Is Cliff Lee Worth Some Cy Young Love?

Perhaps the most fascinating of this year’s award debates is the National League Cy Young race. Johnny Cueto, RA Dickey, Gio Gonzalez, and Clayton Kershaw all have compelling cases, and if voters are looking for dominance over accumulated value, Ar

oldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel, Kris Medlen, and Stephen Strasburg are worth discussing as well.

A quick look at fangraphs’ pitching WAR leaderboard suggests that Cliff Lee may have a place in this conversation as well. Lee ranks third in fWAR, just .6 wins behind Kershaw and .5 behind Gonzalez. Baseball-reference ranks Lee eighth, bunched up with five other pitchers behind Kershaw, Cueto, and Dickey at the top. After the jump, I’ll examine 12 candidates based on some key numbers.

[table id=70 /]

 

I included wins in the chart, not because they say anything about a pitcher’s talent or award-worthiness, but because they’ve had an overwhelming impact on past votes and because Lee’s six wins will probably keep him off most voters’ five-man ballots. My goal here is not to pick my Cy Young winner (I’ll let John tackle that in a future post), but to assess just how realistic it would be to put a starting pitcher with six wins at or near the top of a ballot.

Several numbers from the above chart jump off the page, and a few of them belong to Kimbrel. In just 62 2/3 innings, Kimbrel was as dominant as any pitcher has ever been in any role. I wouldn’t hold it against a voter who threw Kimbrel a first-place vote on the the basis of his sub-1 FIP, near-1 ERA, and 8+ strikeouts for every walk, but I think it’s nearly impossible to be the most valuable pitcher in the game without pitching 100 innings.

Similarly, Medlen’s 1.57 ERA, accumulated mostly as a starter, is a remarkable feat, but he only threw about twice as many innings as Kimbrel and less than 60% as many as Dickey.

Lee, on the other hand, struck out 7.39 times as many batters as he walked over 211 innings. If not for a bit of a home run problem (he gave up 26, though many came in a park that inflates homers by about 9%), he may have been the most dominant starting pitcher in baseball this year. Normalize his home run/fly ball rate, as xFIP does, and he leads all qualified pitchers at 3.06. Even with all those homers counting 13 times in his FIP (you can find the FIP formula here), he trails only Gonzalez, Kershaw, and Adam Wainwright (who pitched fewer than 200 innings with an ERA near four) among qualified pitchers. Gonzalez owes much of his success to minimizing home runs, giving up just nine. Bring four just-enough homers back on the field for Lee and he’s the best pitcher in the NL from a fielding-independent standpoint.

I think it’s important that voters (or just debaters) establish a framework in evaluating candidates and are consistent in staying within the framework. Otherwise, a single pitcher’s narrative may cause the voter to neglect another pitcher’s stronger candidacy. If a voter values run prevention and high volume of innings, Kershaw or Dickey is the pick. A voter who prefers dominance over a shorter timeframe would take a closer look at Kimbrel and Medlen. A FIP loyalist would likely vote for Gonzalez, or Kershaw, whose FIP was a tick behind Gio’s in 28 more innings.

The framework within which one can justify Lee as the best pitcher in the National League this season would look something like this:

-Wins are a team statistic and do little to measure a pitcher’s contribution to his team’s success.

-Striking out hitters and avoiding walks are the two most important things a pitcher can do.

-BABiP shouldn’t be held against a pitcher, since it’s more a measure of defense and randomness.

-Home runs are also random to some extent, since they’re affected by park dimensions and weather factors and fluctuate more than strikeouts and walks.

-Relievers don’t throw enough innings to deserve the Cy Young, but additional volume shouldn’t be a deciding factor if several candidates throw 200+ innings.

I listed the five points above in descending order of reasonableness. The last two are, shall we say, less than scientific, and it seems unlikely that a voter of any ilk would consistently apply these five tenets to any Cy Young consideration. Any voter who really does put Lee at the top of his ballot is probably making a somewhat outlandish statement about the worthlessness of pitcher wins.

Remove the last line from the framework, though, and Lee’s probably second to Kershaw, who threw almost 17 more innings. Remove the last two lines and your framework is essentially fWAR, where Lee finished third. I’m not saying I would, but it would be perfectly reasonable for a voter to place Cliff Lee second, third, or fourth on a Cy Young ballot.

