Clayton Kershaw and the NL Cy Young Award

The numbers are almost laughable. In a season when over 100 players have hit 20 home runs, Clayton Kershaw has put up a line for the ages. Through Tuesday: a 1.65 ERA, 1.67 FIP, a nearly unthinkable 168:10 strikeout-to-walk ratio. The only blemish is his low innings total, resulting from the back injury that cost him a substantial part of the summer. With no one seeming to run and hide with the NL Cy Young Award, it’s only natural to ask whether Kershaw might still be a worthy recipient of the hardware.

Last week, I used granular batted-ball data to measure the contact-management performance of all ERA-qualifying NL starters. This group did not include Kershaw. In that article I referred to my hypothetical Cy Young ballot, if it were limited to only qualifiers; that ballot would have been headed by two above-average contact managers with very strong K/BB profiles, Max Scherzer and Kyle Hendricks. Today, we add Kershaw to that mix, comparing him to those two pitchers, again utilizing exit-speed/launch-angle data in our analysis.

Sure, there are other legitimate candidates likely to receive Cy Young consideration. The late Jose Fernandez was over-the-top dominant, but was actually one of the lesser contact managers among NL starters. Noah Syndergaard is likely the best NL hurler at whom we won’t take a look today; on a per-inning basis, he arguably measures up with anyone not named Kershaw, but his innings total doesn’t come close to matching Scherzer’s.

Hendricks’ candidacy has been at least somewhat controversial in some circles. His K/BB profile isn’t nearly in the league of your typical award candidate, and many believe that luck and the Cubs’ stellar defense has a lot to do with his puny BABIP. The wonderful thing about using BIP data is that we are able to weed out such context and get down to the pitchers’ true talent level. He wouldn’t win a vote for “best Cub starting pitcher,” but does he deserve the Cy?

Kershaw is the best pitcher in the NL, you won’t get any argument on that point. A healthy Kershaw is likely a unanimous Cy Young selection. How much, exactly, do we dock him for his shortfall in the innings department?

And then there’s Scherzer, who has sort of gotten lost in all of this discussion. There’s some irony to all of this. For many years, the analytical community fought, eventually successfully, to take award voters’ eyes off of categories like wins and ERA when deciding award winners. Now, here we are in 2016, sort of blowing off Scherzer’s chances, in part because of an ERA that is quite a bit higher than his competition’s. It doesn’t help that the analytical community’s pitching statistic of choice, FIP, still leaves an awful lot of important stuff out of the equation, and casts an even warier eye on Scherzer’s candidacy.

With this as our backdrop, let’s dig into some plate appearance frequency and production by BIP type data (through 9/26) to draw some conclusions regarding these three pitchers. First, the frequency data:

Hendricks possesses the least imposing frequency profile of the group. Sure, a K rate in the 66th percentile and a BB rate in the 24th is plenty good, but it’s not necessarily what one would equate with award candidacy. His batted-ball mix isn’t exactly eye-catching, either: there’s no extreme go-to pop-up or ground-ball tendency. While his liner-rate allowed is below average, it’s isn’t materially so. There is nothing in Hendricks’ frequency profile that wows you. We’ll have to wait for the production by BIP type data, which is a solid proxy for the measurement of BIP authority, to see what, if anything, sets Hendricks apart.

There’s a whole lot of wow in Kershaw’s frequency profile. K rate in the 97th percentile, behind only Fernandez. BB rate in the 1st percentile. Bam. His K-BB spread is historic. His BIP mix is arguably as impressive. You want a ground-ball guy who gets a tons of pop ups? That combination is about as rare as the woolly mammoth, but here is living proof. Pretty staggering stuff.

Then there’s Scherzer. His K rate narrowly trails Kershaw’s, in the 96th percentile, and his BB rate, while the highest of these three pitchers, is still quite strong in the 34th percentile. (Five of the 31 current NL ERA qualifiers have BB rates between 6.0% and 6.2%. Weird.) He’s as extreme a fly-ball pitcher as you’ll find, with a fly rate in the 96th percentile — and an extreme pop-up tendency, pacing the NL in the 99th percentile. He’s been quite fortunate at avoiding squared-up contact — liner rates allowed are unlike pop-up, fly-ball and grounder rates in that they are quite volatile for most pitchers from year to year — while posting a liner rate way down in the 4th percentile. Scherzer has not been a good contact manager in past years, but has improved over time, and is having a career year in that department because of that low liner rate. Extreme fly-ball pitchers are compelled to contain BIP authority more so than other types of pitchers; we’ll see how Scherzer fared in this area as we move on.

