Hello baseball fans, it’s Dr. Doom again! (I know it was just a little while since the last post, but it’s awards season!)
Today, we’re going to dive into BOTH Cy Young Awards! (As an aside, I kind of wish the award had a different name in each league: the Cy Young and the Walter Johnson, maybe. Yes, it could get confusing when talking about how many “pitcher of the year” awards people won, but it’s also always fun when you get to name awards after players and honor the game’s history. End of aside.)
Over in the AL, we have a mystery brewing: what do you do when the league’s best pitcher was a starter who didn’t qualify for rate awards? Technically, the day after Chris Sale made his last start, he was eligible for the ERA title, because he had pitched 158 innings through 158 games. Alas, four days later, he no longer qualified, so what do we do? If you’re not interested in Sale due to his failure to qualify, might I interest you in Trevor Bauer? Bauer led the AL with a 2.44 FIP (had he qualified, Sale would’ve led MLB with a 1.98 mark). Bauer also allowed HR at the lowest rate in the AL. Of course, he was injured, too. So maybe that leaves you with the triumvirate of Justin Verlander, Corey Kluber, and Blake Snell. Snell has the flashiest surface numbers (21-5, 1.89 ERA), league-leading 7.5 WAR and 5.6 H/9, but “only” 180.2 IP. Verlander has some great underlying indicators (see this article), and Kluber is a nice marriage of the two, with 20 wins, a league best 1.4 BB/9, and WHIP under 1.00. Whom do you prefer?
If you like relievers, I’d offer up Edwin Diaz and his 57 saves with a 208 ERA+ (and his FIP is even better than his minuscule ERA). Or, if you like being a little off-center, check out Jose Leclerc of the Rangers, with a 311 ERA+ (no typo) in 57.2 innings over 59 games. He’s not a closer, but he may have been the AL’s most effective reliever.
In the NL, a couple of starters really separated themselves from the pack: Max Scherzer with his 18-7 record, 2.53 ERA and MLB-leading 300 strikeouts (and the best pitcher in the world at season’s end, according to Bill James’ starting pitcher rankings); and Jacob deGrom with a 1.70 ERA and 269 K’s (deGrom did manage to finish a game better than .500, on the strength of wins in his final two games, both quality starts like the twenty-two they followed). Of course, those two studs were both “owned” this year by the Phillies’ Aaron Nola (defeating deGrom in May, and outpitching Scherzer twice in a week in late August), so, with his MLB-leading 10.5 WAR (third best since 1914 for 25-and-under hurlers), maybe he’s your choice. And, if you ignore actual runs allowed and just look at FIP, Patrick Corbin (3.15 ERA, 2.47 FIP, second to deGrom) has an argument that he’s right there with that group.
Maybe you noticed, like I did about a week before the end of the season, that Clayton Kershaw was Kershawing again – he just missed too much time to seriously compete for any awards. So perhaps you have a down-ballot vote for him. Or maybe you always like to give one to a reliever. Might I introduce you to Prodigal Brewer Jeremy Jeffress? (For those who don’t understand my Milwaukee-based reference, the Brewers have traded him away twice – once for Zack Greinke, and once with Jonathan Lucroy… and yet here he is again, finally living up to what we we Brewers fans hoped he’d one day become when Milwaukee drafted him like a thousand years ago.)
Rules: Vote by making a comment below and numbering your choices with 1 being the MOST preferred candidate, and 5 being your LEAST preferred candidate of your five choices. Please vote under only one screen name (I’m looking at you, RockInTheHall; it’s been five years, but I haven’t forgotten). Your ballots will be EXACTLY five places for each award, just as the BBWAA does. Scoring will be 7-4-3-2-1, just as the BBWAA does. You may post all your ballots in the same comment, or you may vote in separate comments. You are not required to vote in all elections; only vote in the ones you would like to vote in. You may make vote changes, if the discussion so moves you. If you change your vote, please do so in a new comment, not as a reply to your original comment (it’s a lot easier to find new comments than replies to old ones). Please don’t vote strategically; we’re trying to get the best result, not to manipulate the vote totals based on what others have done. Voting will remain open about one week.
Good luck!
We’ll give this one a week-and-a-half again. Let’s go with Wednesday, 10/24 at 11:59:59 as the closing time for this round of voting.
There are wrap-up/results posts at the bottom of the last one, if you’d like to see how the MVP posts wrapped up! Spoiler: we like Mookie Betts and Christian Yelich… and I’m sure you’re shocked by that.
After a preliminary inspection of the comprehensive stats supplied by Baseball Reference under CY Candidates, where in fact only 4 AL pitcher and 3 NL pitchers are deemed worthy of consideration, I have to say that, appearances to the contrary, the field looks rather thin.
In the AL the superficially dominant eminence of Blake Snell’s statistical record lacks a deep foundation, as has been discussed here at some length. Chris Sale’s season isn’t justly described as having only 158 IPs, because, as of July 27, he had pitched 141 of them. Besides missing six weeks in two stints on the DL through season’s end, he made just five starts, only one a 5-inning qualifier. In the rest he was pulled after 1, 3, 3.1, and 4.2. Kluber’s performance looks OK but not particularly special, and when you compare it to last season’s CY winner, it seems downright plain. That leaves Verlander, whose record, in most other years would look good but down-ballot.
As to the NL top three, I retract the adjective ‘thin,’ since it merely describes the lack of additional competition, and offer instead ‘difficult to distinguish.’ All three have excellences, none has a serious flaw, and they each—deGrom most bitterly, true—suffered from lack of support by the team behind them. In cheap wins vs tough losses, deGtom was 1-9, Nola 0-3, Scherzer 2-5. Kyle Freeland isn’t considered worthy of inclusion by B-R, but he was probably more valuable to his team, and his 2.40 ERA in Coors is every bit as remarkable as deGrom’s 1.70 on the season.
I’ll post mine here on day one to get the discussion started.
AL:
1. Trevor Bauer – If Bauer hadn’t been shut down in the middle of the year, he’d have run away with it.
2. Chris Sale – If Sale hadn’t been shut down in the middle of the year, he’d have run away with it.
3. Justin Verlander – I think there’s a universe in which Verlander was this year’s best pitcher (in the AL, anyway). You have to ignore his homers to do that, though, and I’m not willing to do that, even if I know that he gave up more “cheap” homers than any pitcher in baseball. The thing is, even WITH that caveat, I have Bauer at 6.5 WAR, Sale at 6.4, and Verlander at 6.4, so it’s not like there’s a real difference. But someone in that group has to be third, and I’ll put Verlander there.
4. Blake Snell – There are going to be first-place votes for Snell; there are. I don’t think he’s that impressive. It’s mostly that the innings count is just too low. Unlike Bauer and Sale, his greatest effectiveness came in relation to balls in play. He allowed more homers, more walks, and struck out fewer than the guys I have at the top. Verlander bumps ahead of him due to volume of innings, basically.
5. Cory Kluber – Kluber was actually really good this year, though overshadowed by the offensive heroics of his team, as well as being on such a good staff. I have Snell at 6.2 WAR and Kluber at 6.1, so I really pretty much see all these pitchers as being the same. Kluber’s strikeout rate is still great… but everyone else is putting up 10+ K/9 these days, and he was at 9.3 His walk rate is still phenomenal. He’s just allowing too many hits and homers. Among the top 11 guys in both leagues (as I have it), only Kluber and Verlander averaged 1 HR/9. If his HR/9 or H/9 rate would’ve been where they were in his previous Cy Young seasons, he’d probably have been tops in the group. Alas, 5th is the best I can do for him.
Honorable Mention:
Gerrit Cole – Second-best strikeout pitcher in the AL, behind Sale. Allowed very few hits. Cut the walk rate to that Verlander-Sale level, and you’ve easily got a spot on the ballot.
Carlos Carrasco – If this is a team’s THIRD-best starter, it’s easy to see how such a team makes the postseason. The Indians must be the most top-heavy team in the majors, with these three pitchers, plus Lindor and Ramirez. How they didn’t win 100+ in that awful division is really a head-scratcher. Clevinger was also a competitor for an Honorable Mention.
Blake Treinen – If I adjusted my WAR calculations for leverage, Treinen might’ve made my top-5 (I have him at 3.9 WAR). HIs ERA+ was 531 – not a typo. He gets dinged for not-so-great FIP stats (“only” a 228 FIP+). His innings total (80.1) is really pretty respectable for a reliever. I could imagine giving him a vote if the top-5 weren’t so tightly bundled. (I have him ahead of Edwin Diaz, who I have as second in MLB among all relievers with 3.1 WAR.)
NL:
1. Jacob deGrom – I have deGrom at 8.4 WAR. It’s not a “legendary” season – I see it right around Jim Bunning’s 1966 in value. It’s not at the level to which some people were claiming earlier in the year. I can see why they were, but that ballpark was VERY extreme this year. I was lazy in my own figuring and just used Baseball-Reference 3-year park factors. If I had used 1-year figures, it probably looks less impressive. Still, it’s a great season, and a worth Cy Young victory. I have him more than 1 WAR ahead of all other pitchers. It’s not close; it’s a landslide.
