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 07:56 PM |
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Did somebody leave out Felix? That's odd.
I guess the guaranteed screwing Zack was going to get didn't really materialize.
1) Verlander
2) Greinke
3) Sabathia
Probably someone from Detroit.
Personally, I'd go to Pizza Hut.
Two people, actually.
-- MWE
And voting for Verlander 1st is pretty close to that, too.
And then devours Justin Verlander in a fit of secondary rage.
It's not that bad. 19 Ws, 6th in the league in ERA, 1st in Ks and IP.
Maybe the writer is a DIPS guy, 2.80 FIP :-)
Eh, he had a heckuva lot more punch outs than anybody else. I guess you could argue he powered his team to a near playoff spot.
Edit: Sorry shooty, snapper.
Hey, we've still got a few days left to be outraged at the screwing Joe Mauer is going to get by the dumbass writers. Don't spoil the fun.
And then devours Justin Verlander in a fit of secondary rage.
If there's anything the intrnet hates more than a obviously bad decision is a good, non-controversial one. Creates a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.
Hmm. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those were two KC voters trying to help Greinke win.
So, if it's unanimous, can we be outraged that the voters dared to list anyone else on their ballots?
I'm joking Larry. Didn't the smiley face get that across?
I know Larry. I've been insisting he was going to win as long as you have. My point is, an awful lot of people at this site spend an awful lot of time ######## about the stupid decisions the stupid writers are going to make, and recently, these predictions have been pretty spectacularly wrong (see Howard over Pujols in 08). And when 2010 rolls around, we'll see the same preemptive whining taking place.
KC's shopping Wilson Betemit already?
I don't know if it really speaks to that at all. The guy had everything except wins going for him, and contrary to popular belief there really isn't this long history of giving the CYA to the guy with the most wins.
During every summer, there are lots of articles written about some players having a good year who "might deserve MVP consideration" and everyone freaks out (not just here, but every baseball blogger on the web). Often the writer is just trying to complement the player. And, of course, until mid-September there was always a chance that someone could go all George Brett 1980 and pull the race out. But none of this has anything to do with how the vote actually is going to go down.
That possibility, if there even was one, ended when the Twins made the playoffs.
I knew he would win in a landslide before he was even conceived.
The problem is not screwing over the obvious winner. The problems come when the field is more broad.
you do know that Howard got 12 1st place votes don't you?
you do know that Howard beat Pujols in 2007?
or do you have a VERY different definition of "spectacularly wrong" than anyone else?
On this note, can someone please explain why people cite K and BB rates in Cy Young discussions?
Because they are relevant to how well a pitcher pitched?
It's a clumsy attempt at separating pitching from fielding.
I also said recently.
I think the awards voters for the BBWAA have made considerable strides in the last few years. The fact that Howard finished a distant second or that someone voted for Justin Verlander doesn't change that.
And it really doesn't matter whether we're right or wrong, ultimately. ######## about the stupidity of something that hasn't happened yet is an asinine endeavor (as the KC Star writer did a few months ago when he complained of the screwing Zack was going to get).
No, but there is a history of them giving the CYA to a guy with a high win total or a gaudy W/L record, like Cliff Lee, Roger Clemens in 2001, John Smoltz in 1996, and Bob Welch in 1990. Say Sabathia pitches exactly the same, but he gets very lucky with bullpen and offensive support, and he wins two of his losses and three of his NDs, and instead of 19-8 3.37 230 IP, he's 24-6 3.37 230 IP, he gets the award in a landslide.
I don't think Cliff Lee fits; Colon in 2005 was a more obvious wins-trump-all choice.
1994 is a bit different.
understand, i'm not complaining or looking to split hairs. i just think getting on the other side of 15 wins was HUGE in impact on the voters. that and there not being a 22 or 23 game winner on the books.
bravo to a good choice!!
Wouldn't that make him happy? I thought he was a card-carrying member of Team Jen.
Cliff Lee also led the league in ERA (and ERA+). He's not at all in the same category as some of those other winners.
