On the Cy Young and Pitcher Hitting
10 days ago, I was informed that I will be voting for the National League Cy Young Award this year. This will be my first time voting on the pitcher awards — last year, I was tasked with voting for Manager of the Year and MVP — and so I’ve spent the last week and a half trying to work through what kind of factors I’m going to want to consider in putting my ballot together. And as I work through the process, I’ve come to realize that there’s one potentially significant factor that I’m not sure whether to consider or not; a pitcher’s performance while batting.
My initial reaction to the idea of using a pitcher’s batting line as a variable was to reject the notion, considering that it’s an award designed to honor the best pitcher of the season, and a pitcher’s job is to prevent runs. What a pitcher does at the plate can be rewarded when they vote on the Silver Slugger Award. I think that’s generally the commonly accepted approach, and when I broached this topic with a few people at Saber Seminar this weekend, most of them — even Brian Bannister, the former MLB pitcher who posted a career .276/.300/.414 batting line — suggested that a pitcher’s hitting performance shouldn’t be a factor in the Cy Young voting.
But I guess I’m still not convinced. I certainly haven’t made up my mind to definitely include a pitcher’s batting performance as a factor in my vote, but I don’t know that I can accept the idea that we should only be evaluating a pitcher’s contribution to run prevention, when National League pitchers are also required to hit as a function of their jobs. It’s a smaller part of their job, certainly, but it is something they have to do, much like big lumbering sluggers who are selected for their ability to hit the ball a long way still have to run the bases, even though that is definitely not the skill they are being paid for.
Or perhaps more compellingly, do we believe that a pitcher’s own fielding value should be extracted from his run prevention and not considered, because fielding is not pitching, and this is an award solely for rewarding what these athletes did in the act of throwing the ball to the plate? Probably not, right? I haven’t heard anyone argue that fielding should be ignored, and everyone seems to be mostly fine with rewarding the pitcher who best prevented runs from scoring, however you choose to measure that goal.
But when we say that a pitcher’s job is to prevent runs, is that any different than saying that Miguel Cabrera’s job is to create offense, and we just shouldn’t bother accounting for the other parts of the game he’s forced to do to get his bat in the line-up in the first place? In the National League, if you want to be a starting pitcher, you also have to hit a couple of times per game. It’s part of the job requirement.
In the AL, it’s not part of the job requirement, but the National League has specifically rejected adopting the DH, which implies that the NL sees the occasional at-bat as part of a pitcher’s job description. And if this is part of the job, and some pitchers are clearly better at it than others, should we really not consider it as a factor when deciding which pitcher had the best season?
For instance, as a hitter this season, Madison Bumgarner has generated 10 runs for the Giants, relative to what we’d expect from a normal pitcher in those same number of at-bats. Those 10 runs have directly contributed to the Giants ability to win the games in which Bumgarner has started, and it is part of the reason why the Giants are 16-9 in games that Bumgarner takes the hill.
If Bumgarner had instead been a typical pitcher while at the plate, but had allowed 10 fewer runs on the mound, he’d have a 2.49 ERA instead of his current 3.02 mark; that would jump him into a tie for 5th place in the NL in ERA, rather than being in 14th place, as he is now. Most likely, Bumgarner would receive more support in the Cy Young race if he had prevented those 10 runs while pitching than by adding them through his hitting exploits, but those runs affected the Giants in the same way, right? When it comes to determining a winner at the end of the game, a run scored is a equal in value to a run allowed, and it’s probably more accurate to say that a pitcher’s job is to help his team win, rather to narrowly define his job as simply prevent runs.
So, a non-zero part of me thinks that I really should consider a pitcher’s batting line when voting for the NL Cy Young Award. But, I’m certainly open to other viewpoints, especially if the case is made on logic and reason. It probably won’t change my mind if you just write “You’re a moron, Cameron” in the comments section, but I’m guessing a lot of you will probably take the opposite position on this, and I’d love to hear your reasons for why I should end up on your side. Why should I only consider a pitcher’s run prevention, and not run creation, when NL pitchers are required to hit? And if the award is solely for evaluating who pitched the best, why shouldn’t I then take that to its logical extension, penalizing good fielding pitchers for propping up their pitching statistics with non-pitching value?
There’s a pretty decent chance that, at the end of the day, this won’t have a material impact on the winner, as the guy who is probably most people’s current Cy Young favorite also happens to be hitting pretty well himself, but with five spots on the ballot, this could definitely end up playing a role in who makes the cut and who doesn’t. And, realistically, I want my vote to be as logically sound as it can be, and so even if this doesn’t have a tangible impact, I want to make sure I’ve considered every potential source of information.
So, let’s end with a poll, and then let’s hear your thoughts in the comments. Should I consider a pitcher’s hitting performance in the Cy Young process, or is this really just a run prevention award?
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I’d say no for Cy Young, yes for MVP. The CY should be strictly a pitching award, similar to the Hank Aaron award, which is for the best hitter.
Whereas the CY and Aaron awards are for strictly pitching and hitting, respectively, the MVP should take into account all aspects of a player’s game.
I agree with this
Cy Young no, MVP yes
I agree with this as well… except for the fact that pitchers are strangely and, i think, stupidly, excluded from MVP consideration by a lot of people. A lot of people think pitchers simply can’t be valuable enough, and even more think a pitcher should only eligible when there is no outstanding position player. As long as that is that case, I kind of want the Cy Young to be like the MVP-for-pitchers, and include hitting.
However, if people abandon this weird idea and consider position players and pitchers equally for MVP, then I would Cy Young voting should be based on pitching only.
But they already have, right? I mean, a pitcher won MVP last year with decent competition.
Agree.
Including, if needing, penalizing a pitcher if he’s truly awful at the plate in the MVP race. Sure he’s being paid to pitch, but if we want the MVP race to encompass all parts of the game it should all count, for better or worse.
I agree as well. Also,if you start taking hitting into effect for the Cy Young then it will destroy any chance of my lifelong dream of one pitcher winning the Cy Young and a different pitcher winning the MVP of happening.
Which, while unlikely, seems like it could happen this year, with two pitchers from the same team, no less!
That’s a great lifelong dream.
Agreed as well. For reference, Cy Young himself provided about 131 WAR from his pitching, and about 0.8 WAR from his batting, lifetime.
When I read this article, I was just going to go look up Cy Young’s hitting stats, but you beat me to it. Nice one!
Lifetime OPS+ of 45
I disagree. The Hank Aaron award is specifically for the best hitter, not the best position player or for that matter even the best offensive player overall (notably ignoring baserunning in cases where it might have tipped the scales like Trout/Cabrera). So best hitter means best at that specific aspect of the game.
Pitcher, on the other hand, refers not just to an aspect of the game but to an actual position. So I think it’s better to read “best pitcher” to mean best overall at that position, and not just best at pitching only.
I don’t think that’s what is meant by pitcher. Keep in mind that when someone says “position player” they are excluding pitchers, so what’s going on there?
Also, a hitter usually plays the field. In fact, much more frequently than a pitcher hits. If we’re being technical, we can make this whatever we want. But I’ve never heard of the idea of putting pitcher offense in the CYA equation. This seems like an argument for the sake of argument that has mutated to a legit position because of, I don’t know, boredom?
Agreed. To me, when you’re voting for the Cy Young, you’re evaluating pitching performances (the acts) rather than pitchers (the people). It’s an award that’s specific to run prevention whereas the MVP is a more holistic evaluation of the players.
Fairness is an issue for me. Pitchers who come over from the AL may have extra trouble batting, as they may not have had to practice doing so regularly for years or even a decade. As we have more years of the scattered interleague play that we now have, this may be less of an issue, but there will still be some bias towards career NLers.
But NL and AL pitchers aren’t competing against each other for the same award since each league presents its own Cy Young. Plus with the minimal amount of PAs that AL pitchers are going to see in just a few interleague starts, it would never make a difference in the AL anyway.
