Felix Hernandez didn't get many wins in 2010, but he did win one big decision, and it was with the benefit of something he didn't get a lot of: support, and support from those invested in the outcome, no less. By getting 21 of 28 possible first-place votes, Hernandez won the American League Cy Young Award going away.
For all of the build-up that this was going to be a decision between CC Sabathia's league-leading win tally and Hernandez's performance, or his strikeout tally, or whatever numeric proxy you might find for him to quantify the fact that he was handily the league's best pitcher—all of it was pointless. Instead, happily, the voters certified the obvious, providing an assurance that this wasn't going to be one of those years when the guy who wasn't even one of the top two or three starters in his league was bringing home hardware because he had the good fortune to have a productive set of teammates at the plate.
It would be easy to ascribe the voting breakdown to a simple generational divide, since it seemed as if an awful lot of the cool kids—as these things go—were among those voting for Hernandez. Ken Rosenthal and Joe Posnanski? Amalie Benjamin and Larry Stone? Yes, these are the hep cats in the crowd. But it's also a decidedly untrue observation, since you'll find long-service writers like Lynn Henning and John Lowe and Ray Ratto among those voting Hernandez first. The “kids” added decisive mass, but they didn't own this vote. If anything, I'd suggest the vote represents a win for common-sense propositions we've been arguing about for decades, like the observation that a starting pitcher doesn't get to pick his teammates, or determine the extent of his run support. Whatever dragon of old-school sensibilities you wished slain, whether Jack McDowell's demonstrably untrue “knowing how to win,” or Bartolo Colon's victory in 2005, this was St. George's Day and Christmas, all wrapped up in one.
So first, let's not pigeonhole it as a symptom of generational divide. Only three people voting picked Sabathia first, after all, and while they were among the most senior BBWAA electors, they were also slightly less senior than a couple of the guys voting for Hernandez. Instead, I'd blame a big stack of obviousness on Sabathia's weak polling as far as first-place votes, but that's because voting for Sabathia this year made perhaps even less sense than voting for Colon in 2005. At least Colon was the second-best starter in the league in things like SNLVAR and SNWP behind the robbed Johan Santana among ERA qualifiers. Sabathia didn't even have that, ranking eighth in SNWP, and tied for sixth in SNLVAR. In essence, his case was wins and little else, which he had, thanks to an Expendables-grade big-name supporting cast, but like that turkey, just as damned to go to their collective unhappy end.*
Instead, however you want to characterize those who voted for Sabathia, I found the quartet who voted David Price first instead of Hernandez to be the most interesting subset among the voters, since it was their choices that elevated their man above Sabathia in the final tally, putting the lie to the entire initial framing of the expected outcome. If this was “wins versus performance,” there were obviously some voters who sought a bit of both, and found their man in tabbing the Rays' ace. So that was Price: second in the league in wins, and also SNLVAR and SNWP, and deservingly winding up in second place in these standings as well. If this was a matter of picking a quality pitcher who also happened to be pitching in a pennant-relevant situation, then apparently Price was your choice, for reason, while putting Sabathia's “most wins” position in the shade.
The problem is teasing out much meaning from what happened beyond the first-place votes, if there's any to be found. Having awarded King Felix his due, it was as if the electorate shrank from making the equally bold step of putting Sabathia as low as he deserved. Beyond wins and maybe innings, there isn't a lot to tell you that Sabathia deserved to rank this far above Jered Weaver or Cliff Lee, let alone Trevor Cahill or Jon Lester. So however right it is that Hernandez won for having a season that rates with Roy Halladay's, raw wins obviously still holds some form of attraction over the voters. Whether you want to ascribe this to shiny-bauble sentiment on behalf of a number bigger than 19, or a collective guilt for doing the right thing, the implication is that Hernandez's win represents incremental change, not a complete altering of the landscape.
That's going to be important to remember going forward, because selection of the electorate from within the BBWAA changes from year to year. A differently composed group of 28 would not have automatically conjured up this same result all the way down the line, even if you can hope that the decisive advantages Hernandez had in pure performance would compel any group of 28 to reach at least this same conclusion. But as a result, I would urge people to not see this as an end of a long argument about evaluating starting pitcher performance, or a beginning. It is simply progress, and the sort of thing we can keep plugging away at, to deliver more of the same.
*: In Texas, or almost straight to video, which very well may be effectively the same thing.
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So the logic for Hamilton being MVP, if applied to pitchers, would have meant that Sabathia should've gotten the Cy Young. The logic applied to Cy Young, if it should be applied to MVP, will mean that Cabrera is the AL MVP.
Consistency is a foundation for both rationality and sanity.