2. Max Scherzer – I have Scherzer as immensely valuable. I see him as being as valuable as a pitcher as Yelich was with the bat, which is pretty darn amazing. Scherzer was great; there’s really not much to say. The Nats fell apart, and while there’s a lot of blame to go around for that, I can’t see how anyone could place the blame for this season at Scherzer’s feet.
3. Aaron Nola – Baseball-Reference has him at #1. The reason is the epic wretchedness of the Phillies defense. But this may be a case of over-adjustment. I would argue that you can reach some similar conclusions by looking at their FIP results, and I don’t see how a guy that walk-prone who strikes out so (relatively) few can be that strong a contender. In the AL, he might be the winner. Alas, he plays in the NL, and I can’t see how he gets above deGrom and Scherzer.
4. Patrick Corbin – I know, I know. This is the part where you all think I’m too FIP-crazy. But hear me out here: if you take the top pitchers (deGrom, Scherzer, Bauer, Nola, Sale, Verlander, Snell, Kluber) and average their per-9 numbers, you get a guy like this: 6.4 H/9, .8 HR/9, 2.2 BB/9, 11.3 K/9. Here’s Corbin: 7.3 H/9, .7 HR/9, 2.2 BB/9, 11.1 K/9. Keep in mind that the hits can be a factor of luck, and you see that Corbin basically IS that group. A little worse, sure, but that’s to be expected. After all, I’m not saying he’s as good as deGrom; I’m just saying that he belongs in the conversation. This feels like the right spot to me.
5. Kyle Freeland – A 2.85 ERA is nice; REALLY nice in Colorado. Among the top 14 pitchers in baseball, guess who’s the only one who allows walks at a rate of 3 per-9 or more? Of the same group, only Miles Mikolas strikes out fewer. Freeland also allows the most HITS of any pitcher in that group. So… why on earth would I include him as one of the five best pitchers in the NL? Well, the HR rate is good (.8 per-9), particularly for Colorado. And he chewed up over 200 innings, which is pretty important. He helped push a team no one thought had good pitching into the postseason. I can’t really complain about Freeland’s season, but I do think it’s the worst of the 10 seasons I’m voting for.
Honorable mention:
Zack Greinke – This is the guy who leads me to believe that the only way to truly assess a career is by combining both FIP- and ERA-based assessments. After his incredible 2009, he went through a two-and-a-half-year stretch with two Midwestern team in which he had great FIPs but terrible ERAs. Then he had a three-and-a-half-year stretch of the opposite, while spending time with two LA-based teams. Now, in Arizona, he’s finally evened out a little bit, but is more toward the ERA side of things. I just don’t know who he is sometimes, and that makes it hard to give him a vote. I don’t think he was the best pitcher on his own team this year, though, so it wasn’t a hard exclusion. Give me Corbin, if I need to take a D-Back.
Jeremy Jeffress – The only reliever in the NL worth mentioning, Jeffress had a 1.29 ERA, which is pretty great. He walks WAY too many people, but Milwaukee’s bullpen approach worked, so I can’t complain. Not good enough to nab a spot on my ballot, but a pretty good year. (I have him at 3.0 WAR; I have teammate Josh Hader second in the NL at 2.8.)
A curiosity: If Snell’s innings count is too low to be ranked higher, than how come Sale garners your #2 vote with even fewer innings? I was moved by Mike L’s arguments against Snell in the MVP thread, but given that he still threw 23 more innings than Sale, I have trouble justifying Sale that high.
I guess I was unclear. What I meant was, “at that level of effectiveness,” Snell’s innings count was too low. Yes, Snell had a better ERA+ than Sale. But if you calculate their FIP+, Sale’s at a 221, Snell’s at a 140. I like to balance the two; that gives Sale an overall effectiveness of 214, with Snell at 180. Don’t get me wrong, 180 is great… but it’s not 214. And 22 extra innings pitched does not make up for a 34 percentage point difference in effectiveness.
FIP says that Verlander and Snell were, effectively, the same pitcher (144 FIP+ for Verlander, 140 for Snell). If you average their FIP+ and ERA+, you get 180 for Snell and 152 for Verlander. Again, you have a 28 point gap in favor of the person with fewer innings. But here, the gap in effectiveness is smaller and the gap in playing time is larger, which gives me Verlander at 6.4 WAR and Snell at 6.2. However, it also gives me Snell at 4.2 WAA and Verlander at 4.0. Had I used WAA primarily, I would’ve (obviously) put Snell ahead. I just think the replacement level is really where it’s at for starters, because a guy going out there and giving you 180 average innings not only has some value, he has a significant amount – definitely not zero, which is what WAA would tell you. The W-L records I have for them are as follows:
Sale – 14-3 (14.4-3.2)
Verlander – 17-7 (16.5-7.2)
Snell – 15-5 (14.9-5.1)
Like I said in my post, it’s splitting hairs; but someone’s got to be on top, so given no super compelling reason, I’m just going to list them as my numbers tell me to, and that’s in the order listed above. Ultimately, it comes down to “who was the most effective pitcher, as measured by preventing the most runs, normalized for context?” There are many ways of answering that question; the way I chose has Sale by a whisker over Verlander and Verlander by a slightly larger margin over Snell. I wrote it in terms of WAR; written in terms of RAR (normalized for context), I have it as such:
Sale – 57.8
Verlander – 57.6
Snell – 55.4
So they’re all the same, but voting requires ordinal ranking, so that’s what I’ve got. Don’t know what else to say; Snell either had to be marginally better, or pitch slightly more innings to garner a better place on my ballot.
A five man ballot is a lot more manageable than trying to thoughtfully fill out the 10 man MVP ballot. My bias is to pitchers who pitched all, or mostly all, of the season (sorry, Chris Sale). So, here goes.
AL
1. Snell. He has the numbers (especially his historically good 5.6 H/9) and was especially valuable to a team that used a traditional starter in only two-thirds of its games. Snell’s 1.66 ERA against .500+ teams is the 10th best mark since 1908 in qualified seasons with 50% of IP against such teams, and includes a 9-2 record in 12 starts against the Red Sox, Yankees, Astros, A’s and Indians (combined 499-313, .615 record).
2. Verlander. Allowed one run or none in 17 of 34 starts, going 6+ innings in all of those games. With more support (he got an ND in four of nine games allowing zero runs), would have had a more impressive win total.
3. Kluber. His strikeouts were down and his ERA was up, but he pitched the whole season and allowed two runs or less in 18 of 33 starts. But, wasn’t as good as his 20-7 record, as only one of his losses was of the hard luck variety.
4. Bauer. Would have ranked him higher had he not missed 6 weeks in the second half of the season. Pitched 5+ innings and allowed two runs or less in 18 of 27 starts. First Indian since Bert Blyleven (159.1 IP in 1981) with a qualified season allowing fewer than 10 HR while topping 5 WAR and posting BB/9 under 3.0.
5. Severino. Lacked consistency to rank higher but was other-worldly when on his game, as he was for much of the first half of the season (1.98 ERA and .533 OPS against thru July 1). Only 24 and already has two of the top 20 WAR seasons since 1961 by Yankee RH starters.
NL
1. deGrom. His 1.99 FIP was just the 10th qualified mark below 2.00 in the live ball era, with the other nine all belonging to current or prospective (Clayton Kershaw) HOFers. His 1.79 ERA against .500+ teams was the fourth best since 1908 in qualified seasons with two-thirds of IP against such teams.
2. Nola. Better season than you might think. His 8.8 WAA was the 10th best mark since 1901, and his WAA/9IP second only to Pedro Martinez’s incomparable 2000 season. Was consistent all year, with 2.48 ERA thru June, and 2.26 for July-Sept.
3. Scherzer. Led the league in IP, strikeouts, WHIP and H/9. Allowed two runs or less in 23 of 33 starts, going 6+ innings in all of them. A peg lower than the top two as he was a full run worse in ERA over the second half of season, with all 5 of his multi-HR games coming in the Nats’ closing 90 games.
4. Freeland. 200+ IP with a 2.85 ERA, incl. 2.40 in Coors, the best ever for a Rockie in 75+ home IP. Allowed more than 3 runs only once over his last 20 starts.
5. Taillon. 190+ IP with a 3.20 ERA. Allowed more than 3 runs only once over his last 22 starts, with a 2.71 ERA over that period, incl. 1.94 for his last 8 assignments. The better second half gives him a very slight edge over Corbin.
I’m curious why Trevor Bauer gets a place on your ballot while Chris Sale does not. Now, it’s true that Bauer qualified and Sale did not, but in terms of time missed, they were both gone about the same amount of time (in terms of days, not innings). I, too, have Bauer ahead of Sale, but I’m curious why Sale’s performance wasn’t good enough to at least earn a down-ballot spot.
Unnecessary Brewers-related interruption:
Poor Yasmani Grandal. Yikes. I feel bad for the guy. Not bad enough that I wish he’d gotten a hit last night with the bases loaded, but still… I feel bad for the guy.
Orlando Arcia is suddenly Alex Rodriguez. OK. We all expected that.
Christian Yelich’s bat has gone cold. It had to happen. He still has a .357 OBP in this Dodger series, because they’re not really giving him anything to hit.
I feel very lucky that the Brewers took that one last night. Two to go!
I feel bad for him too. Tough to be booed by your home fans in the post-season.
But, may be better for him and the team if Barnes takes over at this point.
