I didn’t realize Verlander had such a good year because Cleveland usually plays well against him. Looking at his numbers I’m surprised he was completely left off a pair of ballots.
Wins wins again! Verlander’s strikeouts weren’t shiny enough to overcome the 6 win deficit I guess. Verlander being left off ballots makes no sense though. I hate idiotic bias in sportswriters.
Sportswriters are generally biased toward idiocy, it’s true.
Speaking of which, here’s a Dave Cameron winner:
For Cueto, the small marks against him were his performance at the plate and the presence of Buster Posey as his catcher. Cueto was one of the worst-hitting pitchers in the game this year, and so the Giants chances of winning his starts were a little bit reduced. Additionally, Posey ranked as the game’s best framing catcher by almost every framing metric out there, so just like we had to adjust Lester’s run prevention for the players behind him, Cueto gets a small downgrade for throwing to a catcher who makes pitchers look better than they are.
This guy gets paid to write about baseball.
(Why I Voted for Clayton Kershaw For NL Cy Young | FanGraphs Baseball for the record…but just don’t)
Honestly, I don’t disagree with any of that if going in your criteria is “I’m voting for the best overall performance by a pitcher” and assuming those metrics are used to differentiate between candidates who are a near toss-up in pitching stats. One of the Cleveland writers did the same for the crowded AL race and posted his process (admittedly in part to defend his 4th place vote for hometown ace Corey Kluber).
Regardless of who you think should have won, the best reaction to the American League Cy Young vote unquestionably belongs to Kate Upton:
Well to be honest, JV got screwed. He is the first pitcher in Cy Young history to get a majority of the 1st place votes and still lose. It wasnt even close either. He got 14 to Porcello’s 2.
Still if that is not a good enough reason this chart may explain why this is a major screw job:
The only categories Porcello did better in were wins and run support. Both of those are team based stats. The thing is. I like Porcello, always have and he did have a great season but Verlander’s season was way superior in the individual measurables.
Finally, the only reason Porcello won was because Verlander was left off 2 ballots completely. Even if those guys felt that wins was the really important stat, there is no excuse for leaving JV completely off the ballot. Congrats to Rickey but they should put an asterisk next to this one saying, the ballot was rigged. I guess, on the plus side Detroit probably saved themselves a decent chunk of change on incentive bonuses.
PS: Kluber had a great season as well but he did not lead the AL in a single category. JV led the AL in 8.
Holy cow, I had no idea Verlander had that amazing of a year. Well done!
Verlander had a great season and I would have voted for him if I had a ballot.
But that chart is also slanted to make Verlander look as good as possible in the comparison. You can easily strengthen Porcello’s position by adding:
Porcello’s league leading 5.91 K/BB vs Verlanders 4.46.
Porcello has the lead in ERA+ 144 to 136
Porcello pitched 8 or more innings 5 times to Verlander’s 4. (2-1 for 9.0 innings) (as a counter to the CG row, not that I think this is a huge difference)
Porcello gave up 23 HRs to Verlander’s 30 (in those AL East parks)
2 or fewer ER isn’t a horrible metric, but at the same time Verlander gave up 7 or more runs 3 times and Porcello never gave up more than 5 despite being in AL east parks more. If it was 3 runs the spread is 27-29. Quality starts, while dumb is 26-27. <=2 is clearly cherry picked here, I don’t know a single place you could find that stat without tabulating it yourself.
And their actual WHIP difference is 0.0072 so I think it is kind of silly to treat that as a category win. And that doesn’t factor in park factors at all. If you swapped them between Fenway and Commerica that’s got to be worth at least .0072.
Like I said, I would have voted for Verlander and leaving him off the ballot is dumb, but that chart is like a Scott Boras salary negotiation binder.
