The 2019 NL Cy Young Voter Guide

Over in the American League, there’s a pretty clear top tier of Cy Young contenders in Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, followed by a solid group of candidates likely to garner down-ballot support. In the National League, there looks to be a top tier of Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom followed by a cascading set of secondary candidates, but that first look doesn’t quite tell the entire story.

To provide some idea of the statistical disparities voters must contend with when making their decision, I looked at our FIP-based WAR as well as the RA9-WAR also available here at FanGraphs, Baseball-Reference’s WAR, and Baseball Prospectus’ WARP. I included for consideration any player in the top five of any of those lists. That search returned nine pitchers for the potential five slots on a Cy Young ballot. Those players are listed below, with a mix of traditional and advanced statistics:

We have Scherzer and deGrom in first and second by about a win over the next-best candidate, with deGrom pitching tonight. After those two, we have a lot of innings from Stephen Strasburg and Patrick Corbin, and fewer innings, but better peripherals, from Walker Buehler. After those three, we have four candidates who haven’t thrown a ton of innings, but all have much lower ERA’s than FIPs. As for how these candidates came to be considered, here are their WAR totals:

While FanGraphs’ WAR has Scherzer out in front, the weighted average gives the advantage to deGrom, and due to Strasburg’s strong showing at Baseball Prospectus, he jumps up ahead of his teammate. In assessing the AL Cy Young race, I discussed how the way a voter assigns responsibility to certain results affects how that voter would choose the Cy Young:

If pure results are key, look to RA9-WAR. If you want those results adjusted, Baseball-Reference can help. If you want a more dialed down version of the WAR based on expected contributions, Baseball Prospectus is there to help. If you’re skeptical that we can reasonably isolate defense or contact quality as a skill in a single season, FanGraphs’ FIP-based WAR can help by using strikeouts, walks, and only the strongest and weakest contact in the form of homers and popups. When choosing between a set of very good pitchers all of whom are having very good years, you have to decide what you believe is most important in terms of results and deserved results, and how much control a pitcher has over individual aspects of the game. We try to be as objective as possible, but a little subjectivity is bound to creep in when making these kinds of decisions.

We can also drill down on some of the concerns we have regarding contact quality, and how defense and luck might be affecting some of the results, by using Statcast data. Below, you’ll find the candidates’ xwOBA as compared to their wOBA. Remember that xwOBA, like FIP, looks at strikeouts and walks, but unlike FIP-based WAR, which uses homers and walks, xwOBA assigns a value to every batted ball based on launch angle and exit velocity:

Based on these numbers, Scherzer has been generally unlucky, deGrom and Strasburg have been neutral, while the other pitchers have received some sort of benefit based on park, defense, or just lucky bounces that have lowered their actual results compared to what would be expected by exit velocity and launch angle. Here, we still see Scherzer and deGrom as the top two, but Strasburg is not far behind. We can drill down on the differences further by removing strikeouts and walks and look only at batted balls:

This chart shows a decently tight grouping of xwOBA with everybody but Corbin within about 20 points of Strasburg’s lead. The above doesn’t capture all of a pitcher’s performance given the importance of strikeouts and walks, but it does provide some idea of what has happened when the ball has hit the bat. We can separate home runs and get a better look at how defense and park might have played a factor as well:

There are a few conclusions we can draw. The first is the difficulty of applying team-wide defense to particular pitchers as Corbin, Strasburg, and Scherzer all play for the same team, but have vastly different xwOBA-wOBA results. This is also true to a lesser extent for parks, as we can see with Sonny Gray, who gets his numbers park adjusted, but the defense more than makes up for that adjustment. Another thing to note is that Jack Flaherty is in the middle on contact, but all the way down the list on balls in play, getting a ton of help from his defense, but not much help from his park on homers.

If you wanted a WAR based on xwOBA, it might look something like this:

We didn’t even discuss Luis Castillo or Noah Syndergaard, but they are having very good seasons based on xwOBA.  At the top, some of these players are close enough that it feels like splitting hairs. When ranking, a value judgment must be made, and how certain we are about who is assigned responsibility for the results, or the results that might have been, can help to dictate our choices.