The NL Cy Young and Quantity Versus Quality
For the second straight year, I have been given the right to cast a vote for the National League Cy Young Award. Last year, the task of picking between three deserving winners was practically impossible, and I ended up going with Jake Arrieta over Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke by the thinnest of margins. After last year’s embarrassment of riches, however, it looks like this year, the choice will come down to picking between some candidates with some more obvious flaws.
Just going by runs allowed, there’s a big pile of guys who have all been roughly similar in value.
| Player | RA9-WAR |
| Max Scherzer | 5.8 |
| Kyle Hendricks | 5.7 |
| Clayton Kershaw | 5.6 |
| Madison Bumgarner | 5.3 |
| Jon Lester | 5.2 |
| Jake Arrieta | 5.2 |
But of course, we’re not big believers in evaluating pitchers by runs allowed around here. If you look at our FIP-based WAR (which does give credit to pitchers for infield flies, so some hit prevention is still included), the list looks a lot different.
| Player | FIP-WAR |
| Clayton Kershaw | 5.5 |
| Noah Syndergaard | 5.4 |
| Jose Fernandez | 5.4 |
| Max Scherzer | 4.7 |
| Johnny Cueto | 4.2 |
| Madison Bumgarner | 4.0 |
There isn’t a lot of agreement between those two groups, with only three of the six names in common between them, and some big differences in ranking even for those who appear on both. By runs allowed, Max Scherzer and Madison Bumgarner are both top contenders, but by FIP (plus infield flies), they’re behind both Noah Syndergaard and Jose Fernandez, who don’t show up in the top RA9 group.
Then there’s the Cubs problem. Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester, and Jake Arrieta are all among the top six in RA9-WAR, but all three are there because they’re running some of the lowest BABIPs in the league; Arrieta is #1, Hendricks is #4, and Lester is #9, and for good measure, John Lackey is #8. With that kind of across-the-board BABIP suppression, it’s hard not to argue the Cubs excellent defense has been a significant contributor to each pitcher’s success, and not surprisingly, the Cubs rank #1 in MLB in both UZR and DRS.
So over the next month, I’m going to spend a lot of time going through the details of each pitcher’s success, and for most the pitchers on those lists, the question of their placement will come down to how much credit or blame I end up assigning them for their runs allowed. That’s basically the same problem I wrestled with last year.
But there’s one pitcher on both lists that presents a very different kind of question. Despite not having pitched for the last two months, Clayton Kershaw’s value metrics still put him in the same tier as the mortals who have stayed healthy. Kershaw dominated the first half at a level that no one else could even begin to come close to, and everyone else has spent the second half just playing catch up. So, with Kershaw working his way back towards a return, I very well may have to answer the question of just how few innings a starting pitcher can throw while still being considered for the Cy Young Award.
It’s an interesting year to be asking that question, given all the talk about Zach Britton as an AL Cy Young candidate. After all, if a reliever who throws 70 innings can be considered a serious contender, shouldn’t a starter who has already thrown 120 innings, and might end up around 140, be a legitimate option as well?
It seems like public sentiment isn’t so clear on this. In talking with people about the NL Cy Young vote this year, when I bring up Kershaw, the general response is something like “he’s missed too much time.” It seems to many, the question isn’t really number of innings, but percentage of games he was supposed to appear that he was able to. The idea that the Dodgers had to make trades for a guy like Bud Norris, because Kershaw was hurt and couldn’t make his turn, limits his value in many people’s eyes, even as they acknowledge no one was as good as Kershaw when he was on the mound.
But, really, how much credit do we want to give a pitcher for just taking the mound, even if he doesn’t perform all that well. For fun, here’s a table showing the innings and runs allowed differences between Kershaw and all the other pitchers we’ve named.
| Player | Innings | Runs | Net Innings | Net Runs |
| Clayton Kershaw | 121 | 25 | – | – |
| Kyle Hendricks | 159 | 45 | 38 | 20 |
| Jon Lester | 160 | 50 | 39 | 25 |
| Noah Syndergaard | 155 | 52 | 34 | 27 |
| Jose Fernandez | 154 | 52 | 33 | 27 |
| Jake Arrieta | 168 | 55 | 47 | 30 |
| Madison Bumgarner | 187 | 62 | 66 | 37 |
| Max Scherzer | 190 | 63 | 69 | 38 |
| Johnny Cueto | 184 | 64 | 63 | 39 |
Hendricks has thrown 38 more innings than Kershaw, and allowed 20 more runs in the process; that’s a 4.73 RA9 for his extra innings. And that’s the guy with the best case. Scherzer has thrown almost 70 additional innings, but has done so at a marginal RA9 of almost 5.00. Cueto is over 5.00. Syndergaard and Fernandez are almost at 9.00!
Of course, this is a very basic runs allowed comparison, and that’s not a good way to actually look at their performance. But it does illustrate the issue; how much credit do we want to give the non-Kershaw pitchers for just taking the mound while he was on the shelf? Why would we only look at a difference in innings pitched, and not the difference in performance during their innings?
