2008 BDD Writers NL and AL Cy Young Picks
Posted by Brandon Heikoop on Monday, October 27, 2008 at 12:54 pm
The second installment of the BDD Writers picks takes a look into the Cy Young award. As was the case with the first installment, each of Baseball Digest Daily’s writers were asked to,
Put themselves in the shoes of a writer from the Baseball Writer’s Association of American and provide, for the Rookie of the Year, an ordered list of 3 nominee’s. Each first place vote would be worth 5 points, second worth 3, and third worth a single point.
Similarly, the player with the most points in both the National League and American League will be crowned this year’s BDD Cy Young winner. As was the case with the Rookie of the Year ballots, the writers were given the optional opportunity to explain their picks. Additionally, the ballots were to be the writers picks, not their prediction.
| National League | |||||
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total | Percent of Votes | |
| T. Lincecum | 5 | 3 | 0 | 31 | 49.2% |
| J. Santana | 2 | 5 | 0 | 25 | 39.7% |
| B. Webb | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3.2% |
| R. Dempster | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 3.2% |
| B. Lidge | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
| CC Sabathia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
| D. Haren | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
There isn’t a whole lot to report from the NL. Lincecum was clearly the best pitcher in the league and was voted accordingly. Santana made a late season push, and I wonder how the votes would have come out had Santana had better bullpen support and subsequently led his team to the playoffs.
The Brandon Webb pick does not thrill me, however, as you can see, the third place vote was pretty much a toss up. Pick your favorite pitcher or your favorite team.
| Writer/Vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Brian | T. Lincecum | J. Santana | B. Lidge |
| Bill | T. Lincecum | J. Santana | R. Dempster |
| Rob | J. Santana | T. Lincecum | CC Sabathia |
| Mike | T. Lincecum | J. Santana | D. Haren |
| Eric | J. Santana | T. Lincecum | B. Webb |
| Joe | T. Lincecum | J. Santana | B. Webb |
| Brandon | T. Lincecum | J. Santana | R. Dempster |
Let’s now look into the writers rationale behind their individual picks:
Brian
Here’s hoping the BBWAA doesn’t get this one wrong and go the Brandon Webb route. If I had a vote, Webb might not even make the top 6 as I’d consider putting Cole Hamels, Ryan Dempster and CC Sabathia ahead of him. As for the choice of Lincecum, he was dominant, had an impressive record and led the NL in H/9, K/9, Strikeouts and ERA+. He also finished 2nd in ERA, wins and Win-Loss % and played on a team that managed to win just 72 games.
Bill
Johan Santana made a late push to put him neck-and-neck with Lincecum, but the Giants ace’s peripherals give him the nod.
The FIP is what really clinches the deal for Lincecum, but the K/9 is very impressive.
Rob
CC provided slightly less value to the Brewers than the next tier of great SP in the NL did for their teams (Dempster, Webb, Haren, Hamels, Sheets, Billingsley, Peavy), but doing it in half a season makes him a lot closer to the top two guys than to these. A simply astonishing partial season, and he’d be a very deserving winner if he gets it.
Mike
CC Sabathia was awesome, with or without periods in his name, but had only a half season in the NL. There’s precedent for a Cy anyway, but the NL competition was too good and too deep, making it hard even to narrow it down to the top three. Webb was great, except down the stretch when his team needed him. Haren was solid all year and, except for wins, equaled or bested Webb in virtually every peripheral, and was himself bested in several categories by Cole Hamels. But Hamels only had a 14-10 year, making him similar to Santana, who at 16-7 also didn’t seem to have the mound presence to rally his team behind him to a win. Tim Lincecum edges everyone out in ERA+, has a higher win % than any of these other guys, more wins than anyone but Webb, struck out more guys more often than anyone else, and did all this for one of the worst teams in baseball. That gives him the edge to me, but he’s among excellent competition.
Brandon
When I first sat down to make my picks, I wasn’t even going to look into the numbers. I figured I knew the story and didn’t need any convincing. While my opinion didn’t change after I eventually looked at the numbers, it became surprisingly close after looking at VORP, WPA, WS, PRC, and SNLVAR. Lincecum came away on top, with Santana finishing second, and fellow Canadian Ryan Dempster completing his full circle surprise season. I’m not shocked that Dempster isn’t getting more play in the upcoming days of Free Agency, but I am shocked that he isn’t getting much love from writers on the Cy Young ballot.