Oh, sorry, I had to yell that somewhere.
Link: http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/story/12535920/royals-greinke-beats-out-king-felix-for-al-cy-young-award
It's about damn time.
Wouldn't that make him happy? I thought he was a card-carrying member of Team Jen.
I thought he just wanted Brad to be happy.
And free guacamole at Chipotle.
I think it could be even smaller. Keep all the other stats the same, but make Sabathia 20-7 and Greinke 14-9, and I think Sabathia takes it.
I highly doubt that.
I say he goes back to Jen, right around the holidays. I want Dec 28 if we have a pool.
As a generalization I would say, no, you don't yank a guys vote because you disagree with it. But when it turns out that the Verlander vote came from Detroit, I say, yes, yank it. Crappy judgment is one thing but being a complete homey is another. I suppose this ####### is gonna vote for Cabrera for MVP. Which wouldn't be worse than this here vote.
Why?
Can't help there, but the current site isn't exactly a paragon of good design.
I don't suppose he is this year.
It's a clumsy attempt at separating pitching from fielding.
I understand the value of FIP for projecting future performance. But in terms of the Cy Young, why would we care whether a guy gets his outs by K rather than another means, except to the extent an exceptionally good or bad defense behind him could distort the results of his batted balls?
Racist!
I sort of thought someone would get a joke out of that, although s/he voted for Hernandez, not Verlander. "Assenheimer" is still a great name, though.
If you had a student named Jack Assenheimer, would you be able to get through roll call without giggling? If you say yes then you're a liar!
Roger Clemens lost the 2005 Cy Young to Chris Carpenter
21-5 beating 13-8
Pedro lost the 2003 Cy Young to Hallday (who to be fair had a significant IP edge)
Kevin Brown (17-11, 1.89) lost in 1996 to John Smoltz (24-8, 2.94)
In 1990 Clemens lost to Welch
In Elementary School I had classmate with that name, on year he was the ace of my little league team too, he was year older than everyone else (I think his parents just started him a year late- he was pretty average as a student), a couple inches taller, couple pounds heavier (bone and muscle), had a temper... for some reason no one made fun of his name (not when he was in the same zip code)
Not totally important, but that was Maggs, not Cabrera
If you're a pro, you're a pro. Just like the Braves' PA man back when he had to contend with Brian Asselstine.
And Ordonez was a lot closer to AROD that year than Verlander was to Greinke this year.
"Significant" is an understatement. Halladay had an 80 IP lead on Pedro for that season. At that sort of difference, it's completely reasonable for the voters to go for quantity.
If anyone got screwed in the voting that year (and I don't think anyone did), that person was Esteban Loaiza.
I understand the value of ERA for projecting future performance. But in terms of the Cy Young, why would we care whether a guy gets his wins by limiting scoring rather than another means, except to the extent an exceptionally good or bad offense behind could distort the results of his starts?
It's been eight years and we're still having the same arguments here.
If you ask the Usenet guys, they've been having the same arguments for a lot longer than 8 years.
Since Cabrera was still a Marlin in '07, it's at least a little important.
to match Halladay's ERA+ of 145 in 266 IP Pedro would have needed to pitch 79 1/3 ip with 49 ER (5.56 ERA or an 83 ERA+)- right around replacement/5th starter territory, so you are right it's a push
Of course. Because one of the Golden Rules of BTF is how much smarter we are than the writers. That's a given.
Also, we're more moralistic.
If you're a pro, you're a pro. Just like the Braves' PA man back when he had to contend with Brian Asselstine.
And not long after - Paul Assenmacher.
Um, no. Batter has some effect on this, too. (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. Obviously these degenerate cases wouldn't be likely to fall into a Cy Young discussion, but I interpret the original question to be asking about their use as some sort of "optimal" (not really how people are using them, but I'm not coming up with a better adjective at the moment) assessment of a player's performance. K/BFP or BB/BFP would be more useful as a means of assessing the efficacy of a given pitcher, but one almost never sees these being bandied about. 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.