Historically, though, voters have toyed with the idea of giving votes to a dominant half-season starter, but in the end, they go for innings. Probably the most recent example is CC Sabathia, who was traded to the Brewers mid-season in 2008, then threw 131 dominant innings to help carry them to the postseason. He allowed just 31 runs in those 131 innings, but in the end, the Cy Young went to Tim Lincecum, who allowed 72 runs in 227 innings, for a net difference of 96 innings and 41 runs allowed. Sabathia did get one first place vote, but finished fifth on the ballot, behind even Phillies closer Brad Lidge, who threw 69 innings out of the bullpen that year.
Certainly, taking the mound matters, and if Kershaw doesn’t make it back for the Dodgers in September, it seems unlikely that he’ll be able to keep up with the other contenders who will have another month to put distance between him and themselves. But if Kershaw does come back, and pitches well, this could become a very interesting discussion indeed.
I’d be interested in hearing what you guys think. Should a guy who misses two months of the season be in the mix for the Cy Young award? If you had a vote, would you give Kershaw legitimate considering, even though he’s almost 70 innings behind Scherzer and counting? How much extra weight do you put on just taking the hill and giving the team’s bullpen a rest, even if the run prevention isn’t all that great in those extra innings? I don’t have the answer to these questions yet, and would happily listen to any guidance you guys want to offer.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
I think that Kershaw still has a case for Cy Young. However, if it was a close contest (as this year’s Cy Young seems to be), I would use the time missed due to injury as a negative tie-breaker.
If I had to choose today, I would probably go for Syndergaard, but if Kershaw dominates the end of the season, I think he has to be considered.
PS, Brad Lidge was on the Phillies in 2008!
Voter logic really is fascinating. If you were to extrapolate Zack Britton or Eric Gagne and their dominant performance over 120 innings, they are clear locks for the Cy Young (yes Gagne won it with much fewer IP). If you regard Kershaw’s campaign as that of a dominant reliever, the argument becomes much stronger for him.
So much of this seems to do with context and perceived role(s). That, and extrapolating a sum of data is a bit of an analytical no-no anyway.
All innings are not created equal. Closers pitch high leverage situations. Equating Kershaw 120 innings to that of a closer isn’t right.
Agreed for the most part. I added the extrapolation caveat for that reason. Your comment does give rise to an interesting thought, though. We tend to think of high leverage with relievers, but high leverage situations do occur with starters. Relievers more routinely come into different/less favorable bases/out states, but starters FIND themselves in high leverage situations when going through the batting order several times. Example: pitching with men on base to the 2-3-4 hitters.
Is the award for best player or best season?
Wrong spot.
It might be right. It is not cut-and-dry how to credit the closer for that. Those ninth innings are more important, but they aren’t inherently harder to pitch. A person could, rationally, argue that the closer should not get credit for the fact that the structure of the game allows his innings to be distributed optimally. He wouldn’t be a worse or better pitcher if his manager used him while behind in the 7th inning as opposed to up in the 9th.
Pretty much echoes my thought.
My curiosity is piqued on this topic. Kershaw ends up in a bases/out state of no outs, men on 2nd and 3rd. He strikes out the side. Let’s assume the game was tied in the sixth inning at this juncture. Wouldn’t this be a high leverage situation? Or is the verbiage ‘leverage’ only applied to relievers who assume another pitcher’s mess?
Someone educate me! I’m genuinely curious. I just have difficulty believing that an SP that logs 120 innings wouldn’t find himself in high stakes situations.
Kershaw pitching like Kershaw means he doesn’t get himself into those situations often. That said, Kershaw pitching like Kershaw also gets out of those situations with what I would imagine to be a similar frequency to shut-down relievers.
I believe it boils down to the WPA component of leverage. All else equal a run scored/surrendered later in the game has a greater WPA value than in the early going.
Not true. Some thrive with pressure, some don’t. Also, many closers don’t do well without the pressure. Many blow up when used in a low leverage situation just to get work. Not the same adrenaline level nor mindset.
Also starting pitchers do pitch in high leverage spots but they are of their own creation and there is some comfort in knowing there are still innings to make up for giving up the lead … etc.
Enjoying and/or thriving under pressure aren’t really quantifiable just as perceived “protection” from the guy batting behind someone else isn’t quantifiable. That’s really a conjecture.
Small caveat I should have added above, but there are times when SPs get into jams NOT of their own doing, albeit more rare. Errors, interference, etc.
So, should I deduct credit from a closer who thrives under pressure for pitching in the situation that he finds easiest to execute? I’m not saying the ninth inning is not different, I’m saying its not harder. If the pressure was so extreme that it was notoriously difficult to find pitchers who can handle it, then I might give closers extra credit, but generally it appears that most relievers who are good enough at pitching end up being fine closers.
“Closers pitch high leverage situations.”
Sometimes; then again a 5-2 lead with no one on, no one out, and one inning left isn’t overly high leverage.
Also, while I certainly give all due credit to the Zach Brittons and Kenley Jensens of the world, I would not at all dare to suggest that Kershaw, Arrieta, Fernandez, Syndergaard, etc., couldn’t do a closer’s job (very) effectively just because they’ve never really been asked to.
Closers should have their own award, its apples and oranges, fireman of the year award.