The Cy Young award is strictly for pitching. Batting should not come into play.
A well-reasoned argument, Phillies113
Thank you, Beard.
Voted no. An extreme hypothetical: if Buster Posey pitches well in a few mop-up innings in blowouts, he wouldn’t become a Cy Young candidate. But pitcher hitting should definitely be factored into MVP voting.
Run this question through the patented Mike Hampton Test-O-Matic (TM).
Would you have voted for Mike Hampton for Cy Young in 2001 because he triple-slashed 291/309/582 despite his 5.41 ERA (5.21 FIP)?
QED.
Congrats on the vote!
Clearly, the previous post was intended for Dave, not you Brad. But I’m sure you’re a great guy and I’m glad you would not vote for Buster Posey for Cy Young.
Obviously a pitcher having a bad year as a pitcher is not going to get any Cy Young consideration no matter how much he hits. More relevant would be to ask if Hampton had posted that same batting line in ’99 when he went 22-4, 2.90 era, should that have given him the edge in the CY over Randy Johnson that year (17-9, 2.48)? I would say probably not myself given RJ’s edge in innings, FIP and other peripheral and advanced stats. However I would say that any voter who didn’t at least consider Hampton’s hitting in that hypothetical wouldn’t be doing his job.
ElJimador, respectfully, how do you then weigh the NL CY vote in ’03 where you had a RP with zero PA (Gagne) beat out a SP with over 75 PA (Schmidt)? Should Gagne’s lack of PA been held against him or should/did Schmidt’s lack of ability at bat prevent him from winning the CY? In the AL, should a team’s DH performance merit consideration on the day that pitcher started?
IMHO, the only reason to include a pitcher’s hitting ability during CY consideration is if the Win is still the best measure of pitcher evaluation. Since they’re batting, they directly contribute to a game’s win or loss. And if you are taking the whole of the pitcher’s performance, then the most precise way of measuring a pitcher’s worth is their ability to win games.
(BTW, I disagree that wins are the best measure of a pitcher’s ability as I would only consider his performance on the mound.)
Schmidt would have had to hit much better than he did in ’03 to have that be any factor in CY voting. He did lead the league with 15 sacrifice bunts but had a .161 OPS (-0.7 bWAR) otherwise. So if that was to have any bearing at all it would have been in the wrong direction for him anyway.
Whether a reliever like Gagne should ever win CY is the real question and that really has nothing to do with hitting but just the much lower # of innings a reliever is going to post. I tend to think a reliever should have to be so dominant in the innings he does pitch as to almost never warrant serious consideration. OTOH, Gagne that year was about as lights out as we’re ever going to see (0.69 WHIP and 137 Ks in 82.1 IP) so I can’t really argue with his selection.
Does the BBWAA include any guideline or verbiage on what you are voting for?
I know the MVP includes a “Dear Voter, the rules for voting…”
(that also rules out your Miguel Cabrera line, since MVP specifically says Offense and Defense)
I haven’t seen the actual ballot yet, but my understanding is that the MVP award is the only one that comes with any instructions.
well darn.
“Best pitcher” = the best individual to play the position of pitcher. The “pitcher” position includes defense and hitting.
I guess I vote that you include offense. But I don’t like it.
I would have said no too except I know many people give the pitchers credit for defense. They often gave various pitchers some credit for being a fine fielder. Its best pitcher award not the best pitching award. So I would think it incorporates all contributions as a pitcher. With pitching being the most looked at stat. As for hitters throwing a few innings and hitting, one those are not stats accumulated as a pitcher and they would have even qualified for the ERA title so thus would not be considered. Even if you had a guy was a Babe Ruth or Nigun(two way player) you would only take his batting into account while he was a pitcher and not say an outfielder. For MVP you’d take both.
Your a moron, Cameron
What’s an “a moron” and why does Cameron have one?
Clearly a typo for “amoron,” the fundamental particle of love. The commenter is suggesting that as a result of this piece, his love-particle is now possessed by Cameron.
You have now become Editor of NotGraphs
So would a Cameron be the fundamental particle of photography?
Is a Josemeson a large, highly erratic particle that’s fundamentally banned from Cleveland?
If hitting should be considered a factor when voting for these awards then would you consider Bartolo Colon for the award solely on his performance with the bat? I mean look at him! He is quite the terror at the plate!
He should win an ESPY for his performance with the bat. That’s why the ESPYs exist.
I thought the ESPYs existed for the same reason as the rest of the network – to generate advertising revenue.
Dave, when you vote on something like this, do you vote on what shoulda happened or what did happen?
You can disregard defence and what not, but just because something like awful sequencing shouldn’t happen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen or just because a pitcher shouldn’t allow a ridiculously high HR / FB doesn’t mean he didn’t allow a ridiculous HR / FB. Obviously it makes sense to standardize ballpark, and defence, etc., but does it make sense to regress luck/sequencing for a yearly award?
It gives way for an argument about taking it into consideration for an MVP award. Although let’s be real, if a SP is in contention for an MVP, it shouldn’t be the hitting that makes you lean one way.
Pitchers have their Silver Sluggers which Bum will inevitably win. That’s the hitting award for you right there.
Cy Young should remain strictly for pitching.
No….
I can’t imagine whether Miguel Cabrera pitching he will win a cy young or not
This makes no sense, and is also not what DC argued at all
To the extent you already look at FIP over ERA when evaluating pitchers, then you’re also taking out some of their run prevention value related to fielding. While you may go back in and add back a pitcher’s own fielding prowess, I’d venture a guess that the vast majority of what you consider are ERA and ERA related metrics and not a pitcher’s fielding ability. If that is the case, then this seems to be an implicit argument that the CY Young award is a metric of how good a pitcher is at pitching, and not all aspects of the game
As hitting is a function of the job description, however small it may be, the effect on the vote should be balanced with the small portion of the job description that it is (i.e. as a tiebreaker).
And Brian, the “You are” that you are looking for seems to be missing, as is your credibility in your statement.
Humor…it is a difficult concept.
Humor… not easily achieved.
The problem with saying, “If those hitting runs transferred over to pitching runs, it would be a different story” is that it’s not the case at all. Bumgarner didn’t necessarily choose to take some of the pitching runs he prevented and transfer them to gained batting runs. Maybe he spent a few extra minutes in the batting cage, but it’s not something he goes out and decides to do. If this were an MVP discussion, then no doubt this should be taken into consideration, but what he does with his bat has nothing to do with his ability to throw white spheres.
He’s very proud of his batting prowess and it is my understanding that he works on it. In fact, the Giants batting coach, Sir Bam Bam Muelens had a game for the players last season, including all the pitchers, assigning points to certain batting achievements, so this is something the Giants decided to do, at least last season.
But who ever said that “throwing white spheres” is the only part of a pitcher’s job description that the Cy Young award was meant to celebrate? If the award is for the best pitcher it seems to me that should encompass everything else the player contributes as well.
Take this as a hypothetical. Imagine that Jon Lester was having the season Cubs fans were hoping for and right now he was sporting the exact same pitching line as Bumgarner. Would that make him tied with Bumgarner, wherever you have him on your ballot? Or would it not be blindingly obvious that the guy who hits like Josh Hamilton and is nearly impossible to steal against is a better and more valuable pitcher overall than the guy with the .045 OPS as a hitter and 36 stolen bases against?
I was just about to make this exact argument. Taking it into consideration as a tie breaker or as an extra point of comparison between two pitchers with otherwise similar stats is probably the best approach.
Looking forward to reading you’re next article, Brian.
