IT'S NOT WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE; IT'S HOW WELL YOU PLAY THE GAME: The AL Cy Young race this year may be the most interesting one in a long time. That's not exactly because it's close. Just about everybody with an opinion thinks it's not close at all. It's just that a huge portion of the people you ask say that the Yankees' C.C. Sabathia is the only possible choice, and another huge portion of the people you ask say that there is no rational argument for anyone other than the Mariners' Felix Hernandez. (A small percentage of the people you ask would like to give it to Liriano or Lee.)
The argument for C.C. Sabathia is that he is going to hit and exceed the 20-win mark while pitching pretty well, which indicates that he just "knows how to win." The argument for Felix Hernandez is that he has been better than Sabathia in literally every respect other than the ability to play for a team that scores runs. Quite literally everything that a pitcher does, Felix has done better than Sabathia (including performance in high-leverage situations, which indicates the Felix pitches better when the game is on the line and puts the lie to the "knows how to win" line). Yet Sabathia is the favorite, because 120 years ago some writer decided to assign wins to pitchers, and because a diminishing but still significant number of baseball writers believe that everything that ever was should ever be, to the exclusion of sense and reason.
Yes, I am a Mariners fan. Last year, though, Felix had a great year and more wins than Greinke. You may recall that I said in this very space that Greinke deserved the Cy by a wide margin. Is there really any argument this year that Felix doesn't?
agree that it should be felix this time around, assuming he keeps up this performance. tonight wasn't as good as i had hoped, unfortunately. but he sure is fun to watch!
ReplyDeleteFelix, easily. Wins are a horrible indicator of pitcher quality and should not be considered.
ReplyDeleteIf Felix Hernandez were any good, he'd play for the Yankees.
ReplyDeleteFeliz Hernandez doesn't play for the Yankees.
Therefore, he must not be any good.
I don't know if this is the case here, but at some point the new pitching statistics start to separate theory from reality. Trying to adjust the pitcher's statistics to account for the stadium they pitch in and the defense behind them and the luck involved in batted balls dropping for hits, for instance, probably is a good way to figure out the best (and worst) pitchers, but it ignores the reality that the season played out with pitchers pitching for certain teams and pitching their games in certain ballparks and certain pitchers being more or less lucky. I think the Cy Young needs to be given to the pitcher who had the best season, even if that is not necessarily the best pitcher.
ReplyDeleteNow, I absolutely do not mean that wins are relevant to figuring out who had the best season. If wins indeed is the only measure by which CC tops Felix, then I am on board with this argument. But I get less comfortable when the argument is based on adjusting what really happened to reflect a hypothetical world where pitchers work in a vaccuum and everything other than the pitcher's skill is equal because that is not how the games are played.
I am late to this, but wanted to point out that Joe Posnanski did a couple of (typically excellent) posts on this very subject.
ReplyDeletehttp://joeposnanski.si.com/
It doesn't matter whether you adjust or you don't adjust. I happen to think that not adjusting is embracing irreality, not vice-versa, but it doesn't matter. You can adjust or not adjust to your heart's content and Felix is still better than Sabathia in every category.
ReplyDeleteDo you like ERA? Felix leads, 2.39 to 3.14.
Adjusted ERA+? Felix leads, 168 to 127.
FIP? Felix, 3.01 to 3.62
xFIP? Felix, 3.26 to 3.86.
Strikeouts? Felix, 214 to 170.
Strikeouts/9 innings? Felix, 8.5 to 7.3.
Walks? Felix, 63 to 66.
Walks/9 innings? Felix, 2.5 to 2.8.
Innings pitched? Felix, 225.2 to 209.
Hits allowed? Felix, 184 to 187.
WHIP? Felix, 1.095 to 1.211.
Home runs allowed? Felix, 15 to 18.
Home runs/9? Felix, 0.6 to 0.8.
Ground ball %? Felix, 53.2% to 50.7%.
GB/FB: Felix, 1.78 to 1.48.
You have to go down the list to line drive percentage to find the first category other than pitcher wins to find the first thing where Sabathia has had a better season than Felix (Sabathia has a line drive percentage about 1% better than Felix's).
So I guess it wasn't that Felix has been better than Sabathia in literally every category other than wins. Felix has only been better than Sabathia in ERA, FIP, xFIP, K, K/9, BB, BB/9, IP, hits, WHIP, HR allowed, GB%, and GB/FB.
Incidentally, if you expand the pool of Cy candidates a bit, you'll find some pitchers (not Sabathia) who lead Felix by a little bit in some of those categories. But to get there, you need to use pitchers who have pitched about 60 fewer innings than Felix. So you get to a case that looks close in rate stats alone, and then you realize that Felix has pitched at roughly the same level (or maybe a hair less) for almost seven more complete games. 60 innings is a lot of innings in which to be great.
ReplyDelete