To some degree I agree with you but Verlanders stats include the major ones like K’s, inning pitched, whip, batting average vs, both WAR numbers and he had the lowest run support. So its not like they threw out a bunch of meaningless stats. Dont get me wrong, Im not trying to dis Porcello, my gripe is more about the process and the voters. As mentioned JV was completely left off 2 ballots. That alone is BS. Im happy for Rickey, I was a big fan when he was here in Detroit and he had a great season fpr Boston. Its not like he was not deserving. I would feel better about it if JV hadnt gotten screwed inexplicably by two of the voters.
Not much of a surprise that Kris Bryant won the NL MVP - one vote away from unanimous in first-place votes. It was a lot closer in the AL, though. Not a huge gap between winner Mike Trout and second-place Mookie Betts, with Altuve and Donaldson not far behind.
Tiger’s beat writer Jason Beck was a first-time BBWAA MVP voter this year, and he wrote up a blog post explaining why he voted for Mookie Betts first over Trout, Donaldson, and Altuve. Found it an interesting read. Reinforced for me how subjective this stuff really is - Beck references a whole lot of advanced-metric stats, but it’s how those are interpreted that determines who got the top nod.
Cardinals just signed Brett Cecil to a 4 year, 30.5m contract, which:
- Solves a problem for them with lefties out of the bullpen,
- Really, probably even deliberately, screws up the market for lefty relievers this year with that contract.
I wonder if there’s another team–perhaps a hated division rival with a recent championship–who might have an elite lefthanded reliever who is also a pending free agent?
(hashtag) YoureWelcomeTheo
Hah. If they’re indeed overpaying in the hopes that it will make another team overpay, I guess my first reaction is surprise that they’re hiring strategists from the Clinton campaign to advise the front office.
Brett Cecil is a very good pitcher. He throws the ball with his left hand. Those players do tend to get paid.
It just sets things up so that other premium lefty relievers are not going to be on the lower end of estimates. Like, Aroldis Chapman may not be a $15m, or even $17m, AAV guy now.
It’s a good pickup for the Cards, but I don’t think the Cubs are at all interested in resigning Chapman. They got what they wanted out of him, at least in the sense that they won the Series.
I assume Theo & co will go back to looking for second-tier signings with good upside. They do need bullpen help, though. They probably shift to Montgomery to the possible 5th starter, and Wood, Grimm, Strop & Rondon were all not reliable during the final stretch. That leaves what? Carl Edwards Jr? He’s got great upside but he’s only one guy.
Yankees, Red Sox, and maybe even the Nats or Giants may make some noise on Chapman. If there’s an NL East bidding war, he could go up to 5 years/20m. Or more.
Which is a thing they need to figure out. But their are 29 other teams who would gladly have the Cubs ‘problems’.
Bullpens tend to be high variance. Outside of a few top tier guys, it can be hard to maintain relief excellence from year to year. I tend to also be in the ‘they would put nothing more than a qualifying offer’ for him anyhow.
I mean, worst case scenario for the Cubs, they either pay a lot of money for Chapman, or they start the year with Rondon back in the closer role and see what happens.
Happy Thanksgiving, Taijuan Walker. You’ve been traded to the Diamondbacks along with Ketel Marte.
I’m totally unsure what to feel, aside from shock.
Mariners get IF Jean Seguara, OF Mitch Haniger, and LHP Zac Curtis.
Fascinating deal. If Segura’s amazing 2016 season wasn’t totally a product of his ballpark (and his home/road stats are pretty even, honestly) I really like this deal for the Mariners. I’m not totally sold on Walker being a #1 guy. Maybe. But he seems just as likely to be a middle of the rotation guy. And Walker was pitching in a very pitcher-friendly home park and home division. He now moves to a division where he gets to play his home games at the launching pad at Chase Field and take regular road trips to Coors.
Just really an interesting trade. Both teams may have sold high on players. And the most interesting guy to me in the entire trade is Mitch Hanigar. 25 year olds who hit for power, take walks, and don’t strike out a whole ton at AAA are the kind of players baseball seamheads swoon for. If he pans out, that could be a real nice deal for the Mariners.