If your replying to Brian, you should have responded up their:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/on-the-cy-young-and-pitcher-hitting/#comment-5051317
I suppose if you are voting on something based off of hard numbers, then some creative interpretation has to be allowed, if not encouraged. It’s an interesting topic, however, since I don’t believe the award factors in the pitchers overall value to his team unlike the MVP(I could be wrong, I don’t know if there is a precise description of what constitutes a “Cy Young award winner”) I would have to lean towards your other extreme and say the pitcher who prevents the most runs as a direct result of his fielding independent pitching has likely been the best pitcher.
I think the answer is to not consider hitting by a pitcher as part of the Cy Young award. Here is the reasoning:
The Most Valuable Player award is a measure of overall value, therefore as you mentioned, Miguel Cabrera’s poor defense and lack of foot speed had to be factors in his MVP battles with Trout. But the Cy Young is not the equivalent to the MVP, it is instead equivalent to the Hank Aaron Award. Each award is intended to reward a player based on their contributions in the particular half of the game (Hank Aaron Award being run creation, and the Cy Young being run prevention). Running the bases thus is a part of the Hank Aaron Award, as that has an effect on run production. Similarly, pitching defense should be included, as it is part of how good a player is at run prevention. But to include pitcher hitting is to take the symmetry out of MLB awards. In 2014 Clayton Kershaw’s bat should have been a factor in determining whether he is the MVP, but not in determining whether he was the Cy Young Award Winner. Similarly, it should be possible for someone to win the MVP and lose the Hank Aaron Award, if a lot of the MVP’s contributions occurred on defense.
So ultimately, the symmetry of the awards works as follows:
1. MVP: most valuable overall
2. Hank Aaron Award: Most valuable league wide run creator by a hitter
2. Cy Young: Most valuable league wide run prevention by a pitcher
3. Gold Gloves: Best positional defense only
3. Silver Sluggers: Best positional offense only
Let me know where my reasoning is off.
I think your reasoning is fine, given the MVP is actually what it says it is, that being “most valuable overall”, and not “most valuable position player for a playoff team, and maybe a pitcher if there’s no one with 100 RBIs on a playoff team”
Weird, that is how our ballot reads.
You’re reasoning would be fine if the Hank Aaron and Cy Young awards came with the instructions you’ve provided. They don’t. The Hank Aaron award is expressly for the “best hitter”, not “most valuable league wide run creator”, and if you look at past winners it’s hard to see that they’ve ever taken baserunning into account. Meanwhile the Cy Young award is expressly for “best pitcher”, which could either mean “best at pitching” (and therefore equivalent to the Hank Aaron award) or “best player at position of pitcher”, since unlike “hitter” pitcher is an actual position too.
Your definitions for these awards may be preferable however they are your own, not MLB’s.
+1 for saying something that actually makes sense, instead of just wrapping a one-sided opinion in a declarative statement.
(Not picking on Stephen, just on 89% of the other comments.)
I think we have to wait until the instructions, but Wikipedia says:
“The Cy Young Award is given annually to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball (MLB), one each for the American League (AL) and National League (NL).”
Best pitcher is clearly referring to the player who plays that position. Hitting is part of the job description of a pitcher, just as fielding and holding runners are part of that job description.
If the award says player with the best season-long pitching performance, than I would exclude defense and hitting, but if the player says best pitcher, then that includes hitting in the NL, and defense in both leagues, IMO.
I don’t think the comparison with a batter is right. There is a point where a batter’s fielding is so bad that he is either a DH or no longer plays, whereas for a pitcher, I don’t think that a manager would ever say that the pitcher bats so poorly that he would no longer let that player pitch. Being pinch-hit for is different because that could be due to a variety of reasons unrelated to batting, such as pitcher arm fatigue.
Taking pitcher hitting into account would also lead to a disparity in how the awards are handled across the two leagues, since most AL pitchers are unlikely to do enough during interleague play to move the needle.
I think that is more just a function of the relative impact of fielding and pitcher hitting. Basically, a pitcher doesn’t have enough impact at the plate, and the bar for pitcher hitting is so low, that a pitcher simply can’t hurt his team that much by being a terrible hitter. On the other hand, even a first baseman can really hurt his team on defense.
If pitchers got 200 at bats a year, and pitchers typically hit slightly worse than catchers (instead of hitting like high schoolers), then a pitcher might actually lose his job for being a horrible hitter. Jon Lester isn’t going to lose his job, but Kyle Hendricks might.
so, the point i was going to make was that, if you do consider pitcher hitting for the CY, then most of the time it will make almost no difference anyway, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider it when it does make a difference.
Right. Simply value hitting from the pitchers spot in terms of how much hitting from the pitchers spot adds or detracts to his WAR total. 99 times out 100 it won’t make a difference in the CY standings. But what he can do at the plate does make a pitcher better (at getting victories for his team) enough to matter, it matters. Its a blue moon the day it matters enough! How much more would Bumgardner have to produce to outpace the front runners? Probably more than he will get plate appearances to achieve.
The total of value of a pitcher is actually everything the pitcher does that impacts the game. Fielding errors, holding runners, soft contact, strikeouts etc etc, but a pitcher will never get near being CY material unless he dominates the pitching aspect (95%) of a pitchers game.
this is an excellent argument, dan.
Looking at the pitcher the award was named after, Cy Young had 3 good hitting seasons in his 20+ year career, and a career OPS of .516
So hitting wasn’t a big part of Cy Young’s game. His career offense WAR was -248, but his career defense WAR was +133.
Maybe defense should be counted but not offense, in the Cy Young award…
OK, you made me look it up. Brian Bannister’s career batting line is from just 33 PA.
That’s more than credible enough.
“Why should I only consider a pitcher’s run prevention, and not run creation, when NL pitchers are required to hit?”
Not that I’m leaning one way or the other on this topic, but what if the pitcher pitched in the AL, were actually as good as Miguel Cabrera at the plate, and DH-ed in his non-pitching games? What would count towards his CY Young candidacy? All of his hitting value? Just his hitting value on the days he pitches? None of his hitting value, because AL pitchers aren’t required to hit?
That’s a good scenario. It’s not clear to me what should happen in that scenario, but I’m sure what would happen is that pitcher would be a slam-dunk MVP, and because of that, people would naturally ignore his hitting for the CY award.
I think that instance is actually pretty straight forward. DH is not eligible for the CY Young so therefore all his stats as a DH would not count towards his Cy Young credentials. The same way as if you moved Andrelton Simmons to LF for half the season you couldn’t use those stats to bolster his case for a gold glove at SS.
Like the person above said though, it would likely be a moot point as that player would likely win all the awards anyway. And deservedly so.
I would view the pitcher of your hypothetical as more of DH than a pitcher and would not count their hitting stats as a DH towards their performance as a pitcher. What he does with the bat on the days he’s pitching, sure. But not the rest of it. Where it would get stickier is the more realistic scenario if you had a pitcher who maybe DH’ed a few times and pinch hit semi-regularly too with good success, but who still had a solid majority of their PA’s as a pitcher. In that case I might be inclined to count all of it, on the basis that he’s still a full time pitcher more than anything.
It would be like if there was a Johnny Bench award for best catcher and you had to consider whether how Posey has hit in his 25 or so starts at 1B should count in that discussion. At his current ratio of PA’s by position I’d say yes but if it became more 50/50 or even 60/40 catching I probably would start to peel those 1B numbers out. Others may draw the line somewhere else but that seems reasonable to me.
In this case, I would exclude his performance as a DH from the CY award, because the CY is for pitchers, not DH’s. But if this were a real player, I’m sure his manager would let him hit and decline to use the DH when he was on the mound. In that case, his performance during games he’s on the bump is part of his job as a “pitcher,” and should be included in consideration for the CY.