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Perhaps the most fascinating of this year’s award debates is the National League Cy Young race. Johnny Cueto, RA Dickey, Gio Gonzalez, and Clayton Kershaw all have compelling cases, and if voters are looking for dominance over accumulated value, Aroldis Chapman, Craig Kimbrel, Kris Medlen, and Stephen Strasburg are worth discussing as well.
A quick look at fangraphs’ pitching WAR leaderboard suggests that Cliff Lee may have a place in this conversation as well. Lee ranks third in fWAR, just .6 wins behind Kershaw and .5 behind Gonzalez. Baseball-reference ranks Lee eighth, bunched up with five other pitchers behind Kershaw, Cueto, and Dickey at the top. After the jump, I’ll examine 12 candidates based on some key numbers.

[table id=70 /]

I included wins in the chart, not because they say anything about a pitcher’s talent or award-worthiness, but because they’ve had an overwhelming impact on past votes and because Lee’s six wins will probably keep him off most voters’ five-man ballots. My goal here is not to pick my Cy Young winner (I’ll let John tackle that in a future post), but to assess just how realistic it would be to put a starting pitcher with six wins at or near the top of a ballot.
Several numbers from the above chart jump off the page, and a few of them belong to Kimbrel. In just 62 2/3 innings, Kimbrel was as dominant as any pitcher has ever been in any role. I wouldn’t hold it against a voter who threw Kimbrel a first-place vote on the the basis of his sub-1 FIP, near-1 ERA, and 8+ strikeouts for every walk, but I think it’s nearly impossible to be the most valuable pitcher in the game without pitching 100 innings.
Similarly, Medlen’s 1.57 ERA, accumulated mostly as a starter, is a remarkable feat, but he only threw about twice as many innings as Kimbrel and less than 60% as many as Dickey.
Lee, on the other hand, struck out 7.39 times as many batters as he walked over 211 innings. If not for a bit of a home run problem (he gave up 26, though many came in a park that inflates homers by about 9%), he may have been the most dominant starting pitcher in baseball this year. Normalize his home run/fly ball rate, as xFIP does, and he leads all qualified pitchers at 3.06. Even with all those homers counting 13 times in his FIP (you can find the FIP formula here), he trails only Gonzalez, Kershaw, and Adam Wainwright (who pitched fewer than 200 innings with an ERA near four) among qualified pitchers. Gonzalez owes much of his success to minimizing home runs, giving up just nine. Bring four just-enough homers back on the field for Lee and he’s the best pitcher in the NL from a fielding-independent standpoint.
I think it’s important that voters (or just debaters) establish a framework in evaluating candidates and are consistent in staying within the framework. Otherwise, a single pitcher’s narrative may cause the voter to neglect another pitcher’s stronger candidacy. If a voter values run prevention and high volume of innings, Kershaw or Dickey is the pick. A voter who prefers dominance over a shorter timeframe would take a closer look at Kimbrel and Medlen. A FIP loyalist would likely vote for Gonzalez, or Kershaw, whose FIP was a tick behind Gio’s in 28 more innings.
The framework within which one can justify Lee as the best pitcher in the National League this season would look something like this:
-Wins are a team statistic and do little to measure a pitcher’s contribution to his team’s success.
-Striking out hitters and avoiding walks are the two most important things a pitcher can do.
-BABiP shouldn’t be held against a pitcher, since it’s more a measure of defense and randomness.
-Home runs are also random to some extent, since they’re affected by park dimensions and weather factors and fluctuate more than strikeouts and walks.
-Relievers don’t throw enough innings to deserve the Cy Young, but additional volume shouldn’t be a deciding factor if several candidates throw 200+ innings.
I listed the five points above in descending order of reasonableness. The last two are, shall we say, less than scientific, and it seems unlikely that a voter of any ilk would consistently apply these five tenets to any Cy Young consideration. Any voter who really does put Lee at the top of his ballot is probably making a somewhat outlandish statement about the worthlessness of pitcher wins.
Remove the last line from the framework, though, and Lee’s probably second to Kershaw, who threw almost 17 more innings. Remove the last two lines and your framework is essentially fWAR, where Lee finished third. I’m not saying I would, but it would be perfectly reasonable for a voter to place Cliff Lee second, third, or fourth on a Cy Young ballot.
If only he had the grit to bear down and win games, he might have added another trophy to his mantle this year.
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Chad
Chad
11 years ago

Does fWar make adjustments for batters based on Babip?

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago

Bryan, I’m seeing 4.2 rWAR for Cole Hamels, tied with Lee for #7. Your table has 5.2. Typo? Or am I misinterpreting?
http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/2012-pitching-leaders.shtml

Jim Bouldin
11 years ago

“Perhaps the most fascinating of this year’s award debates is the National League Cy Young race.”

In the sense that watching paint dry is fascinating, one presumes.

We’re onto you now Bryan.

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Jim Bouldin

Jim, I notice that your reactions to awards debates are not binomially distributed.* 🙂

[* Reveals ignorance of the term’s meaning.]