For my list, I considered only starters, and I applied the combination of factors I used in working through the MVP issue for pitchers. ERA+ and Average Game Score provide general quality indicators, IP and IP/Game Started indicate the degree of burden that contenders assumed, and the IP/GS confronts the Snell problem we’ve been discussing – at what point does a starter assume so little of the per game burden that he no longer matches the profile of what we traditionally mean by “starter.” Because few IP and low IP/GS may or may not reflect the added strain of assuming a greater SO burden – that is, doing more oneself and relying less on fielders – if K/9 is high and IP/GS is low, that may suggest a burden comparable to more traditional starter burdens than if K/9 is low and the pitcher still doesn’t do very far into the game.
I think the question of how often a pitcher pitched through the 8th inning is important, because for low IP/GS, it indicates the capability to eat more innings, and tends to suggest that it is managers, rather than endurance potential, that is accounting for short starts. Most starters make about 30-33 starts a year, and if many of those starts involve 6>IP, it reinforces the portrait of a pitcher who is contributing to staff-pitched games, rather than one who is performing a traditional starter role.
Here’s a tangent (of the hobby horse variety): I did not consider FIP, a figure with which I have problems. FIP only measures performance in a fraction the pitcher’s game, and the size of that fraction varies without any reflection in the stat. Moreover, it ignores what I take to be a major traditional task of the pitcher: disadvantaging the hitter to the highest degree possible when a ball is put in play. For me, as everyone around here probably knows, BIPs don’t involve “luck” or “chance,” they reflect, overall, the balance of the degree to which hitters and pitchers have each determined through skilled agency the outcome of the duel at the plate (and, of course, the fielder enters the picture, although I think the great majority of fielding plays are routine, manageable by most MLB fielders, and pitchers are not penalized when the routine is broken by an error). To discount this large portion of each pitcher’s work because the pitcher does not have complete control over the outcome, it seems to me, measures the quality of the pitcher’s work in the remainder, but not the value of his work as a whole, and it is value – played out in outcomes – which I think the MVP and CYA are about. It is also true, I think, that FIP erroneously assumes that because fielders are not involved, pitchers (for K and BB) and hitters (for HR) have exercised “complete” control. But if “luck” is allowed in the analysis, then pitchers are lucky when hitters swing poorly and hitters are lucky when pitchers deal one where it turns out they can park it. I see the fiction of “luck” applying as much to those scenarios as it does to the speed, spin, and direction of a BIP.
So here are the figures I have for all the starters who have been named as contenders so far here, and my lists for each league.
NL
…………………….ERA+……IP……….IP/GS……..Ave.GSc….8+IP……..6>IP…….K/9
Corbin………….137…….200……….6.1…………..60………..1…………9………11.1
deGrom……….216…….217……….6.8……………68………9…………..3………11.2
Freeland………164…….202……….6.1……………57……….0…………..8……….7.7
Nola…………….175…….212……….6.4……………63……….3…………..7……….9.5
Scherzer………168…….221……….6.7……………66……….5…………..3…..…12.2
Taillon………….121…….191………6.0……………56……….2…………11………8.4
1. deGrom
2. Scherzer
3. Nola
4. Corbin
5. Freeland
The first three seem to me just a matter of order. DeGrom prevails on almost every front, with Scherzer having a significant edge only in K/9. In particular, deGrom’s 9 outings of 8IP or more really stands out. Since CG are nearly extinct, this is now the number that best serves in their place, and deGrom laps the field. As for the last two, it’s toss up for me. I’d normally give ERA+ the most weight, but Freeland’s lower GSc and K/9 more than balanced that for me.
AL
…………………ERA+……IP………..IP/GS……Ave.GSc……8+IP……..6>IP…….K/9
Bauer……….198……..171……….6.3………….63………….4………….5……….11.5
Carrasco…..129……..187………..6.2………..58………….3………..10……….10.8
Clevenger…140……..200……….6.3………….58………….1………….7…………9.3
Cole………….145……..200……….6.3………….63………….1………….8………12.4
Kluber………151……..215……….6.5………….61……….…6………….6…………9.3
Sale………….207……..158……….5.9…………66……….…2…………..9……….13.5
Severino…..129………191……..6.0………….57…………3…………15………10.3
Snell…………219……..180……….5.8…………64…….……0…………12………11.0
Verlander…159……..214……….6.3…………64……….…3…………..6………12.2
1. Verlander
2. Sale
3. Snell
4. Bauer
5. Kluber
No one really dominates, according to the measures I’ve chosen. Sale prevails the quality measures of ERA+ (though Snell’s a little higher) and GSc. His low IP and IP/GS fit as a function of his unreal K/9 rate, but for me, the fact that a full one-third of his starts lasted under six innings is a real problem. Snell keeps pace with Sale in quality measures, but in his case, almost forty percent of his starts ended before the sixth inning did and his K/9 number, while good, is significantly lower than Sale’s, and doesn’t compensate for low IP to the same degree – and we really don’t know whether Snell really could pitch successfully through eight innings, because there is no example of him lasting that long. Moreover, even if he failed by a hair to qualify, Sale’s K/9 figure needs recognition because it is literally unprecedented. So I’ve given the edge to Sale.
Because of the starter-profile issue, I’ve gone with Verlander as my top pick and included Kluber on the list. The two are not far on quality measures, but Verlander’s advantage in significant, especially in average Game Score, and with Verlander’s very significant lead in K/9, given that their IP are equal, I’d say he took on more of the burden for his team overall by a comfortable margin. I could equally have flipped Bauer and Kluber, since Bauer is much higher on ERA+ and quality overall, but the 44 IP difference in their workloads (40, if you add Bauer’s relief stint) led me to place Kluber higher.
I do want to add one thought. The principal problem I think most of us are having with the CYA has been the small number of starting pitchers who carry a game into late innings. Here, I’ve balanced that against the strain of high K/9 numbers, which we might think of as shifting the form of a starter’s burden from eating innings to keeping the ball out of play while generating outs. I think this is fair as far as it goes, but it ignores the question of what accounts for the insanely high K/9 rates we’re now seeing. Is it pitcher skill or a function of batters making themselves easier SO targets by prioritizing barrels and shift-beating HRs? I have no doubt it’s some combination, but to the degree that batters are now easier to strike out overall because of the holes in their hitting approach, it seems less justified to see IP/GS and K/9 as straight up complements.
It will be interesting to see how the official CYA voting turns out—if the sportswriters buy into the surface narratives of Snell and deGrom (i.e., WAR and ERA+ for a pitcher with manufactured luck and a pitcher with very little) or if they look beyond at other pitchers’ records.
To me the AL is particularly messy because no one had a particularly outstanding year, Snell’s hyped stats notwithstanding. As mentioned in an earlier comment, Sale went missing for over six weeks and wasn’t a factor for another two or three. Kluber 2018 was not a continuation of Kluber 2017; the superiority of Snell’s performance is a partial illusion. Other pitchers mentioned by Doom and Bob Eno fail to thrill: Bauer because he missed almost the same calendar stretch for the Tribe as Sale did for the Bosox. His September starts look almost exactly like Sale’s: 1.1 IP, then 4, then 4. Basically a non-factor in Cleveland’s easy lope to the top of the worst division in baseball. Doug brings up Severino, but admits that his second half was a disaster. Gerrit Cole? He impresses me more than does Bauer, but, like so many contenders, he wasn’t a strong presence in the second half.
So—my AL ballot:
1) Justin Verlander—Not the first great pitcher to give up home runs. Even with that, he wins by default.
2) Cory Kluber—a workmanlike season.
3) Blake Snell—75% Snell, 25% Cash. I don’t foresee him matching this season, but who knows? The cutting edge of the future of pitching?
4) Blake Treinen—an incredible, hidden performance as a reliever for a team with no qualifying starters.
5) Gerrit Cole—an idiosyncratic pick over Bauer and Sale, perhaps, but he missed no time, and in his starts the Astros were 24-8, as good a reason, it seems to me, to think he was worthy of consideration as having two thirds of a good season might be for the other two.
The NL picture seems crafted by a different artist. First of all, there’s no question that three NL pitchers put up numbers worthy of CY consideration in any year. Secondly, there’s a fourth pitcher who trails the three only slightly and would probably win the AL award in a walk, were his team in the Junior Circuit. Here the difficulty is not in finding a default winner, but in choosing among several high caliber performances.
My NL ballot:
1) Max Scherzer—by a hair over
2) Jacob deGrom—by a hair over
3) Aaron Nola.
4) Kyle Freeland.
5) Miles Mikolas—kept the Cards in contention more than anyone else. In July-Aug-Sept he was 10-1; the team was 17-2 in games he started.
A note on names: Justin, Cory, Blake twice, Gerrit, Max, Jacob, Aaron, Kyle, Miles. I haven’t checked, but I’d guess that only Max and possibly Jacob in the form of Jake appear in baseball annals as first names prior to the last few years.
Some research:
The first Aaron was Aaron Clapp in 1879, but he played only one season. The first real career for an Aaron belonged to Aaron Boone (again, if we’re only talkinfirst st names; there was a decent player with Aaron as a last name, too).
The first Kyle is a little harder. Skinny Graham (1924-1929) had a real career and Kyle as a given mange, but is listed in encyclopedias as “Skinny” every time (to my knowledge, at least). That makes Kyle Abbott (1991-1996) the first Kyle.