It’s a fair point, but let’s not forget britton’s ERA is 0.67. That’s significantly lower than kershaws. It’s a whole other level of dominance.
If Kershaw only had to gear up for 1 inning do you think his ERA would drop?
Kershaw has a FIP of 1.67 from 444 TBF. Britton has a FIP of 2.02 from 204 TBF. You are right though, that is a whole other level of dominance.
Bumgarner for sure couldn’t he a good reliever. He not infrequently takes an inning to settle down.
I think you mis-labeled the second grouping up there as RA-9 WAR when it should be FIP-WAR.
Hendricks also leads the NL and the majors in the highest soft contact % allowed (Roark is 2nd), and has the lowest hard contact % in the NL (Roark is 2nd there as well). It would seem that his low babip is in part due to his contact management results this year. Roark same.
I’d go with Jose Fernandez (lowest SIERA of the non-Kershaws) or Scherzer (so many more innings than Syndergaard or Fernandez) slightly over Kershaw, depending on ROS results, but Hendricks deserves to be in the conversation.
OK, now it says FIP-WAR.
Not a perfect analogy, but could a dominant backup goalie ever be a Vezina candidate? Even if he didn’t allow a goal all season? I think most folks would agree that he just wouldn’t have enough saves, even if his numbers in fewer minutes were otherworldly.
Sorry but this is a bad analogy. A backup goalie rarely plays and when he does, he plays in the same leverage situation as a starter. A good goalie analogy is a backup who dominates shootouts, is subbed in for them and half his team’s wins are decided by shootout in which he never loses.
A good backup would play around 25 or 30 of 82 games. A goalie that gets 25 or 30 shutouts in a year would absolutely win the Vezina.
You are dead wrong about how much a backup plays. They only play if starter gets hurt of is used in international duty. A starting goalie plays every game for most teams.
You may be thinking about soccer. The Vezina is an award for the best NHL goalie. There are 30 teams in the NHL and 48 goalies played 25 games or more: http://www.hockey-reference.com/leagues/NHL_2016_goalies.html
Yeah I’m an idiot and played soccer in college so I jumped to soccer.
Wouldnt a better analogy for a hockey “closer” be a goalie that (1) enters games where his team is leading at the 10:00 or 8:00 mark of the 3rd period and (2) never gives up the lead?
Tough call, but I don’t see Kershaw’s case as clearly as someone like Britton. While Britton has thrown fewer innings, those innings have been much higher leverage, which I think makes the innings comparison tougher. I think your comment about expectations comes into play too.
While Hendricks has had the Cubs stellar defense behind him, he is leading all qualifying pitchers in Soft% by a decent margin.
Meanwhile Kershaw has pitched more than twice as many innings as Britton and has a lower FIP without the benefit of only going an inning at a time.
^^This. Kershaw has quality AND quantity edges over Britton. To counter that you would have to think there’s some yuuuuuuuuuuuuuge leverage factor (and that somehow Kershaw couldn’t perform in that role if expected to).
Don’t think you (both) really understand Britton’s value. FIP does not really work for pitchers with an 80% GB rate. I’d rather, as an O’s fan, have Kershaw, for sure. Still, you guys are looking numbers too deep, or not enough.
The other guys on the list have averaged about 170 innings, so I would reframe the question to say, “Would you rather have Kershaw and 50 innings of replacement level or one of the other guys?” I don’t know the answer, but I think adding 50 innings of replacement level into Kershaw’s stats and seeing how they now stack up would be what I would do next.
Or you could add the 41 runs in 50 innings they got from Bud Norris, Brett Anderson and Rich Hill. Ouch. But yeah, that’s one way to do it. With all the injuries they had the Dodgers really had to keep finding innings, not just for Kershaw but for the other guys who missed time. So there is something to be said for Scherzer’s 190 innings of excellent pitching. he’s a litle short-changed by FIP due to some homeritis and by eFIP simply due to the a higher fb%, but probably a siera based WAR would have him in front, with 40 more innings than Fernandez and Syndergaard.
Yeah, while I don’t advocate deciding awards by looking at WAR, this is one of the exact questions WAR is designed to answer.
What does Kershaw missing time cost you? The approximate worst case is that his innings are made up by a hypothetical replacement level starter (as a practical matter, on contending teams an injured starter is replaced by a better than replacement level arm so the cost is smaller than that).
But that’s still a place to start the evaluation, if Kershaw plus a replacement level starter is still the best pitcher, then he deserves the award. If that’s NOT the case, then and only then does the question of quality vs. quantity really come into the discussion.
agreed
Since the analysis above is framed in WAR and replacement level is by definition 0.0, adding 50 IP (or 100 IP or 1,000 IP for that matter) of replacement level wouldn’t change Kershaw’s WAR at all.
If you take Kershaw’s 5.5 war and add 50 innings of replacement level, he’s still at 5.5 war.
It doesn’t factor into awards voting, but another interesting tidbit this year concerns AL catchers, where Sandy Leon and Gary Sanchez might end up finishing 1-2 in WAR. I know WAR is probably less accurate here given the difficulties in valuing defense, but if you were picking an all-star team after the season, would you choose Salvador Perez for his extra 300-500 plate appearances? Even if all that playing time yielded 0 WAR or even below replacement level value?