Jim Bouldin
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

It’s more that my sarcasm recognition sensors have been engaged John!

Evan
Evan
11 years ago

Normalizing abnormally high HR rates* might be better for predicting future performance than not doing so, but I don’t like the idea of using a statistic that does so to justify awards voting. He gave up the HRs and I have to assign him the responsibility for doing so not matter how improbable it is that that large a percentage of fly balls would clear the wall.

*I’m more than willing to consider park factors, but on 9% increase for half his games is an extra 1-2 HRs.

bstar
11 years ago

FIP and xFIP for the Cy Young?

“Striking out hitters and avoiding walks are the two most important things a pitcher can do.”

While striking out hitters and avoiding walks are certain to help in the endeavor, it flies in the face of logic to suggest these two traits are more important than run prevention.

Run prevention is the pitcher’s ONLY job. It’s quite irrelevant how he achieves it. That’s why he’s out there, to prevent runs, not pad his strikeout total or keep his walk rate low.

I better stop right there.

Mark in Sydney
Mark in Sydney
11 years ago
Reply to  bstar

Right. And there is a strong correlation between men-on-base and runs scored. So, it can be argued, that the pitcher’s real job is to stop guys getting on base, however they do that, is goodness.

It is somewhat perverse that we rate a 9-pitch 3K innings as being “better” than a 3-pitch ground-out innings (a la the game-score approach). But isn’t that just the pitching equivalent of hitting a home-run?

Dan
Dan
11 years ago
Reply to  Mark in Sydney

If a pitcher loads the bases every inning and then pitches out of the jam each time, achieving an ERA of 0.00, how “good” of a pitcher is he?

Baserunner prevention does not equal run prevention. Run prevention equals run prevention.

Jim Bouldin
11 years ago
Reply to  Dan

And the same argument applies to run differential, winning games and “pythagorean expectation” I might add. The team’s job is to *win games*, not accumulate more runs than opponents over some collection of games. If they lose 10 games 6-2 but win 20 others 3-2, they’re +10 on the former metric but -20 on the latter. And from such data some believe the necessary conclusion is that they won some number of their games by “luck”. Others, who shall remain unnamed, dispute this interpretation.

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago

I’m not asking Cliff to bear down and win any games. But what about bearing down with men on base? – Bases empty: .239/.664 – Men on: .285/.737 – RISP: .258/.721 R.A. Dickey: – Bases empty: .227/.637 – Men on: .226/.644 – RISP: .177/.526 I second Evan’s position on normalizing HR/FB rates in this context, and I would extend that to performance with men on. Dickey’s fantastic RISP numbers may not be repeatable, but this year, they really happened. Guys do have years when they’re just “in the zone” in certain situations. And a dark little secret on Lee: His… Read more »

deal
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

From watching the games I felt Lee’s issues w/ men on and RISP were the big difference this year fo him. Also For all his Ks he seemed to have trouble finishing guys once he got to two strikes – extra foul balls.

The Phillies miserable bullpen led to Lee pitching a lot extra innings and to batters he may not have had the Phils had better options.

Ed
Ed
11 years ago
Reply to  deal

Looking through Lee’s game log, he was definitely the victim of several blown saves and poor run support.

Assuming I’ve counted correctly, Lee made 21 quality starts with a record of 6-4 and 11 no decisions. He picked up 0 cheap wins. Also, The Phillies went 4-9 in one run games in which Lee started (21-18 with other starters).

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Ed

Ed, that’s of interest as regards Lee’s W-L record. But his QS data don’t advance his CYA case at all — he was 11th in QS% with 21 out of 30 starts.

And if we look at the 18 NL pitchers with 20+ QS, Lee’s performance in those games is unremarkable — 7th in ERA, 5th in IP/G, 3rd in SO/9, 9th in WHIP.

Ed
Ed
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

John – I wasn’t trying to make a Cy Young case. Just trying to make sense of his W-L record.

birtelcom
Editor
11 years ago

I, too, am troubled by using FIP-type stats as a basis for awards, for the same reason I wouldn’t award a star-of-the game designation to a great hitter who went 0 for four in a game on three screaming line-outs and a blast to deep right caught at the top of the wall by a speedy, leaping defender. Sure we know that those four shots will likely be hits in most situations, and on those other days, this hitter can be the star of the game. We can also take those nearly-hits as further evidence that this guy is indeed… Read more »

Mike Felber
11 years ago

I could give a small edge to guys who did worse than expected due to luck, or vice versa. Though for something like BA with RISP, for good pitchers, is the sample size big enough in a year to make those results meaningful? There are many more BBIP, right? And I have heard that in a single year that can vary randomly.