What you’re proposing goes against convention, but it is logically sound. There’s no good reason to be including fielding in the mix while excluding batting. From a value perspective, what a pitcher does at bat has an effect on how he’s used on the mound throughout the game. Contrary to what sabermetrics often implies, game events do not happen in vacuum apart from each other. Game strategy does change based on the score and inning, so it would be improper to presume that whatever happened on the defensive side of a game would’ve still happened the same way if the offensive side had been adjusted. Players play the games with their minds as much as with their instincts. They are reacting to unique situations instead of behaving in a generic way. The study of statistics often overlooks the behavioral aspect.
this is not really correct.
Support?
human behavior touches every part of baseball. If a guy throws 60% fastballs and 40% offspeed, he is a human choosing to do so, is he not? And statistics are measuring that and making predictions based on that, are they not?
There is no line between “data”, on which statistics can act, and “human behavior,” on which it can’t. Human behavior is captured by data all the time, and thus well within the domain of statistics.
You play to win the game. Hello? The pitchers job is to help his team win games – if he can do that with the bat in addition to pitching and defense, it should be considered for the award. To Dave’s point, no one seems to take issue with fielding being included in the analysis even though there is already a separate award for best fielding pitcher. I don’t see why one additional aspect of a pitcher’s contribution should be considered while another is excluded.
Position players play to win the game too, but we are excluding them from winning this award. So you should probably look at the intended methodology for choosing the winner, beyond just assuming everything is relevant.
But Bip, if the “intended methodology” says only that the award should go to the best pitcher then why shouldn’t we assume that all parts of the job requirement of pitcher are relevant?
That is one answer to my question, out of a few possible, yes.
I don’t think that hitting shouldn’t play a role in principle, but thinking statistically I have concerns about sample size. Value added is value added, and it doesn’t necessarily take away from what he’s done to suggest that Bumgarner may not be a “true” 125 wRC+ batter. But just like there are minimum PA requirements for the batting title, it seems a little shoddy to give him full credit for 10 runs created when the models only have 60 plate appearances of data to draw from. So I think we can probably delineate between good/bad hitters qualitatively, and I think it’s fair to let that determination inform CY voting, but I would be reluctant to treat pitching value and batting value as strictly additive, quantitatively speaking.
But runs created is a counting stat, and therefore is already constrained by sample size. We also don’t hand out Cy Young awards to relievers, even though they are always the best on a per-inning basis, because their runs-prevented can never be close to what a starter’s would be.
Yes. We’re not extrapolating his value over 600 PA. We’d only be giving him credit for the actual PA’s that happened. Whether you prefer wRC+ or WPA or fWAR, that’s up to you.
The award is to remember and honor Cy Young by giving an award to a player that resembles Cy Young’s accomplishments. Cy Young batted, and he was pretty okay at it. He hit a few homers and a number of triples on top of doubles and singles every year. Career numbers were similar to Bumgarner, for instance.
Baseball players slot into the lineup and play, their ability to perform each task is vital to their value.
Lets bring this to a logical extreme. Imagine pitcher A who is the best overall pitcher in every category except batting, and pitcher B who is 5% weaker in every category, except he has a .350ba, 15hr, 20 doubles, whatever else. How could anyone pass up a guy who pitches roughly as well, but is also one of the best batters in the league?
People don’t want to include batting with pitching stats is because there are so many pitchers who can’t hit, so they have been conditioned to believe batting doesn’t matter. That is logically flawed. Batting always matters. People who pitch well on top of batting well are better pitchers than ones who cannot bat. Batting is a default skill that every player is assumed to have. Defensive specialization can lower expectations of offense, but it never eliminates it.
No one ever really thinks back to Cy Young and says “Man, that Cy Young…he could really hit!”
It’s all about the pitching w/r/t the Cy Young award. That’s all the Cy Young award is for; best pitcher. As others have mentioned, you can consider both pitching and batting when evaluating the MVP awards, but Cy Young is strictly pitching.
It’s like giving a Gold Glove to a player because he also has a high OBP. The high OBP is nice, but it shouldn’t factor into a defensive award like the Gold Glove.
On the other hand, if the award for best pitcher was meant to celebrate “best at run prevention” as the be-all, end-all of pitching then why isn’t it called the Walter Johnson award instead?
Cy Young is the name on the award because he is the career leader in pitcher wins. That stat may be discredited these days (and rightly so) however it seems to me more in keeping with the spirit of the award to celebrate the pitcher who in all aspects of the game does the most to help his team win. By the nature of the position that’s still going to mean run prevention first and foremost, just not only. Everything else should count too.
Can you publish the guidelines you were given by the BBWAA for this award? Reading that would go a long way to helping me know what my answer is. My knee-jerk reaction is also no, but I’m basing that on what I imagine the guidelines to be, rather than what they actually are.
This is a fascinating conversation
I am undecided
maybe it is best to look at hitting and defense as tie-breaking type considerations
or 80% of consideration is pitching, ten for each hitting and defense
Batting should be included in the Cy Young voting, because Cy Young himself had 18 career dingers, which is good for 18th all time among pitchers.
Furthermore, it was the deadball era, so that’s probably like 90 dingers by modern standards.
If you’re taking things to their logical conclusion in treating all runs equal then does that mean that hitters qualify for the award too? What if they pitched one inning all season in an extra inning game?
Someone has already noted that relievers don’t get much consideration for Cy Young, so obviously a hitter who has 1 IP is not going to get consideration either.
but i think the question is just related to the spirit of the award. Is the spirit of the award value produced? Value produced while being somewhat-arbitrarily considered a pitcher primarily? Value produced in games in which you pitch? Value produced just from run prevention?
Relievers don’t win the CY because they don’t produce enough value, not because they aren’t “pitcher” enough. A position player who pitches can be plenty valuable but isn’t “pitcher” enough.
Cy Young award for best pitcher. Pitching is obviously more than just Ks and ERAs. There are a lot of ways to be effective. Obviously Dave’s point mostly pertains to MadBum and to a lesser extent Greinke. Now consider this, baseball is entertainment and in no way some sort of objective system where the best or most statistically supported outcome comes through. Perhaps the only thing I know for sure about baseball is that pitcher dingers are maybe the most awesome thing we get. Bumgarner took Clayton Kershaw deep this season (and beat him that game too). If that’s not awesome and doesn’t make him both a more exciting and more valuable pitcher then maybe you should go back to accounting or whatever else you prefer.
Ps Bartolo colon is also pretty awesome and definitely more valuable because of the incredible faces he makes when he gets a hit.
Cy Young is a pitching award /thread
Give him the MVP tho.
“Give him the MVP tho”
Naw.
y not? if you’re going to factor hitting.
I mean… it’s not like Harper’s winning LOL
I mean, if a bus with 10-20 other more deserving MVP candidates falls into a ravine then perhaps? It just seems the odds of that are so, so low…
(To be fair that bus with the more deserving candidates could be eaten by a plesiosaurus or hit by a large piece of falling space debris. Still seems unlikely though. Just what are they doing together on the same bus, anyway?!)
Also, pitchers shouldn’t hit, and I look forward to soon never having this conversation again.
Or have Josh Donaldson pitch an inning and just give him everything.
18 men enter, 18 men hit. Thunderdome.
Meant the above to be about your DH preference. But also, if JD pitched one inning his candidacy for CY would be based on that single inning, so hope he pitched the top of an inning, and then hit a homer in the bottom. He might make it to #437 in the voting.
Is it totally true that a run scored = a run allowed simply because you ultimately have to score at least one run to win? This is mostly a quibbling point, but I’m curious to see how people weigh in.
It’s not because you have to score at least one to win, but more generally because runs are the currency of the game of baseball. For an individual game, runs can be more or less valuable, but when viewing baseball in a context-independent, which we generally do here at fangraphs, you just want to look at how aggregate runs affect a team’s wins.
If we could show that a run prevented from pitching had a greater effect on wins than on contributed through hitting, then we might value them differently, but I don’t think we have reason to believe that is the case. If Bumgarner hits a solo home run to make the game 5-3, then it’s not really different than if he doesn’t do that and instead prevents a run, making it 4-2.