*if the season ended now, I would vote for Kershaw, although there is still time for someone like Scherzer to pass him.
Personally i’d be happy voting for kershaw but not first. Suiting up has to count in some ways and in a way a Cy Young should tell a part of the story of the season a large chunk of which he’s not involved with. While we all intuitively know that he would have maintained his performance over those missing games we have no proof he would, he could have blown up and damaged his case,(in a way that often happens for hitters) if you wanted to look at it numerically though maybe you could assign replacement level performance to his “missing ” innings and then compare overall lines. God knows who you should vote for i can’t say this far out but i wouldn’t say kershaw
The replacement level performance is already added to his innings. Just now, just this second, I added 1000 innings of replacement level performance to his WAR 😛
As far as whether he would have kept it up, my guess is that since the start of 2009, Kershaw has not had had a stretch of 8 starts (about how many he has missed) that was even close to replacement-level. Since 2014, he may not have even had such a stretch worth less than 1 WAR. I’m not sure how to look this up though.
His war isn’t his overall line but lovely pedantry 🙂
No doubt the Cubs’ defense has had an impact on the Cubs’ starters, but it feels like the flip side of that must also be true. Great pitching helps make the defense look so good.
Hendricks leads the NL with a Soft% of 26.1 and a Hard% of 24.6. A guy who generates more weak contact than hard contact should be pretty damn successful.
Arrieta is the only starter in the top 5 in the NL generating weaker contact – Soft% 22.2 and Med% of 52.5 – and minimizing hard contact with a Hard% of 25.3.
When balls don’t come off the bat with authority very often, it’s gotta be easier for the defense to get to them.
Here’s the way, I’d cut this very badly: Who was dominant the most times? I know it is imperfect and it is messy in that it doesn’t take bad starts into account, but I think that may be a virtue in this case. Just go with who was the best the most times and not let bad starts drag them down.
The simplest way (not the best) would be to go with FIP in QS for the top six folks. So Scherzer’s May 6 gets dropped and he is probably clearly ahead of the field with that gone.
Or go with Jimmy Nelson who hit the most batters. Shake things up.
Or do it the other way – Who had the fewest meltdowns?
There’s one guy who hasn’t given up more than 4 ER in any start all season. Consistency counts.
Doesn’t work that way because not pitching (like Kershaw) becomes a benefit. Using great starts makes being hurt a negative but if you are so ridiculously good that in less time you put up more great games you can still be the best (like Kershaw).
What’s the definition of “great”?
Starts giving up 2 or fewer ER –
Kershaw – 13
Arrieta – 17
Bumgarner – 19
Lester – 19
Scherzer – 19
Syndergaard – 19
Hendricks – 20
EDIT – Lester just wrapped up what would be his 20th such start.
So, I understand the desire to cut up all these pitcher seasons every which way. Doing so allows you to selectively pick which measure best supports your case. However, just about everything you are citing is factored into WAR with the proper context.
For example, all of your run-based arguments are somewhat discredited by WAR, because all indications are that Cubs pitchers are receiving amazing defensive support this year. I’m not saying Hendricks hasn’t been very good, but I don’t find these arguments that don’t consider the whole picture very convicing. For the record, I was not particularly convinced by cranky’s original idea wither.
I’m a Cubs fan and if Kyle wins the CY, that’s great. He’s had a great season, but he sure doesn’t feel like the best starter in the NL to me. Obviously Kershaw is the best but doesn’t have the innings. If you go by WAR & FIP, Thor and JFernandez have been the next two best. I’m not even sure if Hendricks has been better than Arrieta… they feel about the same to me.
As I suggested elsewhere, it’s plenty reasonable to think that one of the biggest reasons the Cubs defense has been so good is that Cubs pitchers are excellent at minimizing hard contact and maximizing weak contact.
It’s much easier to turn balls in play into outs when those balls are put into play weakly.
Methinks defensive metrics are not so easily fooled as that. They aren’t giving the Cubs defense credit for fielding more easy balls.
Plus, everything I have seen suggests Kershaw has among the best EV-allowed in baseball too, as this confirms: https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard?year=2016&abs=190&player_type=pitcher
That puts his lower than any of the Cubs starters, yet all 5 Cubs have a BABIP as low or lower than Kershaw’s. That strongly, strongly suggests that there is more at work than *just* allowing weak contact.
If the Cubs lose a game where Hendricks gave up 2 runs that they would have won had he given up 0, that matters too. It is not trivial to show that a uniform distribution of runs over starts is more valuable to a team than allowing the same number of runs in fits and bursts.
If anything, I would think it would be more valuable to be less consistent, since runs in a game quickly start to give diminishing returns as far as win probability. Imagine if Hendricks gave up literally 100% of his runs in one start a 0 in all the rest. He’d be amazing.
WPA could be a good tie breaker to account for that kind of difference.
I thought there was an article here, a couple of years ago, perhaps including Edwin Jackson, that concluding the better the pitcher the more consistent you want him to be. But the lesser the talent, the more effective inconsistency is. I recall the article explaining that the team should win almost all of the games that hes dominant in and maybe 1/4 to 1/3 of the games he’s “bad” in.