I didn’t look up Max because I thought of Max Carey right away, so there’s an oldie.
Your assumption about the name Jacob is correct, if you don’t count “Jake” and you ignore a couple of one-season players. Bonus fact: Nellie Fox’s given first name was Jacob.
The first Blake was Blake Stein (1998-2002).
Cory Snyder played from 1986-1994.
With Justin, there are some nickname players and one-year players until Justin Thompson in 1996. He was an All-Star at one point, which I did not remember.
Miles and Gerrit are the first of their kind.
I think I got them all here. I’m a little surprised at the relative lack of Aaron and Jacob. Those names are very, very old.
Doom, on the relative lack of Aaron and Jacob, I think what you need to take into account is that neither of those names were used with any frequency in the general population. In 1918, Aaron was 196th, and I couldn’t find Jacob in the top 1000th. Probably most parents were traumatized by Dickens “Jacob Marley was dead….”
Just came across Aaron Robinson in the 1940s-50s, lost the Yankee catching job to Yogi. What I was pursuing in a haphazard way was players with genuine nicknames, not just diminutives or plays on their real names like Jo-Jo.
In 1937 I found without looking very hard, so I may have missed a few, 31 roster players who went by nicknames in the NL and 34 in the AL, The Tigers leading both leagues with 7, including the redoubtable Boots Poffenberger, a fifth starter who went 10-5.
Skip forward to 2007 and the 16 team NL: 7, four of them on the Braves.
Ah yes, Boots Poffenberger (a childhood nickname). His major league career was over before he turned 24, but he certainly made a name for himself during his short career, mostly for his colorful antics off the field. Check out his SABR biography.
One more: Signers of the Declaration of Independence, sorted by name:
Abraham Clark, Arthur Middleton, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Button Gwinnett, Benjamin Harrison, Carter Braxton, Caesar Rodney, Charles Carroll, Edward Rutledge, Elbridge Gerry, Francis Lewis, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Francis Hopkinson, James Smith, James Wilson, John Adams, John Hancock, John Witherspoon, John Hart, John Morton, John Penn, Josiah Bartlett, George Clymer, George Taylor, George Ross, George Read, George Wythe, George Walton, Joseph Hewes, Lewis Morris, Lyman Hall, Matthew Thornton, Oliver Wolcott, Philip Livingston, Richard Henry Lee, Robert Treat Paine, Roger Sherman, Richard Stockton, Robert Morris, Samuel Adams, , Stephen Hopkins, Samuel Huntington, Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone, Thomas Jefferson, , Thomas Nelson, Jr., Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Thomas McKean, William Floyd, William Whipple, William Ellery, William Hooper, William Williams, William Paca.
As a public service to my HHS friends, I did a little research on the athletic careers of some of these folks. Ben Franklin, nickname was “Electric” in his younger days, but was on the DL several times in his career because of gout. Benjamin and William Henry Harrison both went by the nicknames “Super-Pops”, Josiah Bartlett’s great great great great great great grandson grew up to be President on The West Wing, Elbridge Gerry was a utility infielder known as “The Contortionist” in his playing days because of his remarkable flexibility, John Hancock was a power-hitting corner infielder who gave it up to go into the insurance business, Francis Lightfoot Lee invented the stolen base…and Samuel Chase was known as a clubhouse lawyer (and later became the only Supreme Court Justice to be the subject of impeachment proceedings).
Mike L,
Probably my own visions of those names is influenced by the fact that I grew up in an area that was largely Jewish, which means I knew lots of Baby Boomers (and older!) individuals with those names. But then, that’s a very small segment of the US poplulation overall, and you’ll always find communities in which certain names are so prevalent as to seem universal even if, outside that community, they basically don’t exist.
As for your other list, the “Josiah Bartlett” on the Declaration, it was implied (if not explicitly stated) that Jed Bartlet on the show WAS a descendant of his namesake; I believe there was even talk of the change in last name spelling, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you the episode, nor even if it’s something that was on the show or just something I read.
I’m also now realizing that my earlier post was autocorrected like crazy; “name,” not “mange” in the second paragraph.
There was also some political thingy I wanted to write to you about (and which I’ve forgotten), but I hadn’t see you comment in a while and wasn’t sure you were still hanging around these parts. Good to know that you’ve still got eyes around here.
On West Wing, then-Governor Jed Bartlet brags to Leo about how he won 63% of the vote in his State….to which Leo responds along the lines of “Big deal, considering your ancestors founded it”
Still around. Still the sanest place in town. Other baseball sites comments look like political sites comments.
Mike L
Martin Sheen still thinks he’s the President…..
Paul…..it could work. Sheen was born in Dayton (Ohio is a bellwether state). Parents were Irish and Spanish legal immigrants, so you might have cross-cultural appeal and blue collar. He is on the short side, a negative, but good on camera. Good hair. Polio survivor. Played both JFK and RFK. Tanned and ready.
He’ll be 80 at the next election. A little old, no? Bob Dole (73) and John McCain (72) are the only people over 70 to run (non-re-election). I get that you were jesting, but that seems like a pretty strong negative, particularly given his MS – no wait, that was the president he played, not actually Sheen himself. Of course, it looks like Bernie Sanders may be giving it another go, and he’s basically the same age as Sheen, so what do I know?
It’s a good point, but of course I don’t know how many potential candidates the Democrats have who will be under 80….
Right……and the Indian woman from Massachusetts could be his VP
From 1871-1992 there were 4 players with a first name of Aaron. Since then there have been 36 more.
Thanks to all for their research.
NL – no doubt about the top 3
1) Nola – was consistent all year and the source of the false narrative that the mediocre Phillies were contenders
2) deGrom – fantastic year….35 years ago we wouldn’t have noticed due to the W-L bias
3) Scherzer- typical Scherzer season…kind of faded in second half
4) Freeland – impressive home ERA in the cow pasture
5) Corbin – really disappointed the way AZ faded. But, Corbin was great
AL
1) Verlander – nobody really has a clear edge. But, I really dig his wife
2) Kluber – a “battler” and “workhorse”. Really pushed through his struggles
3) Cole – this is what was expected of him from the day he was drafted out of UCLA (University of Crumpettville at Lake Agnes)
4) Snell – the greatest part-time performance since Gibson in Sept. 1967….would have just liked to see him “eat innings”
5) Bauer – just like Snell but at least the injuries provide an excuse
I think the biggest compliment that can be paid to Corey Kluber is that no one is particularly impressed by a season of 151 ERA+, a .991 WHIP, and a 6.53 K/BB ratio in a league leading 215 innings because like other indisputable top tier pitchers (Scherzer, Kershaw, Verlander) it’s simply what is expected of him now.
Well said, CC.
The Hidden Nola Advantage:
I’ve been trying to figure it out: why does baseball-reference love Aaron Nola SO much? Jacob deGrom was better by basically every conceivable measure, both at a macro level and a game level – ERA, FIP, innings, strikeouts, HR, BB, etc., etc. Yes, deGrom had the better home park and Nola had the worse defense… that should tighten thing a little. But not enough for them to FLIP, I wouldn’t think.
And that’s when I discovered it. While looking at the two of them, I noticed that the ERA gap (0.67) was pretty large: it works out to 15 R in 5 extra IP for deGrom. However, here’s the trick: deGrom gave up 7 unearned runs; Nola only gave up 1.
The trick with unearned runs is that they’re stupid. That’s not how things should be counted. Maybe, once upon a time, that was the best way to do things. Even now, it’s not so bad most of the time. But we have better ways of adjusting for defense than arbitrary decisions; we don’t HAVE to have opinions and judgment calls in baseball – it is, in fact, they opposite of all other baseball statistics, in that it doesn’t present a “fact,” but rather an “opinion.” Depending on the official scorer, calls can be very different. Maybe Nola had less forgiving official scorers than deGrom or Scherzer; should that cost him a Cy Young if he earned it? What if the gap between the deGrom and Nola isn’t 0.67 runs/9, but is rather 0.43 R/9? That’s significantly tighter, and I could see it making a difference. Baseball-Reference WAR uses RA9, rather than ERA or FIP. Fangraphs uses FIP. In doing my own calculations, I used ERA and FIP in equal balance. I fear that, in so doing, I may have taken away from Aaron Nola his biggest selling point.
I don’t think I’m going to re-do my ballot, but I think there might be cause to give Nola a little more credit. Particularly if there are voters still out there who haven’t cast their ballots (and you still have a little under a week to do so), you might want to consider it. Maybe it’s still not enough to top deGrom – that’s my instinct – but it might be enough to top Scherzer. Go ahead and see what you make of it.
Doom,
” “But we have better ways of adjusting for defense than arbitrary decisions; we don’t HAVE to have opinions and judgment calls in baseball – it is, in fact, they opposite of all other baseball statistics, in that it doesn’t present a “fact,” but rather an “opinion.” Depending on the official scorer, calls can be very different.” ”
By the same token, when Beltre ranges to his right and makes a play in the hole, somebody at Baseball Information Systems makes a judgment call that the play witnessed was either routine or extraordinary. And, if you’ve got a league full of say, 7-8 potential Gold Glovers at 3B, I guess it is a routine play
Actually, “Beltre ranges to his LEFT and makes a play in the hole”….ughhhh
Well, if you assume that BIS data is the best way to adjust for defense, then you’re right. When you assume that UZR or TZ or DRA is doing a better job, then that works, too. Or a simple adjustment like looking at the difference between ground balls and fly balls (which is not really a judgment call, I don’t think) can cover for it. And, frankly, once the WAR systems are able to use StatCast data, this is all going to be pretty much moot, because we’re going to be able to see how likely a player was to make a particular play (although the jury on how to apportion credit/blame for such things is still out, and makes for a fascinating mathematical question).