The reverse of that is also true. You ultimately have to allow at least one run to lose.
Pythag shows that they are not equal. My analysis has found that for a 90 win team, the number of runs scored changed is more than the number of runs allowed changed.
You have a team scoring 650 runs and allowing 574 for a .600 record, 90-72.
If they scored 639 runs then they need to allow 564 for a .600 record.
If they scored 661 runs then they need to allow 584 for a .600 record.
For every 10 run swing for runs allowed, runs scored swings by 11 runs. Thus 10 runs scored swinging over to 10 runs allowed don’t do the same thing. Thus Bumgarner’s hitting is valuable, but roughly 10% less wins than if he had reduced his runs allowed.
However, the short hand that most people use is 10 runs = 1 win, whether scored or prevented.
Isn’t that only for winning teams though? So if you flipped it, so that the team was 72-90 and had the opposite run differential, would 11 runs scored still equal 10 prevented, or would it be the reverse, i.e. 10 scored = 11 prevented?
A pitcher who can hit is a more valuable pitcher. I say yes, it is part of the equation.
MVP? Absolutely. Cy Young? No.
Same reason you wouldn’t give a Gold Glove award based on hitting performance.
The same reason that you “shouldn’t” give a Gold Glove award based on hitting performance. Though, it debatably happens all of the time. (See: Derek Jeter).
No one gave Jeter a Gold Glove based on his hitting. He was given gold gloves because the managers and coaches that vote on the award evaluate defense differently than you do.
(i.e., based on his hitting and/or reputation)
I am willing to bet that if you asked the people that voted for Jeter for GG, not a single one would reply “I gave it to him because he is a good hitter.”
And is that because they aren’t factoring in hitting at all in their evaluations or because they’d be embarrassed to give that as a reason?
They may not say they gave it to him because he was a good hitter, but they may have leaned far more towards recognizable names, considering they can’t watch every player play every position, and I’m sure the players and coaches rely more on seeing players than stats.
There was a player/coach poll for the best in class at such and such, and best defender was a category, and all the best names were mostly recognizable names. Adam Jones was called the 2nd best defensive outfielder. I don’t think people said that because they see his hitting stats and think he’s a good defender, but I think they are not going to look at a spreadsheet and sort by UZR; they are thinking of the players they know well enough and going partly by memory and partly by popular perception.
Manager and coach evaluation of defense is probably a lot about perception. They remember the good and bad plays made against their team. Jeter seldom made mistakes, and made a fair number of plays that looked spectacular. That is what his opposition remembered. They don’t remember balls rolling through out of his reach, because those get mentally credited as good hits to their players.
Plenty of great hitters have never won a gold glove, and plenty of bad hitters have won multiple gold gloves. Players like Ryan Howard or Jason Giambi who look bad to everyone never win gold gloves. Players like Jeter who really only look bad according to rather opaque numbers but look fine on the field do sometimes win gold gloves.
“I am willing to bet that if you asked the people that voted for Jeter for GG, not a single one would reply “I gave it to him because he is a good hitter.”
Well, no crap. of course they wouldn’t admit to having his hitting or “general leadership skillz” influence their votes.
Even though they very likely did.
“Even though they very likely did.”
No evidence for that, but it’s a fun narrative.
Same reason you shouldn’t give a Gold Glove based on hitting performance.
I’ll give you $50,000 for your vote.
This is only the pocket money for you right??
But we`ll pay it out over 17 years.
If you include hitting, did Babe Ruth have the greatest single pitching seasons ever?
No because Ruth stopped being a full time pitcher after his age 21 season, before he began to peak as a hitter. In his best season as a pitcher at age 20 he posted 8.7 WAR as a pitcher but added “only” 1.7 WAR as a hitter (10.4 combined), while in his best season as a hitter when he was still pitching semi-regularly (1919 when he was 24) he posted 9.4 WAR as a hitter but only 0.8 WAR from the mound (10.2 combined).
Those are great seasons obviously however wouldn’t rank even in the top 50 pitcher seasons all time.
“I haven’t heard anyone argue that fielding should be ignored, and everyone seems to be mostly fine with rewarding the pitcher who best prevented runs from scoring, however you choose to measure that goal.”
Doesn’t everyone ignore pitcher fielding when evaluating Cy Young candidates? Basically all of the metrics we use are either fielding-independent (FIP, K/BB), or include a pitcher’s fielding only to the same degree as all his teammates’ (ERA, wins).
You talked me into it. I say include hitting.
I understand the argument that a run created is just as valuable as a run saved, but the problem I have with it in this context is that different awards are intended to celebrate different things. I mean, don’t we roll our eyes at many of the historical gold glove winners since those trophies were often handed to the best hitter at their position, even if that guy was a lead ball in the field? But if were to apply this argument consistently when it comes to awards then we would have to applaude those selections since, after all, a run is a run and most of those guys were tops at their position, regardless of how they got there.
As for seperating pitching from fielding, 1) isn’t that what FIP, and by extension FIP based WAR, already does? 2) I think it’s a little tougher to completely seperate pitching and fielding since at the most basic level the pitcher’s job is to record outs, so both these things are tied together. I think of a guy like Zack Greinke who after throwing a pitch is always squared up perfectly and often is already breaking to the spot where he expects the ball to be before the batter even makes contact. If Greinke has a good, quick throwing motion that allows him to get into prime fielding position better than other pitchers, or if he can cheat a little to where he thinks the ball will go because he has such good stuff and trusts his pitch selection, then how do you distinguish those kinds of things? Couldn’t you make a good argument that Greinke is partly a good fielder BECAUSE he is such a smart, talented pitcher? So I guess at the end of the day that part of a pitcher’s job seems much harder to break apart than the batting aspect, which while significant from a overall winning standpoint, really has nothing to do with the time the pitcher spends on the mound.
I would add another scenario to the discussion that might impact the thought process: In 1919 Babe Ruth was both a pitcher and a hitter. He had a 2.97 era, and a 3.58 fip, but if you asked, “was he the best pitcher in the AL that year?” the initial reaction would probably be, “not even close.” He only threw 133 innings, and his ERA+ was just barely above average, at 102.
But, if you take hitting into account, his stats not only dwarfed his fellow pitchers, but dominated everyone league wide, with a league leading 29 home runs and 1.114 OPS.
Babe Ruth was a pitcher in 1919. But the answer to the question “was he the best pitcher in the AL?” is unclear.
Didn’t see this before commenting, but it is on point. There’s increasing talk of Bumgardner pinch hitting. So this isn’t really just a pointless artifact of 96 years ago.
This does not factor in the fact that Ruth played in the OF a lot that season, hence why he didn’t pitch as well (at least, I’m pretty sure he did play a lot of OF). In which case, you strip out his OF stats and just focus on his stats as a pitcher. (and right now, I’m undecided, but this is a fallacy of a lot of comments above, including non-pitcher results into the equation)
Another commenter posed basically the same question without using Ruth as a specific example (he said if a pitcher DH’s on off days) and much like that hypothetical its a pretty straight forward answer IMHO.
Any position other than pitcher is not eligible for the Cy Young. So any stats you accumulate while not listed on the score sheet as Pitcher are irrelevant. The same way as if you moved Andrelton Simmons to LF for half the season you couldn’t use his LF stats to bolster his case for a gold glove at SS.
By the way, Ruth played 111 games in the OF in 1919. Which was the crux of my point that i forgot to mention lol.
In 1919 Walter Johnson won 20 games (for the 10th season in a row), led the AL with a 1.49 ERA as well as leading in ERA+, FIP, WHIP, Ks and shutouts (and oh btw didn’t allow a single HR in 290+ innnings). So even if you counted everything Ruth contributed as a hitter while playing other positions, there still wouldn’t have been much question who the best pitcher was. And as others have pointed out, how Ruth hit that year in the 111 games he started at other positions (vs. only 15 starts on the mound) shouldn’t have anything to do with how he was judged as a pitcher anyway.
