be 37 next year, and he’s not going to be good forever. If you give him a long-term deal, you’re paying more for what he’s done than what he’s going to do. But he’s going to be an asset going forward – even with the career low BABIP, he’s been worth +1.7 WAR this year, and it isn’t that easy to find a good shortstop.

There’s a lot of variables at play here, even if it’s extremely likely that he re-signs with New York. So, let’s hear it – what do you think Jeter will get this winter?