Also, Paul, excellent point on the number of great defensive players out there these days: it does sometimes seem like the spectacular is routine. There are a lot of great players out there!
And, how about the 3b with a cannon arm who nails the runner by a whisker? Is he going to get credit for that in a league full of guys who throw 90+ MPH across the diamond?
And, lastly, somebody has to ‘program’ statcast to interpret the play and that “GIGO” is conjecture/opinion as well, no?
Doom, I think you’re making an error in your analysis. Baseball stats are loaded with results of “opinions,” rather than “facts.” Every pitch called by an umpire, other than a swinging strike/foul is the result of an opinion (and we can now watch at home and see how often those opinions are — and presumably have always been — erroneous). Every checked swing, HBP, fair/foul calls, fielder/runner interference calls, balks, etc., etc. — all these are the results of umpire opinions. This is fully baked into the stats for MLB’s first century and more. From the point that instant replay and appeals are introduced, it is sometimes the case that umpire opinions on these cases are superseded by the “facts” — which are just the opinions of others with technological aids to allow them a closer look than umpires are granted. Moreover, this sort of thing can apply to hits as well: when a hitter slides safely into second with a double, it’s tempting to say that it’s a clean fact that he hit a double, but if the tag was close, it’s only opinion that separates it from a single + baserunning mishap (which, if we had the vision of a deity, we might know to be the “fact”).
The only differences in the case of errors are that the opinion belongs not to an umpire, but to an official scorer, and that the opinion does not affect game outcomes, but only the assignation of credit/blame. (Which, historically — especially in no-hit/one-hit games — may have led to biased decisions that run counter to the scorer’s actual opinion.) Many scorer decisions may be arguable (like many umpire-called balls and strikes), but they can also be clear: when a Knoblauch takes a routine grounder and throws it to a box-seat fan down the first-base line we can see without reasonable doubt that we have a play where the batter deserves no credit and the pitcher no blame. We know (although theoretically we only opine) that it was the fielder’s misplay that overwhelmingly determined the safety of the runner. You can argue, like Bill James, that the category “error” is poorly configured and poorly applied, and there are lots of unclear, borderline cases, but I think it is very hard to maintain that there is no material difference between a hit and an error worthy of influencing the records of the pitcher, hitter, and fielder.
So I think your division between fact and opinion in baseball stats is problematic. Sometimes the fact in the record books (the sliding double) may not have occurred, and often the “opinion” of the scorer merely records a prima facie fact that no sane person (even a deconstructionist) would doubt. I’m all in favor of using technology to arrive at better opinions, reflecting a closer look at the evidence, but those are still opinions, and this will be true using StatCast technology — as Paul E points out, the software designers program the way video translates into probability calculations, and the statisticians who decide where to place probability thresholds for hit, error, or any new categories in between, will become the hidden arbiters of opinion in the realm of assigning credit and blame among fielders, hitters, and pitchers.
Ad for deGrom, I’d noted those UER and looked at some cases; now I’ve gone back and reviewed each one, including available video of six. One of the problems with UER is that the pitcher is not charged anything, when, in almost every case, he bears significant responsibility because he allowed at least some runners to reach base and/or advance other runners before the error occurred. In deGrom’s seven cases, he was responsible for putting men on base in all of them — the error merely determined that they would score. However, deGrom’s degree of responsibility varies: in six of the seven cases he allowed multiple men on base independent of errors (sometimes EBHs were involved, other times multiple singles; yet other times, a single and BB — all perhaps deserving different weights); in one case, he allowed only a BB (and we might blame him, at least partially, for an SB). In all cases, without the error, no run would have scored, but it’s equally true that without the baserunners deGrom let on it would not have scored. WAR is an improvement, because it does factor in UER, but not, I believe, by assessing specific degrees of responsibility in each case.
One of those seven deGrom cases is particularly interesting. On August 23, playing the Giants, deGrom walked Steven Dugger to lead off the third. Dugger stole second and advanced to third on an infield out. Then deGrom threw a high hard pitch that Evan Longoria swung at. The ball somehow bounded off the well positioned glove of catcher Devin Mesoraco, who was charged with a passed ball, Dugger racing home. So deGrom’s sins were small and his penalty was large. But, in fact, the run never should have scored. Video makes it clear to my entirely objective eye and ear (and to the announcers’) that Longoria actually tipped the ball, making an audible sound and accounting for a slight deflection that directed the ball just out of the pocket of Mesoraco’s mitt. The Mets were aware of the umpire’s error, but the call was not appealable and the run scored. This was a good example of a non-“factual” error “opinion” by the scorer (PB rather than WP — or steal of home) that was clearly a false opinion, but the reason for it was because the rules did not permit the scorer to reflect the true “fact”: E-Home Plate Ump.
I’m only going to respond to one aspect of this, because you wrote a very long (and well-written) comment: fact vs. opinion.
You bring up balls and strikes. Yes, it’s true that balls and strikes are opinions… or rather, they’re facts in which the umpires imperfect judgment, which could be construed (not imprecisely) as opinion, is factored into the game. That’s true.
However, it’s also incomplete. It’s incomplete because the umpires opinion becomes a fact once that judgment is made. Let’s say it’s a 3-2 count on Andrew Benintendi. He doesn’t swing at the last pitch, as it was 2 inches outside. The umpire calls it a strike – he’s out. He doesn’t then get to walk to first base and say, “Yeah, but if you’d have called it right, I’d be here, so let’s just move on with the inning with me here now.”
That is, in effect, what Unearned Runs are, aren’t they? It’s a scorer deciding, “Well, that shouldn’t’ve happened, so let’s just pretend it didn’t, okay?” But that’s not what happens with an umpires call. The umpires call actually changes the play on the field, and so, even though it’s a judgment, must be treated as fact. An official scorer’s call changes the narrative of the game, but not the facts of play on the field. Those are, in my opinion, radically different things. I would rather see ALL the runs a pitcher gives up, then generally just make an adjustment for the quality of his defense (including the knowledge, as in your example, that you might have Chuck Knoblauch occasionally sailing throws into the second deck) than have an official scorer tell me that the home run the NEXT batter hit somehow doesn’t count, because IF Knoblauch had made the play, there would’ve been three outs, and that home run hitter never would’ve come up. That kind of what-if-ism is best left to my other hobby – comic books – and left out of baseball analysis. Just my opinion; you’re certainly free to disagree and think that the way it’s done now is better. But I don’t think it’s arguable that baseball is moving more and more in the direction of judging fewer plays to be errors (even apart from the general trend toward better fielding, which is also reducing the error rate).
Even worse is the error that leads eventually, but not immediately, to a run. In that situation, the further assumption made in deciding whether subsequent runs are earned is that everything that followed the error would also have followed in exactly the same way even if the error hadn’t occurred. An absurd assumption, but one that gets baked into a pitcher’s ERA.
I would prefer to have RA become the standard measuring stick, with a new metric, call it Adjusted RA, that apportions unearned runs among a team’s pitchers based on a combination of workload, quality of pitching and team defense (I did a piece on this topic several years back that looked at which pitchers were most or least effective in preventing unearned runs, by comparing actual unearned runs allowed with apportioned unearned runs allowed. I can post the links again if you’re interested.)
Thanks to Doom for the thoughtful response, and Doug for adding to it.
In the current age, the meaning of “fact” tends to wobble a lot, but in the usage I prefer, an umpire’s decision cannot alter the fact of what occurred on the field, it just creates some new facts: what the umpire’s call was and what the game record shall be. I don’t think the sentence, “The pitcher threw a strike but the umpire called it a ball” lacks any coherence, because I think most people would agree that the fact of the pitch location is one thing and the ump’s call another. Those are two different facts, and the second one does not alter the first, it creates a second fact (which is why that sentence cogently makes two different and non-contradictory assertions of fact). The umpire’s call is, indeed, determinative of how the game will proceed, but the ump was nevertheless mistaken about the fact of the pitch’s location: his opinion was in error. (In the example I mentioned above, the fact that ump ruled deGrom’s pitch to Longoria a passed ball cannot change the fact that Longoria’s bat made audible contact with the ball and slightly deflected it — the ump can’t make those facts unhappen.)
I have no disagreement about the different role scorer’s decisions play, since they don’t affect game outcomes, only player and team stats. In that universe, I think the scorer’s decisions create new facts just as umpire decisions do in their universe. The fact/opinion dynamic seems to me the same.
Like Doom, I also want us to see all the runs a pitcher gives up, and we do. Every pitcher’s game and season lines record that information. I agree also that the rules governing ERA are imperfect, but that does not have to do with scorer decisions: it is a product of rulemaker choices. It’s the rules that require us to let pitchers off the hook for all runs scored after two outs if an earlier error forfeited an out, not official scorers and their opinions about errors.