In the end, though, doesn't matter here...best pitcher won so we can all be happy.
We are (most of us anyway). Also most of my co-workers are not only smarter than the baseball writers, but they are better writers as well.
Also most of my relatives (the vast majority of who are college grads fwiw, but one who isn't is ironically a professional author) are not only smarter than the average baseball writer, but better writers as well.
The current state of sports writing, especially newspaper sports writing is abysmal. Maybe my memory is playing tricks on me, but go to a library (or online archive), look at what was written 20/30/40 years ago, there has been a definite downward slide going on.
Obviously these degenerate cases wouldn't even sniff the MLB let alone the Cy Young discussion.
Not possible, someone looked up and collated the BABIP of every non-pitcher pitching, aggregate BABIP was something like .335 (basically I call it the Glendon Rusch line)
I prefer K/PA to k/IP anyway...
You mean Silva?
There's a limit, k/9, k/bb aren't be all and end all, but they are a lot more informative than you seem to think. Given that both DIPS and FIP predict further ERA better than actual ERA(barely), they shouldn't be dismissed as not being "wholly informative"
so smart we help increase the same writers' prestige and importance by hyping up and obsessing over these awards!
Forget Zack. This suggests that if CC had one extra win, that would have vaulted him from Cy Young nonentity past Felix Hernandez and his one fewer win and nearly full run of advantage in ERA.
Color me skeptical.
Again, I think the beat writers have made significant strides when it comes to voting, likely spurred by a) the types of new guys welcomed into (and voting) in the BBWAA, b) greater acceptance of more meaningful measurements.
The hypothetical was one more win for CC and two fewer for Zach.
What if we give CC 2 extra wins?
I wasn't surprised that Greinke won, I was surprised by the margin- I assumed Felix would pick up more 1st place votes, and thought at least one voter would handed in a King Felix/CC/Verlander ballot...
Anyway, forget CC, one more win (everything else being the same) may have made for a remarkable impact on Felix's vote totals, two more and I think he would have won.
The hypothetical stated one more win for CC and two fewer for Zack and CC takes it. The problem is that if the voters really did dock Zack for that, then it's King Felix who claims the prize. If they weren't wowed by Hernandez's three-win edge but slightly worse performance compared to Greinke, and the vote totals show they clearly weren't, it's rather ridiculous to think they'd have given the nod to CC on the basis of one extra win and a significant disadvantage ERA wise compared to Felix.
It's possible. But as this outcome compared to past injustices indicates, the voters seem less mesmerized by big win totals now.
But I also don't work under the assumption that all sportswriters are stupid, as you seemingly do. The flaw of having been one, I suppose.
I refuse!
No, it was well done. My response would be that the difference in pitcher control between ERA and wins is much bigger than that between DIPS/FIP and ERA. So it's not really fair to lump the pro-ERA/anti-DIPS/FIP crowd in with the pro-wins crowd. It's basically saying that if you're willing to accept a stat that includes some noise, that logically you should be willing to accept one that has tons of noise. But taking the argument to the logical extremes, I understand your point.
Anyway, I'm sure there have already been hundreds of discussions on this here, but I haven't been there and I'm curious. Isn't it a problem that in an effort to find a stat that excludes factors beyond a pitcher's control, we throw out many events in which a pitcher has a lot of control -- in fact, even more events than the ones we end up including? Also, I know FIP predicts ERA better than ERA, but is it the best? How does OPS against stack up?
Yeah, it's just so ridiculous to vote a guy #1 who led the league in wins, innings, Ks, Ks/9, had more starts and a better winning percentage than the winner, and actually pitched in a pennant race.
A friend of mine goes to school with a guy named D.R. Buttwieler. I can't imagine all the different ways this guy got his life ruined by that handle.
Never said all (though all the ones I've personally met (small sample size), have been absolute morons. Not that I haven't met morons in other fields (including my own).
In this particular instance, yes.
And even if those are your criteria how do you justify a vote for Verlander over King Felix? He threw 1/3 more innings than King Felix, and gave up 18 more runs.
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