So a so-so pitcher would be valuable (so to speak) if hes dominant 2 games out of 5 or so.
I’m still unsure of the point of Fangraphs’ RA9-WAR. Not adjusting for defense leaves it feeling incomplete; I can’t think of a single instance where I wouldn’t just look at Baseball-Reference WAR if I wanted a run-based valuation of a pitcher.
There’s plenty of reason to not want to take a team’s defensive performance, then assume every pitcher on that team got equal defensive support, which is how B-R adjusts for defensive performance. RA9-WAR gives you a view of how a pitcher and his team prevented runs while he was on the mound, without making clearly wrong assumptions about how to assign credit fro those runs.
What would be a more appropriate way to incorporate defensive adjustments into WAR? Or do you disagree with any defense-adjusted, run-based WAR?
Dave, i get the logic, but do you not see that by zeroing out all the Cubs pitchers’ defensive adjustments, you are also effectively assuming they got equal defensive support, an assumption that you labeled as “clearly wrong”?
And you’re adding a second “clearly wrong” assumption — that the Cubs have a perfectly average defense.
Which of these defensive adjustments looks more accurate for the Cubs five starters?
fRA9-WAR
0.0 R/9
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
rWAR
+0.49 R/9
+0.50 R/9
+0.52 R/9
+0.54 R/9
+0.50 R/9
You don’t need a math degree to see which of these two sets of adjustments is more off. I think I’ll stick with rWAR because it”s only making one wrong assumption, not two.
I know that it shouldn’t matter, but I think for most voters, a lot of it would depend on the timing. Because Kershaw missed most of the 2nd half – the time when voters think about who should win the award – he has almost no chance to win.
Had he missed the first two months of the season, I think voters would be much more likely to vote for him.
In my personal opinion, Kershaw should be in the running for the award. Athletes in other sports have won major awards despite missing a larger part of the season. Mario Lemieux won the NHL MVP award in 1992-93, even though he played in less than 75% of the games.
Interesting point, I think you are right, considering he won both a unanimous Cy Young and the freaking MVP in 2014 despite missing a whole month and being a pitcher. Cueto threw over 40 more innings than him that year, a larger difference than between him and Syndergaard and Fernandez. However, I think the narrative is very different this year, probably largely because of when he missed time.
As a Dodger fan, one way I look at this is to ask myself whether or not I would’ve traded Kershaw’s season for that of another top NL pitcher. Would I have rather kept Kershaw and his innings for my team or sub in someone like Syndergaard or Fernandez to take his roster spot. As I think about that I feel pretty confident in saying that I’d prefer to keep Kershaw’s year, even with his limited innings up to this point.
There’s a reason why people thought the Dodgers were done went Kershaw got hurt. While there was a certain amount of underestimation towards the rest of the team, the reality is a large chunk of the roster underperformed in the first half. I don’t think it’s crazy to suggest that the Dodgers benefited by having Kershaw’s value concentrated into a time period where the rest of the team was floundering. When he got hurt people thought the team was done because he was literally carrying them.
Of Kershaw’s 16 starts, 6 of them we’re won by a 1-run margin. Any other pitcher making those starts, even great pitchers, likely loses a bunch of them, meaning the Dodgers could easily have been buried long before the rest of the team broke out of its funk. So in my opinion Kershaw was more valuable than another pitcher who might put up the same WAR but over a longer period of time.
So, I think aesthetic preference is definitely a factor here. It’s not dissimilar from asking who was the better pitcher, Pedro Martinez or Roger Clemens? Clemens inarguably had the more valuable career, while Pedro had inarguably a better peak. It’s hard to compare their perceptions, but they are both easily all-time greats, maybe all-time top-10 pitchers (with some asterisks, obviously.)
Except this is not quite the same thing. Here, a better comparison might be Pedro Martinez and Mike Mussina. To wit: http://www.fangraphs.com/graphsw.aspx?players=200,837
They have about the same career WAR, and yet it would be hard to find someone argue they were equally good. The peak counts for a lot.
This logic doesn’t translate perfectly to the Cy Young, which tends to be a much more practical matter than is judging a player’s career in total. We tend to just want to know who helped his team more, in which case WAR (or WPA for some, which I don’t favor at all) is pretty much the primary consideration. To the extent a candidate helped his team, Kershaw is basically even with all of the frontrunners.
However, if we start to entertain the aesthetic argument, you can really start to build a unique case for Kershaw. I, personally, am pretty depressed whenever I think of what this season could have been, but still, just look at what he has done so far. 9 walks. 9. Players don’t just have stretches like that, where they are among the greatest strikeout pitchers of all time, and also the greatest walk-limiters of all time, oh and also BABIP suppression oh and also above-average ground ball rate and home run suppression. His numbers this year are a work of art.
As long as, by the end of the year, he is still basically around the WAR lead, I would easily vote Kershaw. I just talked myself into it.
Aesthetically, I think Hendricks runs away with it.
Sure, watching someone like Kershaw or Scherzer or Syndergaard blow hitters away with overpowering heat or ridiculous movement is a joy to behold.