I don’t think the rules governing ERA should be changed because that would disrupt the continuity of baseball stats over history in a key area. However, I think a better measure can and should be devised and added to stat lines going forward. I wouldn’t base the stat on team season fielding records, inferring from them the quality of defense behind a given pitcher on a given day. (WAR actually does that already — but I’d still like to see your earlier work on this, Doug.) I prefer a stat that charges the pitcher with shares of direct responsibility for runners scoring through errors, based on the way the pitcher has contributed towards that outcome (I spelled that out a bit earlier). In that system, fully “unearned” runs would be rare, and only runners whose presence or advancement on the basepaths was directly the result of errors would be “discounted” from the pitcher’s total runs allowed to yield a new type of adjusted run average.
Here are the links to the Unearned Runs research posts.
Part 1
Part 2
There is a link in Part 2 to a spreadsheet on Google Drive. If you find that the link does not work for you, the spreadsheet may be downloaded here.
Thanks, Doug. This looks like great stuff — I’m sorry I seem to have been on an HHS break when you posted it. I’ll be working through it over the next few days (starting tonight!).
The Dodgers’ win in game 4 was the first of this post-season without an extra-base hit. Only one such post-season game in 2017 and 2016, and none in 2015. Most such games in a post-season is 3, in 2012 and 1918.
To Doug’s point, not only were there not extra base hits; there were no extra base hits on agame-and-a-half, because that game went 13 innings.
After tonight’s game/slaughter and even after letting my temper cool, I do want to say that I think Manny Machado should’ve at least been ejected, if not suspended, due to attempting to injure Jesus Aguilar in Game 4. I find it very upsetting.
Doom, I think it will take something totally egregious, and more, for someone to get ejected in the playoffs. The league (and TV) certainly has a desire to see players play.
I think that’s correct. Mike. But as a Dodger fan and a long-time admirer of Machado’s skills, I feel his conduct on the field in this series is flattening the excitement of winning, and I’m sympathetic to Doom’s complaint. That said, I don’t think the object of Machado’s contact with Aguilar was to injure him. I think he was trying to push him off the bag, just as I think his late grab of Arcia’s leg at second the other day was an ill-timed and ill-executed attempt to break up the double play.
Bob, my reaction as well when Clemens threw the piece of the bat at Piazza in the 2000 WS. In fact, my reaction just about any time Clemens took the mound for the Yankees.
Piazza vs Clemens 25 22 8 1 0 4 10 2 2 .364 .440 .955 1.395
Small sample size but, with 4 homers in 25 PA’s , I have to believe that the big Texan was a wee bit frustrated with the catcher’s success against him. The above stats are from b-ref and, I believe, regular season only.
sorry….those stats include post-season
At the very least, I think there should be a hearing for Machado to explain his actions, and then a decision on a possible suspension. But, don’t think it’s something that an umpire can or should address in the moment.
Evidently, Machado felt Aguilar was showing him up by remaining on the bag after taking the throw. Don’t understand why he would think that, and certainly no excuse for attempting to injure another player. But, it was odd that Aguilar remained on the bag since first basemen usually pop off the bag the instant they make the catch.
…no complaints from this crowd regarding Joe West interjecting himself into the BRS-HOU game like a WWE professional wrestling manager?
I think the replay officials were correct in letting the call stand, as there really wasn’t definitive video showing whether Betts reached into the crowd, or the crowd reached into the field of play. But, I don’t like the call on the field assuming the catch would have been made; that’s an awfully big assumption on a catch that was the furthest thing from a routine play. A safer and more defensible call would have been a double, as Betts prevented the ball going into the seats, which I think the replay confirmed as the ball appeared to hit his glove and not the fans’ hands.
That game had everything, though, and could have turned on so many close plays near the end: Springer’s almost catch at the wall; Houston’s double play that wasn’t; Betts throwing out Kemp; Reddick’s catch; and Benintendi’s catch. Boston was fortunate to escape with the victory, but they made the big plays and were clutch with their two out hitting, so probably earned whatever luck they benefited from.
I don’t like the process much. If a fielder is interfered with within the “field” of course, fan interference. But reaching into the stands while fans are ostensibly trying to catch a home run ball? I’m less sanguine, particularly because we don’t apply a empirical truth standard, but give the call on the field by the umpire preference. Imagine this had happened at Fenway. Red Sox fan reaches for ball, “interferes” with Betts when Betts is clearly in stands, and turns what would have had to have been a great play into an automatic out.
Without the perfect angle, the play can be argued endlessly, but as I watched camera angle after camera angle, it seemed to me that the only fan who might have reached over the fence was one who did not come into contact with Betts at all (the guy in white gripping the wall). The fans who did come into contact with Betts appear to me to be fans whom Betts came into contact with. As I understand the rule, when you reach into the stands there is no expectation that you have “right of way.” So, great as Betts’ play would have been (and there’s no doubt he would have caught the ball), I think he has to accept the hazards of the stands.
Doug’s compromise makes sense, and I agree that there is no clear indication of a fan touching the ball itself (which would make it dead), but I don’t know whether or not there is a rule determining whether, once a fielder’s glove has been manipulated by a fan, a ball ricocheting as a result of that contact is alive or dead.
Bob, good points. I have no idea whether Betts would have caught the ball but for the contact, but the interference call makes that moot. Of course, the only way around this is something that cannot happen–an eight foot empty zone between the wall and the stands.
The ball is still alive even if a fielder or his equipment has made contact with a fan.
In that case, I don’t see any reason why your proposed solution wouldn’t have been the right call.
Here are my lists. And a special thanks t Bob Eno for making my job easier.
AL
1) Verlander
2) Snell
3) Sale
4) Cole
5) Kluber
NL
1) deGrom
2) Scherzer
3) Nola
4) Corbin
5) Freeland
Thanks, Richard. Usually it’s the other way round.
Congrats to the Red Sox for dethroning the champs. Other teams to win games 3-5 on the road in an LCS: 1991 Twins, 1996 Yankees and 2005 White Sox. All three went on to win the World Series.
Here are some stats, a whole lot of stats, from two NL pitchers in 2018:
GS: 33—32
IP: 200—200.2
H: 162—186
R: 70—70
ER: 70—63
HR: 15—16
BB: 48—29
SO: 246—146
BF: 800—808
ERA+: 137—137
FIP: 2.47—3.28
WHIP: 1.050—1.071
H9: 7.3—8.3
BB9: 2.2—1.3
SO9: 11.1—6.5
SO/W: 5.13—5.03
W-L:11-7—18-4
W-L team: 17-16—24
ERA: 3.15—2.83
The two are so close in most categories that they are virtually identical. The first is far superior in strikeouts, FIP, and (un)earned runs and has an edge in H9 which he loses nearly all of in BB9. The second hold the lead in allowing (fewer) walks, in ERA, and by a huge margin in wins versus losses and team wins versus losses.
I’ll still take Mikolas over Corbin. To me a telling point is that in 2/3 more of an inning on the season, with a hundred fewer strikeouts, Mikolas allowed the same number of runs as the strikeout wizard. In our times, it seems to me, the guy who gets batters out without blowing them away is the more remarkable specimen.
Interesting… it seems to me that the guy who relied on his fielders to get outs an extra 100 times got those outs, and I don’t see how he deserves the credit for it over them. That’s my take on it.
Seems we’ve had this discussion before. Is the game pitcher vs. batter or team vs. team? It so happens that Corbin actually benefited far more by his team’s defense than Mikolas did—the Cards, in fact, had a retro fielding % of .978, making ten errors on balls in play behind the team ace, while Corbin suffered only one fielding flub when hitters connected against him.
Some other fun facts: Corbin, a lefty, allowed 10 stolen bases; Mikolas, a righty, 2. Mikolas developed a 0-2 count against batsmen 247 times or 30.6 %, Corbin 212 times or 26.4%. 24% of the hits Mikolas allowed went for extra bases; Corbin? 36%. In the incredible 12 starts where Corbin got 2 runs or less of support, his ERA was an even 3.00; in the 7 starts when Mikolas faced the same obstacle his ERA was 2.09. In Corbin’s 3-5 run support games, of which their were 13, his ERA was 3.17; In the eight games Mikolas has 3-5 runs behind him his ERA was 2.55. In their 6+ runs starts Corbin’s ERA was 3.33; Mikolas’s was 3.27.
What I see, Doom, is that deciding the question of who was the better pitcher of the two is far more complicated than just grasping onto a couple of stats and saying that their importance overrides whatever else is extant. My view is still that the CY should take into account at least some element of value to the team and the season the team played. Mikolas’s July-August-September performance was at the heart of the Card’s aborted run for the division. Corbin had nothing comparable going for him.To me that swings the balance slightly in Mikolas’s favor. To you the small edge overall that Corbin may have statistically (although I think they’re about even), makes Corbin your man. I’m the one person minority here, but I’ll stick with Mikolas, and what does it matter anyway, since were’s talking fourth or fifth position on the ballot?
Certainly, we’ve had this discussion before. And I would argue, to your last point, that the reason we discuss a down-ballot Cy Young vote is that, well, it’s fun to discuss a down-ballot Cy Young vote. But as to the question of whose defense benefited them more, you’re welcome to believe that Jhonny Peralta and JJ Hardy were better defensive players than Ozzie Smith, but I just can’t buy that. I don’t see how fielding % is relevant.