(I'm totally OK with the rest of your post saying that it's a close call between the two--I just don't see why the narrative should play any part at all)
I like Cabrera's durability a lot which is why I give him the edge, but at the same time it's a lot harder to get good production out of Hamilton's position (plus he was a good fielder) then to get good production out of first base (where Miggy wasn't all that great).
As for the GGs, that's not the responsibility of the commentariat at all.
It's like saying that it's ridiculous to not give the award named after the all-time leader in wins to the pitcher who lead the league in wins.
What's in a name?
Beyond that, Felix was helped by an oddity in that it was hard to tell who his real competition was. When I thought about it, as important as David Price was to the TB pitching staff, he had fewer wins and IP than Sabathia, who provided the same glue to the Yankees staff. So in the end, Hernandez was the default choice, based on all sorts of metrics, as well as IP and K. This might have been different had Sabathia won 18 instead of 21 -- there is a difference in the pressure of pitching in a pennant race (no matter how irrelevant the ultimate outcome has been made by the playoff system). And Christina, it's interesting that you mentioned Jon Lester instead of Clay Buchholz, whose numbers certainly had an impact on Lester's support -- and vice versa.
Sabathia's high inning total is, indeed, very significant. That is a lot more batters he was able to get out. Most pitchers would have far worse rate stats if they were left in the game as long as Sabathia was - and Sabathia's rate stats might have been much better if the Yankees had better options getting to Mariano. Sabathia's lower LOB% is evidence of this. The inning total is why Sabathia's VORP is rightly much greater than Lester's.
It is even with Buchholz, but let's look closer: Sabathia had a better strikeout rate and a better walk rate. Buchholz had a better hit rate which can be easily attributable to his luckier BABiP rate. Buchholz gave up far fewer home runs, but, again, I think there was probably some luck in that. Home runs are a small sample item and Sabathia's GB/FB was almost as good as Buchholz's. So, the more reliable skill related stats point strongly to Sabathia. Finally, there is the reliability factor. This was Buchholz's breakthrough year. Which pitcher would you bet on repeating their performance next year? Sabathia is the better pitcher.
The goal of the team is to win games. Players know this. I am sure Sabathia or Price, etc, had a few games where they had a big lead... say 5,6-0 and the team allowed a runner on 3rd to score in order to get an out, and that the pitchers probably were pitching to the score, not trying to be perfect with every pitch, etc.
I don't know how much of a difference it would've made, but I bet if Sabathia was constantly in games where he had 0,1,2 runs of support, he probably would've given up less runs. And the opposite with Felix.
Overall, all these skill based stats like SIERA which are derived from things like K/9 bb/9, etc, are better at telling you who's skills are more sustainable going forward, then they are at judging how good a player actually was. E.G. I fully expect Buchholz, Price, and Cahill to have era's closer to 4 next year then to 3 based on their skills, but that shouldn't take away from what they actually did during the 2010 season.
Anyway, Felix deserved the Cy Young, but wins shouldn't be as devalued as they seem to be these days, nor should they have the value they had even 5-10 years ago. We need to slide to a happy medium.
Will the writers learn some math as a result of this…? A guy like felix who forces them to challenge old ideas is certainly contributing to some sort of reflection. I’d like to say that I hope they learn some math, but I really don’t care.
This concept of "pitching to the score" is about as mythical as saying that a pitcher with a good won-loss record just "knows how to win."
The combination of park factor, defense, and consistently pitching to maximize zero run results is probably not a difference that would completely close the gap between Hernandez and the rest in stats like VORP and SNW. But if one is going to argue the merits of newer stats, one must understand their limitations, too. I think this was a closer contest than most people are saying, close enough that I wouldn't have been particularly disappointed if Price or Sabathia had won.
So while its definitely appropriate to say that park effects close the gap between Felix and CC somewhat, it doesn't apply to Price, who is being overrated by the pundits who say (1) hey he's 19-6 better than Felix, and (2) hey, his ERA was .40 better than CC. Considering Price's fewer innings and park, baseball prospectus puts several AL pitchers ahead of his, including CC Lester Felix Bucholz Weaver etc.
But that being said, its not enough to just say that this is the case. I have no idea how often these situations come up, and before we assume that a pitcher on a high-scoring team allowed more runs because they were "pitching to the score," I'd have to see some evidence that these situations came up enough to have a real effect. I seriously doubt that it makes a large difference over the course of a season, certainly not enough to explain the difference between CC Sabathia's numbers and Felix Hernandez's.
Pujols was an entire win over replacement better than Votto, but Votto was close enough that his being on a winning team will convince the voters to vote for him.