The American League is similar to the National League in that it is clearly a two horse race. Unlike the NL, however, I imagine the BBWAA will get this right as there truly is not a third party worthy of consideration. Here’s how things worked out:
| American League | |||||
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total | Percent of Votes | |
| C. Lee | 6 | 1 | 0 | 33 | 52.3% |
| R. Halladay | 1 | 6 | 0 | 23 | 36.5% |
| J. Lester | 0 | 0 | 4 | 4 | 6.3% |
| M. Mussina | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
| D. Matsuzaka | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
| F. Rodriguez | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1.6% |
If you were wondering, I was the guy who took the unanimous victory away from Cliff Lee, which I’ll get into later. Clearly my colleagues believe Lee had a better season. What is most interesting from the ballots is the belief that Lester is clearly the third best pitcher in the American League. The startling fact from that is because there isn’t an argument that could place Lester as the #1 or #2 guy.
| Writer/Vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Brian | C. Lee | R. Halladay | M. Mussina |
| Bill | C. Lee | R. Halladay | J. Lester |
| Rob | C. Lee | R. Halladay | J. Lester |
| Mike | C. Lee | R. Halladay | J. Lester |
| Eric | C. Lee | R. Halladay | J. Lester |
| Joe | C. Lee | R. Halladay | D. Matsuzaka |
| Brandon | R. Halladay | C. Lee | J. Lester |
Now let’s see how the writers explain their picks:
Brian
For me, there are only two real candidates — Lee and Halladay — which is why I threw in Moose for an honorary vote for his 20-win accomplishment. I don’t get hung up on wins and I understand the argument for Halladay over Lee but Lee was not a product of run support and genuine good luck like Brandon Webb in the National League, Lee was really, really good. Hopefully, K-Rod doesn’t get a lot of support here… a genuine product of his team.
Bill
I really wanted to give the AL Cy Young to Roy Halladay because he was my pre-season pick to win it, but Lee has slightly better numbers. Halladay’s pitched about 23 innings more (thanks in part to 5 more complete games) but overall has been slightly inferior to Lee. A 0.06 difference in WHIP isn’t that much to tip the scale in any way towards Halladay.
Rob
I really wanted to give a vote to John Danks… there’s no way Chicago makes the playoffs without his surprising emergence, and to put up such numbers in that bandbox was Tour de Force that few will appreciate and respect. But Lester was better, and Boston’s an awful park for pitchers, especially LHP. “Statheads” poo-poo the idea that K-Rod had a great season, but he pitched in almost half the games, had the highest “leverage” rating, per Baseball Prospectus.com, and faced a collection of batters which were much better than average. That his underlying stats weren’t as good as the elite relievers seems hard to hold to strongly against him, as he was obviously pitching tired frequently, and was “pitching to the situation” almost every time. I shifted him around in every spot between 2 and 5, but settled on #5, or 2nd Honorable Mention.
Mike
Halladay had a staggering 9 CGs and a WHIP of 1.05, though his 20-11 record isn’t as impressive as Lee’s 22-3, particularly as Lee did it with a poorer team. Lee tossed a not-too-shabby 4 CGs, more than doubling his career total (Halladay’s thrown 40 in his career), while leading the league in ERA+ with 175. Either one of these guys would be easy choices, were it not for one another guy named Francisco “K-Rod” Rodriguez, complicating issues horribly, by shattering the saves mark. But K-Rod has his own award, and saves is an overrated category for a reason: the Cy is for starters.
Brandon
For me, this wasn’t as difficult as it looked. Entering September, I was fairly convinced that Lee would be the winner. However, an article at Baseball Prospectus (free content) led me to thinking Halladay deserves more credit then he is receiving. The theory was that Halladay had faced substantially superior offensive clubs. The evidence is substantial and enough for me to take Halladay as the American League’s best pitcher.
There you have it, Baseball Digest Daily’s 2008 Cy Young winners are Tim Lincecum and Cliff Lee with Johan Santana and Roy Halladay being their leagues respective runner’s-up.
Tomorrow night I will have the National League MVP, and hopefully a Game 6 will provide post-reading entertainment for the American League MVP on Wednesday night.
We’d love to hear what you think of our votes and who you would have taken.
I am utterly shocked at the Rodriguez vote. There is legitimate evidence that he wasn’t even one of the top 2 or 3 relievers in the American League last year, let alone a reliever that was so valuable he jumps into the CY race. In fact, without looking, I imagine Sabathia and Harden’s half seasons were more valuable then KRod’s.
I’m also surprised I’m the only one who went with Doc. While I understand voting for Lee and that his wins look impressive on a mediocre Cleveland team, keep in mind how far under their pythag they performed. Not only that, but could you imagine the Jays without Halladay? We’d be talking Detroit Tigers territory.
Cy Young isn’t MVP so where the Jays would have been means little to me. And pythag is flawed… and hopefully, you will see the fruits of a study I’ve done that works out a little better than pythag. Plus, to base a decision on pythag when a pitcher is only involved in roughly 1/5 of those games is a bit short-sided.
Not that Halladay wasn’t good… I just think sometimes the stat geeks get hung up on coming up with a reason not to vote for the obvious choice.