But watching a guy without those physical gifts shut down opposing offenses is a more unique and beautiful experience. He almost never hits 90 on the gun, but hitters still can’t do anything with him.
Obviously you are free to feel that way, but I personally wouldn’t want to give a guy an aesthetic bonus for a skill award that is skewed towards a particular pitching style. My aesthetic argument for Kershaw comes from the fact that his numbers are just so good, something Hendricks is not technically excluded from doing just by his inherent style.
Yes, his numbers are good. Great even. But they are also lacking, because he hasn’t pitched for roughly a third of the season and counting.
Being on the field matters.
You can see that I am not dismissing that. Right now, just based on value, his amazing performance over less time is about equal to other pitchers’ lesser performance over the whole season. That measure suggests the Cy Young should be a dead heat.
Then, I’m presenting an another argument–one I don’t expect anyone to accept if they don’t want to–that his all-time-amazing performance could be assigned a bonus, a way of breaking what is otherwise a tie. I think this is fair because the argument pertains to the quality of his performance for an award that is meant to honor pitchers based on the quality of their performance. It is also an opinion-based argument for an award where the winner is determined by human vote and nothing more.
I don’t like the idea of honoring Hendricks for being good despite not throwing hard because style–as opposed to quality of performance–is not typically considered relevant for the award. If you had a vote, you could weight that if you wanted, and literally no one could say you were wrong since you can vote however you want, but it would be against the spirit of the award, in my opinion.
I think you kinda are dismissing it, based on your premise that Kershaw deserves a bonus to make up for missing so much time rather than a demerit for missing so much time.
And I guess we are just working from different definitions of what “aesthetic” means. I’m not talking about what their stats look like, I’m talking about what watching them pitch looks like. And I’m not trying to elevate Hendricks above anyone else simply because of his particular style. His performance elevates him plenty high enough on it’s own.
But, if as you suggest, the race is a dead heat on the stat page, I’ll go with Hendricks and his style over Kershaw and his missed time.
He has already gotten his demerit. He’s been receiving 0 WAR while other pitchers have been adding to theirs. Can you explain why he might deserve a penalty above and beyond that one?
If he hadn’t missed time, I would still give him this bonus, it’s just that it wouldn’t matter because he would run away with the award by objective measures alone.
Also, a corollary: I don’t see how a player missing time should be penalized beyond the inherent penalty WAR applies by just “adding” replacement-level performance. The Dodgers have had combined positive WAR from their 6th-and-lower starters, meaning that for them at least, it is better that he is hurt than if he had just pitched at replacement level for the last 2 months.
Now, I’m not saying that the Dodgers’ pitching depth this year should impact Kershaw’s case, but I am pointing out that sometimes it is better to be hurt than bad. Roster spots are valuable. All things being equal, a lot of teams would likely prefer having the choice of using a depth starter than to have one of their starters simply slump for a month. You only get to use the depth starter if the guy is on the DL.
Really, that is the point of replacement level. Some teams have good depth they would rather use. Some teams have none, such that if they lose a starter, they are in big trouble. That averages out to replacement level.
I’ve thought about this, and it’s an impossible question. But I think, in the end, I’d have a hard time giving the award for best pitcher to a guy who was only available for a little more than 1/2 the games. I can see why you’re wrestling with it though…
Right now Kershaw has pitched 76% of the innings Hendricks has pitched and he’s about to come back.
Couldn’t you take the difference in IP between Kershaw and Scherzer, assume a league average pitcher for those innings, and add those stats to CK’s. Then compare to Scherzer. That assumes the Dodgers had a league average SP6, but seems ok enough.
That’s essentially what WAR does, except with a replacement level pitcher instead of average. You can make the adjustment by adding 0 WAR to Kershaw’s number and comparing.
Kershaw still leads all NL pitchers in WPA. Not sure how relevant everyone thinks that is in regards to the Cy Young, but it does say something about how dominant he was.
it also states that the dodgers offense didn’t get it done in his starts. That can be the problem with WPA you can do exactly the same thing twice and get more credit one time than the other due to outside factors to your pitching
To me, measurements like FIP, FIP-WAR, etc. are important/necessary/great for managers, front offices, and nerdy fans like us, but the Cy Young should be about results. If Hendricks ends the year with the lowest ERA, so what if his BABIP is fourth lowest and he may not have totally “deserved” it? It happened. We can argue about how much the Cubs defense has helped Hendricks or if he was lucky, but if at the end of the season he has the lowest ERA, then he has the lowest ERA, and runs are what ultimately matter.
It’s similar for RBI and MVP. People want to totally discount RBI in the MVP discussion. Obviously, RBI are partially dependent on base-runner situation, but if a guy drives in a hundred runs, those are a hundred actual, real life runs that counted in a season.
With that being said, as a manager or GM, you’d be a fool to use ERA and RBI to determine a player’s value in contract negotiations/signings, as they both depend partly on luck. Even for HOF discussions, these measurements shouldn’t hold much weight. But for awards, it should be about what actually happened, not about what *should* of happened or if the results were *deserved*.
~ Even better, we should use wins because that’s what really matter. Who cares if the offense carried and he may not have totally “deserved” it? It happened. ~
… the point of FIP is to give credit where credit is due. FIP is something that “actually happened”.
