Zack Greinke of the Kansas City Royals was an overwhelming choice for the American League Cy Young Award despite posting a victory total that matched the lowest for any winner in either league among starting pitchers in a full season.
Pitching for a team that was next to last in the AL in average runs per game, Greinke compiled a 16-8 record with a 2.16 ERA. No AL starter had won the Cy Young Award without winning at least 18 games. Greinke fell two victories short and equaled the output of 2006 National League winner Brandon Webb, who was 16-8 that year for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Grienke, 26, who held opponents to one run or fewer in 18 of his 33 starts, was named first on 25 and second on the other three ballots cast by two writers in each league city for a total of 134 points, based on the 5-3-1 tabulation system. The righthander’s league-best ERA was the lowest in the AL since 2000 Cy Young Award winner Pedro Martinez had a 1.74 ERA for the Boston Red Sox. Greinke also was second in complete games (6), shutouts (3), strikeouts (242) and opponents’ batting average (.230). He was the only pitcher named on all ballots.
Seattle Mariners righthander Felix Hernandez (19-5, 2.49 ERA), received two first-place votes and finished second in the balloting with 80 points. The other first-place vote went to Detroit Tigers righthander Justin Verlander (19-9, 3.92 ERA), who placed third overall. Hernandez and Verlander were tied for the AL lead in victories. Hernandez led the league in winning percentage (.792) and batting average against (.227) and Verlander in innings (240) and strikeouts (269).
Repoz
Posted: November 17, 2009 at 06:56 PM |
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Well, duh. Did you think I didn't know that? When I'm contrasting them with something "teammate-dependent," clearly I'm referring to the dependence on teammates, and not on the batter and umpire.
K/9 and BB/9 are not, in isolation, wholly informative. Someone could have 27 K/9 but lose every game because when the batter doesn't miss the ball, it gets crushed. Similarly, 0 BB/9 could just mean that the guy grooves everything once he gets to 3 balls.
Of course. I've probably been the biggest advocate on this site of using BF as the denominator rather than innings.
Of course, to be complete in either case (per 9 or per BFP) one should (as I originally noted) consider the opposition faced, as Ks and BBs aren't solely pitcher-dependent events, either. We simply assume that there is a sufficiently connected set of pitcher-batter edges that we can meaningfully compare one pitcher to another, even if all edges are not created equal (e.g., lefty/righty match-up, curveball pitcher vs. off-speed hitter, etc.). While the set is not usually as dense as one would like, I suspect it is usually in the "close enough" category.
Sure. But this is true of pretty much every single metric, and has nothing specifically to do with ERA or FIP or K rate.
Not really. I don't think any of the arguments that were commonplace in the '90s are still common today. But the DIPS discussion has been a central part of BTF for its entire history, and people are making literally the same arguments today as some did in 2001.
amen.
Tim Hudson
-- MWE
It would be cool if we had a discussion about whether today's players are too mollycoddled.
Zero, because he would have quit playing baseball?
Never mind that I made a completely facetious comment...
Did you see Greinke's comments, from the AP article?:
I interpret this as: Greinke will never go to any team where he feels he will be under a microscope. Thus, he won't be going to either NY team, Boston, the Cubbies, and probably a few others. Controlling his social anxiety has to trump all offers of money and championships.
So I think we can rest easy (and so can he).
Wow, that vaults him way up my Favoritest Player Ever list.
Greinke would not pitch for the Mets or Yankees.
He carved it into a tablet and handed it down the mountain, along with nine or so other items.
The more you assen, the less you heimer. The less you heimer, the more you assen. Assenheimer, Assenheimer, Assen Assenheimer.
So, when we're referring to Zack Greinke, we no longer refer to him by his real name, but instead call him by his son's name (who is also God), and that name is "Matt Wieters"?
Or has Wieters awful, terrible, HoF-blocking rookie year resulted in his being cast down into Trubyland?
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