“Giving My Team a Chance to Win” and the Cy Young
If you’re a regular reader, you know that my primary role here at FanGraphs is to talk to people within the game and share their thoughts. Many of my conversations are with pitchers. From them, I’ve heard a particular phrase countless times:
“My job is to give my team a chance to win.”
The extent to which such a thing can be quantified is subjective. That doesn’t make it meaningless. In my opinion, the supposition — for lack of a better term — should factor into the Cy Young Award debate.
It’s well known that pitchers have little control over wins and losses. The best they can do is limit the opposition’s run total. They don’t have complete control over that, either, but they do strongly influence it. As a rule, the best pitchers have the lowest ERAs. Again, not a perfect stat, but it tells a big part of the story.
Corey Kluber, Rick Porcello, Chris Sale, and Justin Verlander will likely receive the most support on this year’s American League ballot. Of them, Verlander recorded the lowest ERA, albeit by a small margin. He has a clearer advantage in the nebulous “My job is to give my team a chance to win” category.
To wit:
- Verlander allowed two or fewer earned runs in 23 of his 34 starts. Kluber allowed two or fewer in 19 of 32, Sale in 18 of 32, Porcello in 16 of 33.
- Verlander allowed three or more earned runs 11 times. Kluber did so 13 times, Sale 14 times, Porcello 17 times.
- Verlander allowed four or more earned runs five times. Porcello did so six times, Sale eight times, Kluber nine times.
- Kluber has the advantage when it comes to scoreless outings. He allowed no earned runs six times. Sale and Verlander did so four times, Porcello three times.
How much weight should be put on those numbers? A lot depends on how much you value raw earned-runs-allowed totals. For pitchers whose bottom line is “Giving my team a chance to win,” they’re pretty meaningful. Your mileage may vary.
David Laurila grew up in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and now writes about baseball from his home in Cambridge, Mass. He authored the Prospectus Q&A series at Baseball Prospectus from December 2006-May 2011 before being claimed off waivers by FanGraphs. He can be followed on Twitter @DavidLaurilaQA.
I suppose this would also factor in the defense. Of those pitchers, which of those 4 teams had the worse defense, its definitely not the Nationals or Indians. So between the Tigers and White Sox its a toss up. Miguel Cabrera is not known for his D. JD Martinez is an iron glove candidate. I would probably give this to Verlander. I think Sox park has become more of a hitters park in recent years than Comerica too. While strikeouts are sexy that is not the primary goal of a pitcher. The primary goal is limiting above average, excellent and elite contact by hitters. Stated another way its to induce more and more weak to average/routine contact. 2016 saw the highest K/per game rate ever at 8 strikeouts per 9 on average across MLB. If there is 27 outs defensively, that is 19 contact outs or 70% of the game.
I considered mentioning defense, but decided to stick with the narrower focus. Had I brought up D, I would questioned the fairness of penalizing Kyle Hendricks, as some will, for having both an unremarkable K rate and a great defense behind him. Given the latter, there was no reason not to pitch to contact
If you look at the pitching-rich late ’60s-early 70s Orioles, you’ll see the team was middle of the pack in strikeouts, and at the bottom in walks allowed. These guys — Palmer, Cuellar, McNally, et al — were pitching in front of Brooks Robinson, Paul Blair, Mark Belanger, Bobby Grich, etc. A high percentage of balls put into play were going to be converted into outs.
Might it be worth looking into margin of victory in the different games? There is nothing wrong with pitching to your defense–it is being smart, plain and simple–but if the focus is giving the team a chance to win, then pitching to your offense might factor in, no?
The Weaver O’s had powerful offenses so squelching the opposition wasn’t as high a priority. For some teams, staying in the game as long as possible matters.