Mikolas faced 808 batters. He struck out 146, walked 29, and allowed 16 HR. That makes 617 balls in play. He allowed 186 hits (most in the NL). That means his defense turned batted balls into outs 69.85% of the time.
Corbin faced 800 batters. He struck out 246, walked 48, and allowed 15 HR. That makes 491 balls in play. He allowed 162 hits. That means his defense turned batted balls into outs 67.01% of the time.
They’re close, but Mikolas’ fielders plainly turned batted balls into outs more frequently, which means his team defense was more of a benefit to him.
What may be the culprit in both of these cases driving Mikolas’ better ERA is actually sequencing – something I haven’t looked into with the two of them. How much of that is skill and how much is random is very much up for debate, and that may really be the driving force here. So that’s another wrinkle to consider.
Your chart forgot to list Cardinals losses in Mikolas’ games. The team was 24-8 in his games.
The records – both for the pitchers and the teams – were quite different. I think it’s also important to point out that Mikolas got 171 R of support in 32 games (5.34/G), while Corbin got 126 in 33 games (3.82/G), and that the run support alone, absent any actual difference in effectiveness, would basically describe their difference in record.
Average NL teams this year scored 4.37 R/G. St. Louis played in parks in which runs were scored at 97% of that level, so we can change 4.37 to 4.24. At that level, we’d expect a team that scored 5.34 R/G to go 19.6-12.4 in 32 games.
The Diamondbacks played in parks that INCREASED scoring by 3% this year, so we’d expect the Diamondbacks to be playing in a 4.50 R environment. That means we’d expect them to go 13.8-19.2. They actually went 17-16, and improvement of 2.7 games.
We expected Mikolas’ teams, with no discussion of the actual pitching, to be six wins and seven losses better than Corbin’s teams in their starts. They were actually 7 wins and 8 losses better. If you want to credit that game-and-a-half to Mikolas’ pitching (again, without any discussion of defense, etc.), you’re welcome to do that. But even in the W-L column, they’re not really very far apart, and I expect it’s a lot closer to a game-and-a-half difference, rather than the FIVE game difference their records show.
Well, I can’t say I was happy with how the NLCS ended. But I will say this was probably the most fun Brewers season I can remember. It was a lot of fun, and this season can’t be considered anything but a success. Expectations will be higher next year, but that’s next year’s problem. For now, it was a fun ride.
Doom,
That 10/3/18 Powerball drawing foretold it all:
41 53 59 63 66 …..and the PB “3” might just indicate a 3rd WS winner in 2018 for the Dodgers after “59” and “63”? Should have bet the house.
In the words of Ronnie Isley, “You can’t fight the power”
Doom, fantastic season anyway. As for what’s next, this Yankee fan looks at a Red Sox-Dodgers Series with as much enthusiasm as a Patriots-Cowboys one.
As a Dodger fan since the ‘50s I was naturally happy to see them win the pennant last night. But I’ve been captured by Doom’s enthusiasm and the Brewers’ team personality, and feel that if they’d extended their terrific run to the Series it would have been a better story.
I guess I just don’t get Counsell’s use of his pitching staff. Taking out your starters after a few innings, when they appear to still to be effective, just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I get that your best pitchers are in the bullpen, but as good as they are, after a team has seen them regularly for 5 or 6 games, they’re going to make better swings against them, regardlees of whether the pitchers are tired or not.
I don’t get it either. I would’ve done things differently, but then, I wasn’t in the dugout, so I’m hoping that something I don’t know was affecting it.
Thanks for the kind words, Bob!
FYI – 1.89 is less than 1.98
I wrote this post about a week before the season ended, so some of the facts changed. I tried to update them all, but I guess I missed this one.
Personally I would vote a guy named Blake in 1st and a guy named Blake in 2nd. It doesn’t matter which order to me. But Blake Treinen was historically awesome this season. Find all the guys in baseball history with 80+ IP and lower than 0.420 OPS against. It’s only been done one other time… ever. (Eric Gagne in 2003 when he won the Cy Young)
Please feel free to post a ballot, then! Anyone can vote. Deadline is 11:59:59 Wednesday night, so you have (and anyone else has) a couple days left to get a ballot posted!
I’ve agonized over the AL Cy Young long enough…..Had a really tough time deciding between the dominant numbers of Snell versus the higher usage of Verlander. I’ve probably flipped my top two 6 times over the last week and if you ask me tomorrow I might switch back. It is hard to quantify how much more valuable Verlander’s 33.67 innings are. If Snell had pitched the same amount of innings as Verlander at the same quality as his first 180, he would have saved his team 15 more earned runs than JV. That seems pretty significant, and yet, the very fact that his team didn’t allow him to pitch deeper into games suggests they did not feel he was able to maintain that level. I’ve appreciated the conversations above and on the MVP thread — they have swayed me.
[b]AL Cy Young:[/b]
1. Justin Verlander – ate lots of innings for a team in a pennant race (probably my deciding factor), and hardly got any run support. 76% of his starts were quality (led AL), far outpacing Snell. Allowed only 3
stolen bases all year, tops among AL contenders. And, he should have won in 2016. 🙂
2. Blake Snell – I would have no qualms with anyone putting him first.
3. Corey Kluber – also produced 76% quality starts (and led the league in innings). Between Rdrs and fielding percentage, he seems to be easily the best defender among the contenders. And, like Verlander, Kluber was not easy to run on (4 SB allowed).
4. Gerrit Cole – Cole gets the edge over Bauer since he has more innings, a higher K rate and a lower WHIP.
5. Trevor Bauer – I could have easily included Chris Sale, but decided that since he didn’t even meet the qualifier standard for innings, I would not consider him. You could argue it is an arbitrary cutoff, but it exists.
NL Cy Young:
1. Jacob DeGrom – DIdn’t spend nearly as much time on NL ballot; don’t think it was needed. Incredible season that will be underappreciated because he got no help from his offense. 88% quality starts! I think only Gibson in ’68 and Gooden in ’85 had over 90% quality starts.
2. Max Scherzer – As a Tigers fan, I can’t help but feel a little bitter over all the former Tigers who have been successful after leaving Detroit. Think about the rotation you could make of former Tigers: Verlander, Scherzer, Porcello, Fister, Fiers in the rotation. Andrew Miller, Justin Wilson and Fernando Rodney in the pen for good measure. And now a lineup including J.D. Martinez, Justin Upton, Ian Kinsler, Eugenio Suarez, Yoenis Cespedes, Cameron Maybin…I’m just going off the top of my head. Maybe every team can make a list like that, but I’m guessing that a team of former Tigers would be pretty tough to beat. Anyone care to try? Anyway, Scherzer is great and probably the best hitter among NL contenders to boot. It took a historic season to dethrone him (though he’s probably still the safest bet among starting pitchers in the game today).
3. Aaron Nola – great season, but I think he falls short of the top 2.
4. Miles Mikolas – surprisingly effective. Only allowed 2 stolen bases.
5. Kyle Freeland – not sure if I’m underrating him or overrating him due to Coors Field. But it sure seems like the best Rockies pitcher season I can remember since Ubaldo Jimenez. Plus, it felt wrong to have a Cy Young top 5 without a single pitcher from a playoff team…
http://www.astroland.net/allrookielineup.html
Again, off the beaten path, however, I figured i’d post the above link. There has been a lot of discussion on this site on more than one occasion about the “youngest battery” and I think the two totaled less than 37 years in age (Milt Pappas and ?). But, interestingly enough, the Houston Astros starting lineup AVERAGED 19 years, 3 months on 9/27/1963 in a 10-3 loss to the Mets
The ? is 17 year-old Frank Zupo in 1957.
All 9 Houston starters in the 1963 game were under 22 years of age. Second most is 7 such starters, by Houston two days later. The next youngest lineup was 7 starters under age 23 by the Philadelphia A’s on Sep 10, 1919, when the A’s scored 6 times in the 9th inning to walk off the Tigers 6-5 (the other two A’s starters, aged 23 and 24, were both making their major league debuts, while Detroit fielded their regular lineup, including Cobb, Heilmann, Bobby Veach and Donie Bush).
Doug–I wonder if modern service time considerations would discourage teams from giving too many rookies too much roster time, especially in what amounts to garbage time for bad teams?
Probably true. Ironically, in the bonus baby days of the ’50s and ’60s, the opposite was true; rules then in place required teams to give their top young prospects a prescribed minimum playing time in order to hang onto them.
I didn’t think the bonus baby rule actually required playing time, just roster space. Those may fundamentally amount to the same thing, since, why would a team use a roster space and then not use the player? But maybe I’m wrong about it and some amount of playing was necessary. Just not sure.
A few famous bonus babes: Four Hall of Famers: Kaline, Killer, Koufax, Catfish. But a lot of busts as well.
Mike L
And, I believe the Dodgers tried to hide bonus baby Roberto Clemente in the minors and ended up losing him in the Rule 5 draft
Including Clemente there were 62 official bonus babies, by my count from information on the Baseball Almanac list. Out of the 62, five made the HOF, the four Mike L notes plus Roberto. of the remaining 57, these are the players who accumulated 10+ WAR:
Johnny Antonelli—31.2
Lindy McDaniel—28.7
Bob Bailey—28.7
Clete Boyer—27.6
Billy O’Dell—22.5
John Romano—20.9
Moe Drabowski—19.9
Mike McCormick—17.3
Jim Pagliaroni—15.8
Joey Jay—15.6
The remaining 47? Only someone like me who was baseball crazy in the 1950s would recognize even a few of the names: Wayne Causey, Jerry Kindall, Von McDaniel, Lindy’s younger brother, Steve Boros, who managed later, Joey Amalfitano, Reno Bertoia.