No need to be sarcastic. We both know W-L record is useless. Of course since it takes into account offense it shouldn’t be used. And offensive help is different than defensive help because a pitcher can pitch to weak contact, allowing the defense to turn more balls into outs (like Hendricks).
And FIP is something that should of happened if the pitcher were to experience league average outcomes on balls put in play. That’s why an extreme ground ball or elite contact manager pitcher can consistently have a better ERA than FIP. Of course the HRs, Ks and BBs that FIP uses actually happened, but the stat’s purpose is to measure the “what if”.
FIP is no more a matter of “what if” than ERA measuring “what if errors didn’t happen”. The point is to assign credit to the people responsible – that’s why it has more predictive power.
Sure it’s not perfect, but the Cubs’ pitchers clearly are benefiting to some extent from great defense behind them.
Totally agree that FIP has more predictive power than ERA. It’s a superior stat in that regard. That’s not what I’m suggesting. Consider this example: Pitcher A has a 2.05 FIP/3.50 ERA. Pitcher B has a 3.50 FIP/2.05 ERA. If I’m a GM building a roster, I’m taking pitcher A, as it looks like he just ran into some bad luck on balls in play. If I’m voting for the CY young, should I vote player A because he “deserved” to give up less runs, or should I vote player B because he actually gave up less runs? I vote player B because it’s what happened.
Should a guy be penalized for the quality of the defense that plays behind him? If a guy is having a career year with regards to BABIP, even if it is a fluke, should that be penalized? I say no. The award should consider who allowed the fewest runs to cross home plate while they were on the mound.
It’s not a matter of penalizing him for having a good defense, the point is to not reward him for having a good defense.
Again, your exact argument could be used to argue for just picking the pitcher with the most wins.
I guess I don’t see how my argument could advocate for wins. Unless he gives up no runs, a pitcher can’t control if he wins or loses. A pitcher has a much more substantial influence on his ERA, obviously. Are you suggesting that ERA is just as useless as wins?
On the topic of defense: It’s hard to tell how much a defense gets helped out by a guy who has elite soft hit percentage. It’s a ying-yang type deal. I get having a great defense makes pitchers look better. Pitchers who can produce lazy ground balls and IFFB make a defense look better.
I understand that FIP takes out the noise of BABIP, and I understand how valuable that information is. I get that more strikeouts, less walks, and less home runs are good things. The problem with using it over ERA to select a Cy Young winner is that balls put in play can score runs, and FIP doesn’t comment on those.
More importantly, and this is something I think you’re missing, is that for some pitchers, managing contact on balls in play is an actual skill. When Greg Maddux was dominant, he consistently had a FIP that was higher (sometimes significantly higher) than his ERA. All the while producing K rates of less than 8%, sometimes even less than 7%.
According to your logic, a pitcher who has an excellent FIP, but gives up a ton of runs on hard hit singles, doubles, and triples should still win the Cy Young over someone with an excellent ERA? Maybe he deserves to get paid more the next season than the pitcher with the excellent ERA (based on predicted performance), but he doesn’t deserve the Cy Young of a season that already happened.
Let’s just give the award to the Cubs defense. Just kidding. But not really.
Also here’s an idea: let’s punt on this year’s award and give Kershaw a 2015 trophy. He deserved it last year, and really, this year no one does. Done and done.
Award time of the season always splits the crowd so much.
A lot of people always seem to want to reward the player who they deem to be the “best” in terms of ability. The players that should be the best going forward.
Others want to eliminate certain players due to the team they played on, suggesting that bad teams dont deserve awards.
I personally try to find the best balance of both.
So if I had to pick right now, Id go with Scherzer #1, Bumgarner #2.
Scherzer’s team looks like it will win its division. He always had that 20 strikeout game (an awesome moment that I think deserves credit in award voting). Bumgarner is the next best pitcher. Probably followed by Thor, Fernandez, and a few Cubs (definitely Hendricks) in any order. Throw Kershaw in there whereever you’d like but he certainly doesnt deserve to win. Neither does Britton in the AL. Gotta throw at least somewhere between 180-200 innings to win the award.
Which section of the rules on CY voting does it specify an innings minimum?
Kershaw has obviously been dominant, but how valuable is it to the team to have a pitcher sit out 70 innings? Totally understand the logic, but intuitively I cannot see Kershaw coming away with the award.
The comparison to 2008 is a bit flawed. Lincecum that year had 2.5 more fWAR than Sabathia in his NL stint. While Sabathia had a great ERA, he wasn’t so dramatically dominant to make up for throwing 100 fewer innings.
Looking at fWAR, Kershaw was significantly better than 2008 Sabathia in his limited innings (with the potential for another 20 innings or so) while nobody this year has been (or is on pace to be) as valuable as 2008 Lincecum.
There are a lot of people asking what Kershaw’s numbers would look like if you add on replacement level innings – well WAR is essentially already doing that. So the question is why ding him beyond that?
Not that I think it has any chance in hell, but one argument is that he could be below replacement level.