Let’s now take a look at the production by BIP type data to get a better feel for the authority allowed by all three pitchers this season:

The actual production allowed on each BIP type is indicated in the batting average (AVG) and slugging (SLG) columns, and is converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD (or Unadjusted Contact Score) column. That figure is then adjusted for context, such as home park, team defense, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD (or Adjusted Contact Score) column. For the purposes of this exercise, sacrifice hits (SH) and flies (SF) are included as outs and hit by pitches (HBP) are excluded from the on-base percentage (OBP) calculation.

First, you will note the almost total absence of numbers above 100 in the REL PRD and ADJ PRD columns; the Unadjusted and Adjusted Contact Scores are better than league average across all BIP types, for all three pitchers, with the exception of Scherzer’s fly-ball Unadjusted Contact Score. These guys are getting it done with more than just Ks and BBs.

Hendricks is our likely 2016 NL Contact Manager of the Year. In this, the year of the homer, he has suffocated fly-ball contact. Hitters have batted .328 AVG-.895 SLG on fly balls this season, but only .279 AVG-.721 SLG vs. Hendricks — for a 68 fly ball Unadjusted Contact Score. And it’s not the defense, or Wrigley Field, which has played like a pitchers’ park this season. When you remove context from the equation and solely rely on exit speed/launch angle, Hendricks “should have” performed even better, with a 60 fly ball Adjusted Contact Score, better than both Kershaw and Scherzer.

Hendricks has benefited from quite a bit of good luck on grounders this season, allowing only .148 AVG-.171 SLG for a 39 ground-ball Unadjusted Contact Score. Adjusted for context, this jumps all the way up to 94, close to league average. A stellar infield defense has helped Hendricks look good here.

On all BIP combined, Hendricks has posted Unadjusted and Adjusted Contact Scores of 63 and 73, respectively. Add back the K and BB, and Hendricks’ 2.75 “Tru” ERA is nowhere near as good as his ERA, but markedly better than his FIP.

Kershaw is much more than a K/BB freak. He has absolutely strangled fly-ball contact this season, to an even greater extent than Hendricks. Hitters have batted .222 AVG-.580 SLG in the air (43 Unadjusted Contact Score), though adjustment for context nudges that mark upward to 66, higher than Hendricks. Kershaw has also been quite lucky on the ground, with hitters batting just .183 AVG-.190 SLG (57 Unadjusted Contact Score). Though that mark also is adjusted upward for context (82 Adjusted Contact Score), it remains below Hendricks’ level.

On all BIP combined, Kershaw has posted Unadjusted an Adjusted Contact Scores of 61 and 80, respectively. A relatively high liner rate is responsible for Kershaw falling short of Hendricks’ Adjusted Contact Score. Add back the K and BB, and Kershaw’s “Tru” ERA of 2.08 isn’t nearly as good as his ERA or FIP, but is still much better than his two competitors.

Scherzer has allowed fairly extensive damage in the air this season, a .352 AVG-.982 SLG, for a 118 fly-ball Unadjusted Contact Score. There’s a good bit of bad luck in that number, however; adjusted for exit speed/launch angle, he “should” have posted a 97 Unadjusted Contact Score. While Scherzer has been a bit lucky on both liners and grounders, one cannot ignore the impact of his high pop-up rate. That helps forces his overall Adjusted Contact Score down to 85, below his fly-ball, liner or grounder mark. That’s pretty good contact management for an extreme K/BB guy not named Kershaw.

Add back the K and BB, and Scherzer’s “Tru” ERA of 2.55 is below both his ERA and FIP. No, current mainstream metrics do not give Scherzer adequate credit for his pop-up tendency, or pick up the fact that he has not allowed above-average fly-ball authority.

So, on a per-inning basis, Kershaw’s the guy, with a 2.08 “Tru” ERA to Scherzer’s 2.55 and Hendricks’ 2.75. To measure each hurler’s “pitching runs” for the season, you simply multiply their innings pitched totals by the difference between their “Tru” ERA and the league average, per nine innings. Scherzer wins once his innings bulk is taken into account, with 40.2 pitching runs to Kershaw’s 33.0 and Hendricks’ 29.2. The Nationals’ righty is the 2016 NL Cy Young Award winner in my book. He might not be the best on a per-inning basis, but he has delivered the most pitching value of any NL hurler this season.

Next time, we’ll look at the AL, drawing the Zach Britton factor into the discussion.