All those poor young incompetents clogging up team rosters. What a great idea.
Warning: long personal story/Bonus Baby digression/name-dropping post below.
Only three Bonus Babies had $100K+ bonuses. The third-highest (the only bonus for exactly $100K) went to a fellow named John DeMerit. DeMerit went to Port Washington High School in Port Washington, WI. I grew up just around 30 miles from Port Washington; they were in our conference and we played them in every sport. John DeMerit had a classmate named Frank Gahan, who grew up to be a high school track coach. In fact, he became my high school track coach (for the throwers; I love throwing the shot, and have coached at local high schools for the last couple of years).
Anyway, Frank told me once about John DeMerit. I think sometimes, we forget about what special people these guys are. John DeMerit was a 16-letterman in high school – football, basketball, track, and baseball (which is a summer sport for some schools in Wisconsin and a spring sport for others, so there are multiple state champs at each level each year, which can be very confusing). When I was in high school (over a decade ago now), he was still the ONLY 16-letterman in Port Washington history. He held some never-will-be-broken school records, like in the 100-yard dash (which obviously won’t be broken, because they don’t run the event anymore). Frank told me how the only comparable high school athlete he’d met in 50 years of attending events in Wisconsin was a good friend of his daughter, Michael Bennett, who probably could’ve been an Olympic sprinter (on a relay if a 100 runner or possibly solo in the 200; he took curves really well), had he focused his energies on track and field, which was Bennett’s superior sport. Anyway, Frank told me that DeMerit’s best sport was actually basketball, but in the mid-50s, there wasn’t really any money in it, and he wound up with a $100K bonus for the hometown team, so I think it’s fair to say that he made a pretty darn good choice.
DeMerit was also the 8th-to-last ever player from the (now defunct) University of Wisconsin baseball team. The last person (or tied as the last person, anyway) to play at UW who made the majors was a journeyman reliever named Lance Painter. He attended the same high school I did, though much earlier. He is one of only two alumni of my high school to have a picture up depicting their professional accomplishments. Skip Kendall (the golfer) is the other. Oprah is not one of the people so honored (though she’s not technically an alumna, as she only attended for one year; she was two years behind my dad and in my uncle’s class).
Other random professional athlete I know: I used to sit next to Whitey Skoog in church, and he invented the jump shot (or, at least, he’s one of the people credited with it). He’s still alive, though he’s in an assisted living facility now, as he’s in his 90s now. Nice guy; you’d never know he was pseudo-famous unless you knew, you know?
I believe you’re right on the requirement, Doom, but not on the assumption that teams would play their bonus babies. In his two seasons on the roster, bonus baby Tom Qualters pitched a total of 0.1 innings. If you’re shaky on your knowledge of Qualters’ career, it’s because he fell into the trap many of the babies encountered — two years not only sitting on the bench, but foregoing any realistic opportunity to develop the skills that made you a pheenom prospect. Qualter’s hung up his spikes five years later with 50 IP and an 0-0 record.
There was a certain logic to the bonus rule: it did make wealthy teams pay a price for buying talent other teams couldn’t afford. But the effect on those young players was awful, twiddling their thumbs next to pros who detested the fact that these kids had raked in more in bonus than they earned in multiple years, and that they also deprived the team of a player ready to contribute.
One baby who was probably ready to play regularly from the get-go was Clemente, which made it doubly idiotic for the Dodgers to risk losing him by starting him in the minors, where he’d be unprotected. Ironically, two former Dodger manager/execs, Sukeforth (Pirate scout–he’d had a 1.000 W-L Pct. as Brooklyn skipper) and Rickey (Pirate GM) were the ones who figured out what was up and picked the Dodgers’ pocket. Had they not, imagine how the Dodgers could have transitioned as their great ’50s players began to age. (At my first MLB game, two years later, as I sat in the right field grandstand at Ebbets Field, Clemente was in right for Pittsburgh — but, alas, I had eyes only for my idol, Carl Furillo, and I can’t really say that I noticed Clemente at all.)
As I’ve mentioned here on another occasion several years ago, as a teen in 1961 I was part of a group from my league invited to appear on a Chicago TV program in which big leaguers in town plus a Cub or two gave on-field hints to young players. In this instance the visiting player was Roberto Clemente and the two Cubs were Richie Ashburn in his post-Phillies years and Bob Will, who had a great minor league career, but not a great Major League one.
We were lucky without knowing it, being there actually on the diamond of Wrigley Field with two future Hall of Famers—three, if you count program host Jack Brickhouse.
Didn’t realize the bonus babies had to stay on the roster for the whole season. Talk about a lose/lose situation: a roster spot given to a player who’s not ready and thus doesn’t play; and, as Bob mentions, those players languishing on the bench instead of developing their skills in the minors. Who dreamed that up?
In 1954-55 the Yankees had bonus baby Frank Leja who had 19 G and 7 PA. And in 1955-56 they had Tom Carroll who had 50 G and 24 PA. Neither played again for them. So in 1955 the Yankees were essentially a 23 man team.
Tom Carroll is the youngest player to pinch run in a WS. It occurred in game 4 of the 1955 WS, his age was 19.014.
That Houston lineup was fairly loaded, though nobody knew it at the time:
A HOFer in Joe Morgan.
A should-be-a HOFer: Jim Wynn.
A seven-time All Star: Rusty Staub.
A catcher, Jerry Grote, who made it to 4 World Series and was twice an All Star.
Sonny Jackson at SS finished second in the ROY voting in 1966, although he faded fast.
Aaron Pointer and Brock Davis? Well, they both did resurface for a while in the Bigs.
Glenn Vaughan? His 9 games in ’63 constituted his career in the majors.
Pitcher Jay Dahl made his debut in the game in question, lasted 2.2 innings, didn’t play at all in ’64, spent ’65 in the minors, and then left baseball.
In contrast, the Connie Mack 1919 team had lesser players, the best career-wise being Jimmy Dykes, a steady infielder for the A’s during their revival in the Grove-Simmons-Foxx era and later the All-Star player-manager for the ChiSox. Chick Galloway and Joe Dugan had fairly long but undistinguished careers, and Al Wingo’s career year for Detroit in 1925 made him part of a .370+ BA starting outfield with Heilmann and Cobb. Mixed in with those three were Heinie Manush at .302 and Fats Fothergill at .353. With all this firepower in the year of the Yankees’ unexpected drop to 7th place and the Babe’s health problems, the tigers managed a mere 81-73 record, good for fourth behind Washington, Philly, and St. Louis.
NSB, there’s still this game, from May 18, 1912 that was worth a look.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/sports/baseball/ty-cobbs-outburst-led-to-notorious-game-in-1912.html
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PHA/PHA191205180.shtml
Included 48 year old Deacon McGuire, who played in one game in 1912, one in 1910, two in 1908, and 7 in 1907.
NL Results!
With a group of voters less intimidated by the 5-player threshold necessary for the Cy Young, we had better voter turnout in this election. We had 5 votes for NL MVP and 6 for AL MVP, but ticked up to 7 votes for each in the Cy Young balloting. Here are your NL results, with vote points listed first, followed by first-place votes in parentheses:
1. Jacob DeGrom, 43 (5)
2. Max Scherzer, 29 (1)
3. Aaron Nola, 26 (1)
4. Kyle Freeland, 10
5. Patrick Corbin, 7
6. Miles Mikolas, 3
7. Jameson Taillon, 1
The top four finishers were all named on all 7 ballots.
Three people (Bob Eno, Richard Chester, and me) all submitted identical ballots, and all included the top three in order, plus #4 and 5 swapped; those were the closest to “consensus” ballots we had. Doug gave us our biggest wild card vote, which was a nice thing to see in a fifth-place vote (and he did the same thing in the AL, too).
AL Results!
Here are your AL results, with vote points listed first, followed by first-place votes in parentheses:
1. Justin Verlander, 42 (5)
2. Blake Snell, 25 (1)
3. Corey Kluber, 17
4. Trevor Bauer, 13 (1)
5. Chris Sale, 11
6. Gerrit Cole, 8
7. Blake Treinen, 2
8. Luis Severino, 1
The top three finishers were all named on all 7 ballots.
In the race for a consensus ballot, I’d have to go with nsb’s. His and mine named the top five, but both were out of order; nsb had it a lot closer, though, as he picked the winner. The only person to have the top three finishers in order on his ballot was Josh Davis. Once again, Doug gave us our most out-there pick; to be honest, I considered Severino, too, and I had him in the top-10, but while 5 and 10 were close, there were a LOT of guys in that range.
I did not think that the AL winner would win by a wider margin than the NL winner; in fact, I did not think anyone from the AL would wind up anywhere near Jacob deGrom; yet, deGrom had just one more vote point than Verlander did. I have to say, I will be pretty surprised if this is how things go in the BBWAA vote, but stranger things have happened.
Great exchanges on this string, both on and off topic. Thanks, Doom.