How much a pitcher contributes with his bat when he’s pitching is part of his overall performance as a pitcher (that is, if you view “best pitcher” to mean best at his position and not just best at pitching). How he hits as an outfielder, 1B or DH would not be.
I think it should count, I’m just not sure how heavily it should be weighted.
Interesting factoid:
Zack Greinke hitting WAR: 0.6
Zack Greinke pitching WAR: 4.7
Zack Greinke total WAR: 5.3
Madison Bumgarner hitting WAR: 1.1
Madison Bumgarner pitching WAR: 4.0
Madison Bumgarner total WAR: 5.1
That really narrows that gap…
But that is fWAR. If you factor in ERA at all (or a whole lot as the vast majority of voters do) the gap becomes large again.
But the majority of the hitting WAR for pitchers is defense, which as far as I can tell is entirely a positional adjustment, whose value is dependent on the number of PA’s by the pitcher. Maybe that makes perfect sense and I just haven’t figured it out yet.
I put something in the Q&A about this exact thing a couple days ago.
Curiously, look at their batting pages:
Greinke – (-2.6) offense WAR, (6.2) defense WAR, 0.6 total WAR
MadBum – (1.8) offense WAR, (6.3) defense WAR, 1.1 total WAR
How do they have higher defense WAR on their hitting page than total WAR on the pitching page?
Pitcher WAR on the batting side does not come mostly from defense. It comes from the positional adjustment. Because most pitchers are terrible hitters, being barely above average (like MB) over a decent sample is pretty valuable.
I believe you are mis-reading the metrics in the Value section on their Batting pages.
Madbum’s 1.8 is RAA, or runs above league average.
MadBum’s 6.3 is 100% a factor of his positional adjustment which derives from the difference between the average pitcher’s offense and a league average hitter (hence 1B/DH get negative positional adjustments, and C/SS get positive ones) weighted by PA. Fangraphs does not have a defensive value metric component for pitcher fielding in pitcher’s fWAR.
So the full component of 1.1 total WAR derives from his value from the bat.
I would say not to include it.
Miguel Cabrera won the Silver Slugger and Hank Aaron awards in ’12 and ’13 despite playing third base at a negative value. Sure, he may have won those even if defense was included, but I would bet the voters there did not take any player defensive values into play. Just as Gold Glove is for glovework.
The awards aren’t meant (other than MVP necessarily) to select the best run differential contributor at each position, or else they’d all be the same. If you include other/all facets of a player’s contribution in the CY vote, it doesn’t maintain the differentiation between the awards. Mark Buehrle would have never won any GGs if it took his pitching results into account. Outside of the MVP, they are relatively specialized honors meant to highlight the best at a specific skill set.
/opinion
Great to meet you at lunch on Sunday at Saber, Dave. Appreciate your work.
I would say at a last resort tie-breaker type thing where there’s 2 pitchers that are so neck and neck that maybe hitting is the only real difference between them… but still feel kinda wrong. Of course, I’m also of the school of thought that pitchers shouldn’t hit at all because the vast majority of them suck at it so bad that its ridiculous.
I vote no because it is a pitching award. One thing to note about hitting v. defense is that pitcher defense is necessarily a part of the game (until we have designated fielders that stand next to the pitcher. Hitting is not.
Further, taking hitting into account could create an awkward situation if a pitcher is ever such a good hitter that he routinely plays on days that he does not pitch. What then? Count his offense only when he is pitching? That would seem a bit silly. The fact that you’d have to go down this road is just one more illustration as to why hitting should not factor in.
Defense, on the other hand, is very much a part of pitching. If Greg Maddux did not finish his follow-through in such good defensive position, he’d have given up many more hits. And that is the position he plays. All pitchers play that position and all have to do it basically the same way.
One more point. While no one cares about it, we do have a pure offense award, the Hank Aaron Award. We also have a pitcher hitting award and an award for overall value that pitchers are clearly eligible for (and sometimes win!).
There already has been that awkward situation, Babe Ruth played the OF a lot when he was pitching, in his latter years as a pitcher. He basically transitioned over time.
If you look at the MLB rookie requirements 130AB=50ip. so 1Ip is 2.6 as valuable as 1 ab so…..
So if a Cy Young pitcher throws 230 Innings x 2.6= 598, 70Ab’s.
than 598/668= ~90%. SO even if you include it should only be worth 10%.
OF that 10%, the value that bumgarner adds vs the value that colon adds is so marginal that it hardly has an impact on the overall number and probably wont sway your decision.
So it’s probably appropriate to include it, but the marginal impact probably wont be enough to sway any decisions.
If we’re going to consider defense for MVP, why not hitting for Cy Young? At least hitting can be measured easily and without controversy.
To reiterate something already said better, but not more tersely, above: I see it as an award specifically for the best pitcher at the skill of pitching, not a multi-skill Most Valuable Pitcher award. The Silver Slugger and the Gold Glove exist in order to reward the other skills; the Cy Young is IMO parallel to them, not to the MVP. For the MVP it’s appropriate to use multidimensional measures of “value” (= “how much he helps/helped the team win”), but for the Cy Young, voters should be focusing on the best possible measures of, specifically, how well the candidates pitched.
Voted undecided. Here’s one reason why: I think IP is a very important pitching stat – and hitting ability presumably affects that, but I don’t know how much.
Hi Dave,
I admit, I instinctively leaned towards the no batting consideration side, until I read all the comments that made the subconscious arguments I was thinking. And I realized it is really not that strong of a case. I don’t think it is fair to say all pitcher hitting and defense should be measured in their own awards because I find it hard to believe that anyone cares very much about the pitcher silver slugger or gold glove awards when paying them, while winning the Cy Young likely results in a significant salary boost. Given the relative importance put on the three awards, I think it would be best to vote on the Cy Young as if the silver slugger and gold glove awards did not exist. Pick the guy who performed the best in terms of total value added.
I actually have a separate question about Cy Young voting, how will you deal with catcher framing value? Will you subtract that or a percentage of it from the pitcher’s value? I’m actually a lot more interested in this.
Good Luck
I say it depends entirely on your interpretation of “pitcher.”
See, the Silver Slugger award goes to the best hitter, but “hitter” is a function, not a position. It necessarily limits the discussion to the offensive portion of the value. It is awarded by defensive position, but defense itself does not play into it.
Same thing for the Gold Glove. It’s strictly a defensive award (supposedly, anyway).
Contrast that with the Edgar Martinez Outstanding Designated Hitter Award. It even has the word “Hitter” right in the title, but it seems obvious that by using the position of Designated Hitter as a qualifier, they are looking at all aspects of the Designated Hitter position, rather than just the hitting. Admittedly, this only adds base-running to the equation, but it’s not nothing.
So, back to pitching: Does “pitcher” in outstanding pitcher refer to the function of pitching or to the position of Pitcher? If it’s a positional award like the Edgar Martinez, then hitting is a part of that position. If it’s a functional award, then nothing outside that function should be considered.
Without more clarification, each voter is free to use a different definition. The real question is, is that a bug or a feature?
I think it makes sense to vote on the best season by a pitcher, which includes hitting in the NL (and a small amount for some AL pitchers). I don’t see the logic of ignoring an important part of a NL pitcher’s game, as even those pitchers who can’t hit five homers in a season can still contribute by getting occasional hits, bunting, base running, etc., as well as fielding. In this sabremetric age, I think it’s the complete package – the Most Valuable Pitcher – that someone playing the position should be judged on.