Innings between britton and Sabathia are totally different. Both were dependable all year to accumulate their dominant innings. I would favor britton over closer B who pitched 70 innings before the break with the same results, but not taking the ball in the second half. For sabathia, the innings is a league only innings, and he accumulated them dependably through the second half after having pitched in the al for the first half. With two months on the shelf, kershaw doesnt get my vote.
Do you want a 10-ounce glass of an Imperial IPA, or do you want a pint of a very good but single IPA? Of course this analogy doesn’t quite work, because you can sip the Imperial IPA over the same amount of time your friends drink their pints, but in the case of Kershaw, you drank the 10-ounces as fast as they drank the first two-thirds of their pints and now you’re just waiting for them to finish, nibbling on peanuts.
I guess in this analogy you get a 5 oz. sampler of Busch Light after you finish your IIPA.
It’s a very tough call at this point in the season. If it ended today, with Kershaw still out, he’s got a weak case, as he is ‘only’ equal in WAR to the more durable pitchers. But two months out should not automatically disqualify someone IMO.
What happens in September will probably decide this for you. If Kershaw comes back and pitches well, he may continue to lead in WAR, in which case he’ll have a strong case. If he doesn’t come back or pitches at a diminished level, someone else will easily eclipse his WAR and he’ll be out of the running.
The lack of bumgarner mentions is disappointing, but a reflection of national news focus on other teams and players as well as east coast fans and writers being asleep by the time he starts his games. Any mention of Scherzer should also at least include bumgarner, who has identical (albeit slightly inferior in some areas) stats across the board.
Actually bumgarner’s era is much lower than scherzer’s (2.49 vs 2.89) even though scherzer has had much better luck on babip (.241 vs. .266) and their lob% is basically the same. Of course bumgarner pitches in a better pitcher’s park but not .4 runs/9 innings better.
Eyeball test I would say it’s Scherzer or Syndergarrd, but they are both pitching in a weak division compared to Lester and Hendricks. Cy Young should always go to a starter.
Should it? Where does it specify that?
Is there any way to find a WAR for Madison Bumgarner’s hitting with the replacement player being a hitting pitcher? A pitcher’s hitting WAR could be added to his pitching WAR.
I think that the analysis you made in your “Differentials” table is key, but putting predictive peripheral stats or at least adjusting for ballparks and division would be better. It’s tough to compare the really weak East to the mixed bag of the West to the incredibly tough Central.
The rest of this comment doesn’t get at the heart of your post (did Kershaw pitch enough?) but at a point made in passing (does Bud Norris pitching in a pennant race get held against Kershaw?).
Josh Hamilton and Joe Mauer won the AL MVP while both missing a month+ due to injuries. Hamilton’s injury increased playing time in the OF for an aging Vlad Guerrero and Jeff Francoeur. Mauer’s injury made the Twins play Brendan Harris at catcher sporadically all year, where he put up -0.2 WAR.
Josh Hamilton and Joe Mauer still played better than any other player in their league that year, and were deserving MVP winners.
I don’t see why we should hold Bud Norris’ innings against Kershaw any more than we should hold Brendan Harris’ plate appearances against Mauer, or 35-year-old Vlad’s defense against Josh Hamilton.
Would Kershaw’s injury hurt him *less* in your eyes if Hyun Jin Ryu had come back from the DL and played like a 4 WAR pitcher?
I don’t think that the ability of the front office to assemble quality depth should be a factor in determining the quality of a given player’s year.
Interesing article!! I had never thought Kershaw is a Cy Young contender before reading this.
Hmm.. in the situaion that no dominant pitcher exists, Kershaw could be…..
I think that if Kershaw had come back a month ago (when he had his setback), he would have won the Cy Young.
I just can’t see the writers giving it to someone who doesn’t qualify for the ERA title, even if he deserves it.
Or Kershaw comes back and in his last five games pitches 35 innings with 0.50 ERA and a perfect game and they give it to him anyway.
If I’m voting for a NL Cy Young today, it’s still Kershaw. To me, we’re getting close to the inflection point where Scherzer’s volume (and 20 K outing) are putting him within shouting distance.
Last year Arrieta won the award for basically having a run in the last half of the season that was almost as good as Kershaws in the first half of this year, Granky pitched the entire year and had a better entire year than Arrietta did. Depending on the final month which Kershaw will be pitching If he is more of the same he should be awarded the NL Cy young but not the MVP
Isn’t this exactly the kind of question that pitching WAR is meant to answer? If two pitchers end the year at say 6.5 WAR, isn’t that supposed to mean they were both roughly equivalent in value, regardless of their IP totals? So if Kershaw is at or near the top of the WAR (or RA9-WAR etc) leaderboard at the end of the year, that implies he is a worthy Cy Young candidate.
Considering he’s scheduled to return this Friday, if he is able to maintain anything close to his previous pace (no sure thing of course) he will finish in a strong position. There is a reasonable chance he tops both the fWAR and RA9-WAR leaderboard in the NL. If he does so, his case should be quite strong.
Even as a Met fan that loves Thor I’d have to vote for Kershaw if I had a vote. There’s nobody even in his class. Sandy Koufax was named the greatest player in the 60s despite just five great seasons. It’s very much the same thing.