I’m anxious to see what your study has to say to disprove EQA and EQR. Clearly pythag isn’t perfect, but it is an indication of how a team ACTUALLY performed over the span of a season. With that in mind, the additional love that Lee is receiving because of the team he is on is a terrible explanation and ignores the ACTUAL team that he was on.
And Cy Young is the MVP. The MVP of pitchers. The pitcher who not only was the best, but the most valuable. If not, if you are going to go off of statistics alone, then Halladay was vastly superior to Lee once you consider the level of competition-something the BP article I sourced mentions.
As for the ’stats geeks’ slam, that’s probably not far from the truth. However that is how theories are created in science. A theorist never tries to ‘prove’ something to be correct, rather, they look for ways to prove something incorrect. If they are unable to do this in multiple simulations, then their theory is tested and subsequently proven correct.
This was the same thing that I did with Lee v. Halladay. I asked, ‘How can Lee not be the CY winner?’ The raw stats point to him as the more dominant pitcher, however, as the article I sourced suggests, the raw stats do not tell the full story. The raw stats assume a start against the Royals is the same as a start against the Yankees.
So, is the ’stat geek’ wrong for digging deep into the numbers instead of believing them at surface value?
I will fess up as the knucklehead who voted for K-Rod (the list above has me putting in for Lester).
As I saw it, K-Rod got the nod for shattering the saves record, and participating–if not legitimately sealing–62 of his team’s 100 wins. No other pitcher on his team contributed to as many wins.
His peripherals were not eye-popping, to be sure, and (depending on your POV) saves are either marginally worthless or totally worthless. (OK maybe there are people that love saves). But as far as intangibles go, that level of performance is impressive.
Having defended my choice, I will acknowledge that Lester might have been a worthier choice. I was swayed by emotion more than stats here, and wanted to acknowledge the record-breaking season. No matter what you think of saves, they measure at least some amount of shutdown ability, and this record should stand for some time.
I don’t give extra credit for strength of schedule… I’ll leave that to the BCS and their awfully flawed system to decide winners.
However, if we need to go there, here’s one way to look at it. Comparing Lee and Halladay, this is how their numbers look against the same team either home or away (meaning that Lee’s starts on the road against KC do not count in the calculation since Halladay did not pitch at KC):
Lee – 15 STARTS: (12-2, 2.37 ERA, 1.055 WHIP, 7.12 K/9)
Halladay – 18 STARTS: (10-8, 2.54 ERA, 0.964 WHIP, 7.04 K/9)
Lee went 7.9 innings per start and Halladay went 7.7.
Overall, their numbers are similar against similar opponents and Lee outstats Halladay in 4 of the 5 categories listed. If I gotta go “stat geek”, I can go “stat geek”!
You don’t give credit to strength of schedule? So if Lee started all of his games against the six worst offensive teams and Halladay started all of his games against the six best offensive teams, and had extremely close numbers, you would say the pitcher who was a product of his teams schedule was better? You’ve already decided that ‘value’ has no place in the Cy Young ballot, and it is simply the more dominant pitcher, so why are you avoiding who was actually the more dominant pitcher.
Your stats are terribly flawed. TERRIBLY flawed! Probably worse then the BCS!
What you did here was tally up the teams each pitcher faced in common. Two teams that the pitcher have in common, for example, are Boston and New York. Halladay faced Boston and New York a combined 11 starts. Lee faced the two clubs a combined twice. Now to you, is this REALLY the same?
What you really need to do is simply read the BP article. It’s fairly simple. Most people take the easy route with Lee. There’s little to no digging to find out if he really was the better pitcher.
Maybe you think they are flawed but it shows that when the two pitchers faced the same talent what they actually did. So, instead of giving credit to Halladay for just pitching against better teams (a very flawed argument, I’m sorry to say) it actually says what they did.
Against the same opponents those are the two players numbers. It’s not complicated or inferring anything, it’s actual data. There’s really nothing flawed about it. It’s comparing apples to apples.
By the numbers, Lee was the more dominant pitcher in my opinion. Game in and game out, he did what he needed to do for me to say that. We had 7 writers vote… only 1 of them thought that he wasn’t better. It doesn’t take extra capital letters or insulting comments like “worse then (it’s than not then) the BCS” for me to make my point. And remember, New York had the 7th best offense in the American League this year, that’s pretty mediocre.
“Actual data”?
So 2 starts is the same as 11? I’d say comparing 2 starts with 11 is not apples to apples, its like apples to carpet.
The BBWAA also has a couple dozen, but they traditionally get the voting wrong. Yankees fans think Jeter is the best player in baseball, which he isn’t. Simply stating what the majority thinks is not evidence.
Also, I wasn’t insulting you, I was insulting your flawed system. You are asserting that if a pitcher went up against the best team in the league once, and the worst team 29 times, that is the same as a pitcher who went up against the best team 29 times and the worst once.
All that being said, I will assume you didn’t read the BP article as you have ignored the facts presented in it.