I can understand those who believe it should be based solely on the pitching, as the award has never been that clearly defined (nor has the MVP, for that matter, as it’s usually reserved for players on teams that make the playoffs, and it often ignores defense and base running.) I cannot understand those who say a position player could pitch one inning and then be named as Cy Young for their hitting, or a pitcher who is a good enough hitter to play everyday and is in LF would get more credit for their pitching – if they’re playing another position, they’re not acting as a pitcher, and so that wouldn’t be a factor.
As far as Madison Bumgarner, unless the pitching gap between him and Grienke and Kershaw closes, I don’t see how MadBum’s hitting is enough to close the gap. (The gap is much wider using rWAR than fWAR, FYI.) I do think MadBum’s hitting is especially noteworthy when there’s discussion of insitituting the DH in the National League – his hitting may be the factor that keeps pitchers batting in the NL.
I’m in favor of anything that involves all 9 players playing both offense and defense. Pitchers hitting makes baseball a purer competition than letting them sit out on offense while letting one hitter sit out on defense.
But: the question is really whether the Cy Young should be given to the best player at the pitcher position or if it’s an award for the best pitching performance.
There are silver slugger and gold glove awards for pitchers hitting and fielding, respectively, and pitchers are still eligible for the MVP. That all points toward the Cy Young being awarded for the best pitching performance rather than the best player at the position.
Dave, congrats on your newly acquired vote!
I’ll help you out here. Voting for the Cy Young is a piece of cake. You take the top three qualifiers in ERA, and then pick who has the most wins. BINGO! Also, nobody is going to begrudge you if you hand it over to someone with a sub 2 ERA, regardless of win total.
Also, 20 wins is automatic consideration. There’s a lot of little funny things about it but I know you’ll do great!
I feel like this could be titled, “Is there a way to justify giving MadBum the Cy Young he deserves that Kershaw will steal?”
so you’re saying Bumgarner deserves it, or that Dave thinks Bumgarner deserves it and is trying to rationalize? Cause neither of those are likely true.
I believe the CY Young award should only be based on a pitchers performance, no hitting or fielding.
Taken from an ESPN site, there is a formula that can be used as a guide to determine who the CY Young winner should be for each league.
“CYP: In The Neyer/James Guide To Pitchers — co-authored by Bill James and ESPN.com’s Rob Neyer presents a method, based on past results, to predict Cy Young balloting. This page provides an in-season snapshot of the Cy Young “race,” as figured by the following formula: Cy Young Points (CYP) = ((5*IP/9)-ER) + (SO/12) + (SV*2.5) + Shutouts + ((W*6)-(L*2)) + VB (see below).
VB: Victory Bonus is a 12-point bonus awarded for leading your team to the division championship”
I think the ESPN formula is based on some old Bill James formula. I don’t know if that formula was ever good, it certainly isn’t now. There are always relievers way too high on the list.
That formula was devised to predict CY voters’ behavior, not because Bill James, Rob Neyer or anyone else thought it was actually the best way to measure which pitcher had the best season.
I lean towards no. Instead of saying “Pitchers in the NL have to hit,” it’s more correct to say “Baseball players have to hit.” And the NL correctly considers pitchers to be baseball players. The Cy Young award recognizes the subset of baseball players that are pitchers, and should be based on their contributions in that specialized area. This argument still allows fielding to be considered because they are fielding the position of pitcher.
Hitting should count. A run is a run is a run.
I voted unconvinced because I don’t know the rest of your criteria, so I don’t know how you’re weighting other skills and especially other stats.
Perhaps you should use pitcher hitting solely as a tiebreaker, if you have 2 candidates who are within margin-of-error-percentage-points from each other in most other categories and stats you’re using.
I am almost tempted to say yes. Until I realize that 99% of the other writers will say no. So in a way it shows the whole voting thing is flawed. Therefore “no” to keep it balanced
Past Cy Young voters included a pitcher’s hitting in their evaluation, since many tended to vote based on the won-loss record. Since a good-hitting pitcher would likely have a better won-loss record than he would otherwise, it would increase his chances of being voted for. Whether there was ever a Cy Young election that was close enough that a pitcher’s hitting made enough of a difference in his record to tilt the election is unlikely, but possible.
So, Dave, if you decide to include the pitchers’ offensive contributions in your evaluation, you would be continuing an established tradition.
Great topic and great comments above, for the most part.
I was leaning towards including pitcher’s hitting at the start because, as Babe Ruth showed, a pitcher’s hitting can make a difference. But then the good argument was made that the MVP recognizes all contributions, while the Cy Young should thus take into account just pitching, since that is the pitching award. I was truly conflicted, until I walked my dog and cleared my mind.
If definitions were all we were to go by, then I can see the splitting up of the awards, it is all very clear-cut, pitching is pitching and not hitting. The OCD side of me can dig that.
However, there are two factors that swung it for me. First off, there is no provided definition as to what exactly encompasses a Cy Young winner, not like the MVP, which while vague, is still at least defined. While most voters have historically voted based on pitching metrics solely (I think there’s no argument on that point), there is no reason a voter can’t incorporate hitting as part of the pitcher’s value because, as shown above, a pitcher’s hitting can significantly contribute to his team winning when he is pitching.
Some have noted that Cy Young wasn’t much of a hitter as justification for not including hitting. The problem with comparison is two-fold: one is that pitchers back then started a lot more games and completed a large percentage, meaning he got a lot more AB’s, roughly double, and the other is that he pitched during the dead era, where homers were scarce, for example, Roger Connor was the HR career leader during this period with 138 HR and through most of Cy’s career, 10-15 HR would lead the majors. He averaged roughly 1 HR per season during the main part of his career, 1891-1907, which would roughly be a half a home-run in today’s world, but Connor led with 138 and was soon passed by Ruth with 714, or roughly 5 times the amount (which is roughly the difference between 10-15 HR and the 50-59 that was the leader in many seasons after Ruth broke the barrier), which puts him around 2.5 HR per season today, which over that 17 year period would equal 40-45 homers.
And that would be a lot. The career leader in HR by a pitcher is 37 by Wes Ferrell (Ruth “only” had 14 HR as a pitcher), and so Cy Young, in the live ball era probably would have been the career leader in HR for pitchers, just by this calc, 40-45, but given he got double the AB’s almost, he could have had somewhere in the 60-80 HR range for his career, depending on how many starts he ended up making. So Cy would have been a bit of a HR hitter, as least as compared to other pitchers not named Ruth.
Secondly, the MVP, while by name includes pitchers, in practice, pitchers rarely win the MVP. In fact, some voters don’t vote for pitchers because “they have their own award”. So, really, the Cy Young is the only well-known award that acknowledges what a pitcher can do, and part of what they can do is hit and support their own pitching (I say well known because many people note that hitters can win the Hank Aaron but if I wasn’t reminded of it in this thread, I might not have remembered it: for most people, they know MVP, Cy Young and ROY, plus Gold Gloves, and to a lesser degree Silver Slugger).
Using Pythag and the lineup calc, I’ve figured that if they can roughly double their batting line, they can add a win to their team, changing a 15-15 pitcher to a 16-14 pitcher, and over 10 seasons, 150-150 pitcher to 160-140 pitcher. If you can convert a rotation of .500 pitcher to hit like a replacement level player or so (roughly double the NL P batting line), you can change a .500 team from 81-81 to 86-76. And that’s just with a .500 pitcher that you add hitting to.
So hitting can be a significant factor in how a pitcher can contribute to whether his team wins or not, and since they are rarely acknowledged in MVP votes, pitchers who can hit should be allowed to be acknowledged in Cy Young voting, when significant, like Bumgarner has been the last two seasons.
This article made a baby article.
No…. Dave. Does not make sense.
cy young was originally a national league pitcher. so i say yes. when he went to boston, he also pitched for the american league where he didn’t hit. so i think when voting for the pitchers yes to their respective leagues?
The DH didn’t exist back when Cy Young pitched. All pitchers hit in each league back then; the AL adopted the DH in 1973.