So especially for a pitcher, & one who is very good, should we assign any meaning to variations like RISP for a single year?

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Mike Felber

“should we assign any meaning to variations like RISP for a single year?” Mike, where does the question of assigning meaning come into the Cy Young Award discussion? Suppose a pitcher had a great ERA helped by a fantastic RISP split, linked to a major spike in SO% with RISP. That may not be meaningful in the sense of repeatable, representative of his talent level. But I would hardly call it luck, either; we’re not talking about escaping jams with a bunch of at’em balls, but with strikeouts. Whatever the true underlying cause might have been, he did it. I… Read more »

Jeff
Jeff
11 years ago

I have a couple problems with this postng. First off: No Matt Cain mention…at all? Look at his numbers for the season, he’s top 5 in almost every category, he also has the best game score off all time and another score of 96. He anchored a team that included Tim Lincecum falling off planet earth somehow and lost at the time it’s best hitter(Cabrera) and Sandoval for two months. Again, I don’t think he’s a top 3 candidate but Dickey didn’t pitch a meaningful game after June. Define CY Young winner based on team performance. Does the pitcher get… Read more »

Jeff
Jeff
11 years ago

Also, Why is Cain’s WAR so much lower than other pitchers considering the season he had? It couldn’t completely be the ballpark factor because Kershaw plays in LA, just wondering.

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago
Reply to  Jeff

Jeff, don’t assume that all pitchers’ parks are the same.

The 3-year park factor for Dodgers Stadium is 96. For SF, it’s 88 — which I believe is the lowest in MLB.

Cain did have an extreme home/road split this year: 2.03 ERA at home, with 7 HRs; 3.56 on the road, with 14 HRs.

Jeff
Jeff
11 years ago
Reply to  John Autin

Cain has given up 16 fewer hits in 25 more innings. His WHIP is .14 better than Miley. And Cain is in the Playoffs, Miley isn’t.

RJ
RJ
11 years ago
Reply to  Jeff

Jeff, I asked the same question about Cain’s WAR totals: have a look at the discussion that followed. http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/10/wednesday-game-notes-such-sweet-sorrow-edition/#comment-40134

Ed
Ed
11 years ago

Without getting into the Cy Young debate, Lee is only the 2nd pitcher ever to have 6 or fewer wins and WAR greater than 4 while qualifying for the ERA title and making at least 60% starts. The other pitcher was:

Joey Hamilton (1995) 6-9 4.4 WAR

Interesting that he and Lee had exactly the same W-L record.

Two other pitchers did it while making fewer than 60% starts:

Stu Miller (1958) 6-9, 4.7 WAR
Terry Forster (1973) 6-11 4.4 WAR

Hartvig
Hartvig
11 years ago

I assume the prototype here is Nolan Ryan’s 1987 season when he went 8-16 for the Astro’s. Ryan also led the league in ERA, ERA+, SO and SO/BB. He also finished 5th in the Cy Young voting and WAR for pitchers. I just cannot see Lee doing anywhere near that well. He’s 7th in WAR for pitchers, 9th in ERA, 8th in ERA+. That leaves us with a stat (FIP) that most likely a majority of SABRmetric friendly sportswriters could only explain in the vaguest of terms and and an outstanding SO/BB ration. Thing is that just 2 seasons ago… Read more »

Brent
Brent
11 years ago

I am all for the FIP and BABIP numbers when evaluating how good a pitcher is going forward (in other words predicting how well he will do next year) because it gets rid of the noise created by luck and other changeable factors. That being said, I believe, at the end of the year, when determining who had the better year, in evaluating a pitcher on what they actually did, not on what they might have done if their defense was better or their luck was better. I agree with normalizing stats for ballparks, because 5 runs given up in… Read more »

Jeff
Jeff
11 years ago
Reply to  Brent

It’s like WAR which specifically accounts for “luck’ defense which a pitcher can’t control. Verlander has a 7+ WAR…Why? Price and Weaver are 6.4 and 3.7 respectively. 3.7 for Weaver…? Why so low?

John Autin
Editor
11 years ago

I remember a story about Greg Maddux telling a teammate that he was going to throw a certain pitch and get a certain batter to pop foul to 3rd base. And then he did just that. I mention this because, in his 4 CYA seasons, Maddux significantly outperformed his FIP. Starting with ’92, his last year in Chicago, here are his actual ERA and his FIP, and the difference: 1992 – 2.18, 2.58, -0.40 1993 – 2.36, 2.85, -0.49 1994 – 1.56, 2.39, -0.83 1995 – 1.63, 2.26, -0.63 Granted, he led the NL in FIP all 4 years, so… Read more »