I came into this article ready to say “you’re a moron, Cameron,” but I come out convinced that hitting should factor in.
Dave – I would have to say they selected you to vote for this for a reason. I think you should take into account any factors you wish. People vote for a multitude of different reasons. I can only imagine how some people vote for elected officials. This is different though, it’s a sporting award, not a person that is voted into their job. This is a vote for who, IN YOUR OPINION, is the best pitcher in the NL at their job. How you come up with that, is up to you. If you want to include hitting, why not? That’s why there’s multiple people voting. The reasons will all be included and opinions counted in a collective whole. Nothing will be left out, in theory. So don’t sweat it, and have fun with being one of the selected few. If that means you’re doing something different then everybody else’s vote, I’d be ok with that.
No, and fielding shouldn’t be taken into account either. It’s not about overall contribution, it’s about one thing and one thing only: pitching. When I hear the name of a Cy Young winner, I want that name to be the very best *pitcher* in the world in a particular year. I want it to be the name of someone who made pitching into an art form that year. Whatever else they did is irrelevant. If you think pitchers deserve a different award for their total contribution to the game, then campaign to have such an award created. But that’s not what the Cy Young is.
For those interested in the history of the award, I think it’s worth noting that first Cy Young in 1956 went to Don Newcombe who happened to be regarded at the time as the best hitting pitcher in the game. (Just the year before Newcombe posted arguably the best hitting season ever by a pitcher with a .359/.395/.632 line worth 2.4 WAR offensively.) I’m sure that’s not why he won the award, even though the 3 others who received votes all posted lower ERAs. His offensive numbers were down that year (though still worth almost 1 WAR) and no doubt his 27-7 record had a lot more to do with it. OTOH, I expect that having that reputation didn’t hurt him in the voting either.
This idea that most people here seem to have that the award was only ever intended for whoever was the best at pitching or more specifically the best at preventing runs, I’m not sure where that comes from. My read is that was always meant to be for the best pitcher overall, and that all aspects of the game should be factored into that.
Is there an innings minimum to qualify for the Cy Young? If a pitcher’s hitting should count towards that pitcher’s CY case, should that pitcher’s hitting count even if he’s used as a pinch hitter? What if a great pitcher is a two-way player who gets the occasional start in the field? What if Mike Trout pitches one inning, thus qualifies as a pitcher, and provides more offensive value in his other starts than any other pitcher?
How about taking it to the logical extreme? Say you have a pitcher who gives up five runs in every start, but he hits two or three home runs, every start. Consequently his team wins just about all of his starts–or let’s say all. Now does his offense count?
I’m very surprised at the amount of people who are equating the Cy Young with a Gold Glove or a Silver Slugger or even the Hank Aaron award; I’ve always seen the MVP, Cy Young and Rookie of the Year trophies as the ‘big three’ awards, and they go to the best overall player, best overall pitcher, and best overall rookie. Theoretically, those could all be the same person. Weird to see that other people consider those awards differently than I always have.
Of course, my way isn’t right; it’s just how I’ve always seen it. And by my imperfect way to look at it, there isn’t a rational argument against including hitting. I’ve always considered it to be the best overall pitcher, and least in one league, ‘pitching’ includes more than just throwing the ball – it’s throwing, fielding, holding runners, and making 3-4 plate appearances. If a pitcher is asked to do all that in a game, then all of that should be considered in an award for the best one.
if we live in a world where a SP or RP can win MVP, then absolutely batting statistics should be taken into consideration. this could even help quantify things (in the NL): Bum gave up x runs, generated x runs, while a certain defender generated x runs via batting, gave up x runs via defense, etc. It just seems like another competent that should be considered.
I voted no. My reasoning is that I consider pitching and defense one side of the coin and hitting the other. So, while I don’t need to exclude the defensive portion of the pitcher’s run prevention, I can still remove the hitting piece.
If I were voting, I would only consider run prevention in deciding the Cy Young winner.
His bat makes him the MVP of baseball, nevermind Cy Young.
Just wanted to point out, we’ve sort of glided past pitcher fielding in this discussion however if you take the view that all aspects of pitcher’s performance should be weighed, where that might actually have an impact at the top of the ballot is to bolster Grienke’s case vs. Kershaw, and in the AL Keuchel’s case vs. Sale. Because Grienke has not only helped himself with the bat more than any pitcher besides Bumgarner, he also leads NL pitchers with 8 DRS (vs. 3 for Kershaw and -1 for Bumgarner, although how DRS judges Bum to be a subpar fielder with only 1 error and 3 SB against seems a bit questionable). Meanwhile in the AL, Keuchel’s 12 DRS are a whopping 8 more than anyone else in the league and 12 more than Sale, which certainly should count for something.
So anyway, for all the focus here on Bumgarner on pitcher hitting, it seems to me that taking the “whole package” view of pitcher performance might actually bolster other guys’ CY cases more than his own.
There’s this esoteric point that good pitchers contribute in a multitude of ways. We try to quantify this with Pitcher Wins, ERA, K-BB%, FIP, SIERA, etc., and often these have to do with what happens when the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. But we know this is only part of the equation. Pace may influence the readiness of the batter or the fielders, and lead to different outcomes. A dominating pitcher may get inside the heads of hitters and change their approach at the place. A manager may feel more confident resting big hitters/bad fielders behind a certain pitcher and will play stronger fielders off the bench, thus resting the team and potentially helping the pitcher’s numbers in run prevention. For all the talk of chemistry, maybe certain pitchers bring a charisma that affects a clubhouse, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this clubhouse chemistry element has influenced Cy Young voters. So if these sort of factors influence the value of a pitcher, shouldn’t the pitcher’s own fielding and batting skills also influence his value to the team as a pitcher? think that’s the biggest thing – the Cy Young is an award for the pitcher position. However best a pitcher helps his team makes him a stronger Cy Young candidate. If the ways in which he helps out as a pitcher happen to include good fielding and batting, that should be recognized.
Hypothetically, given two identical pitchers (in terms of results from throwing the ball), wouldn’t you prefer the one that can also field an important bunt in the 9th inning or lay down a good sacrifice or even be a non-zero value pinch hitter off the bench? Those are still ways in which that pitcher offers value to the team relative to other pitchers, right?
Also, why must awards be so compartmentalized? Like just because there is the Silver Slugger for pitchers, why can’t the Cy Young also take hitting into account as some part of the equation?
Wow that is a tight poll.
I voted to include batting, for the exact reasons you brought up. A run scored is equal to a run prevented and we already give pitchers credit for defence, controlling the running game etc.
If the NL insists that pitchers take atbats then that is also part of their job description as “NL pitchers” so when considering the award for best “NL pitcher” it would be wrong to leave out the value they generate at the plate and on the basepaths.
If Madison Bumgarner had an ERA of 5.00 and generated 50 runs with his bat and if that total effectively lowered his ERA from 5.00 to 2.00, would you still vote Bumgarner as the Cy Young?
I believe that it should definitely be included in your consideration, but I do not think it should be weight at a one-to-one ratio with how many runs they allow. As you said, it is clearly part of the job of the starting pitcher. I pitcher should not be penalized heavily for being a terrible hitter, but I do believe it should be thought of as something that can possibly bump a pitcher up a spot over an obviously inferior hitter but otherwise statistically similar thrower.
I am definitely in the “yes, it’s part of the job, count it” crowd. The only rationale I can see for excluding it is that the MVP award is for the best all around player, and that is the place where the whole contribution is judged. (The Silver Slugger award definitely does not do that.) As you say, how can you (logically) take batting out of consideration without also removing fielding and control of the running game.
A pitcher’s job is to win games, and in the National League part of that job is batting.
Cy Young has ALMOST 100 more career wins than the second place leader. The WIN matters in this award, if you ask me. Batting matters towards this.