Handicapping the 2016 American League Cy Young Award

With the Pittsburgh Pirates officially in the offseason, Pirates Breakdown turns its attention to the playoffs and the upcoming 2016 season awards. Today we look at the AL Cy Young award.

Last week we outlined the reasons that Max Scherzer deserves the award in the National League.  This week, we tackle the American League honors.

[irp posts=”10475″ name=”Handicapping the 2016 National League Cy Young Award”]

In an unusual year where no qualifying American League pitcher posted an ERA below 3.00, the Cy Young field is a bit narrower than in the National League.  Although there are several amazing relief pitchers in the AL including Zach Britton and Roberto Osuna, Andrew Miller of the Cleveland Indians (and formerly of the New York Yankees) stands out as the best statistically.  His ERA of 1.45 and K’s/9 of 14.9 over 74.1 innings pitched are mind boggling.  However, the American League voters haven’t selected a reliever since the Oakland A’s Dennis Eckersley back in 1992.  As good as Andrew Miller pitched this year, this trend won’t change as the voters have several worthy candidates to choose from among starting pitchers.

There are many deserving candidates among the top ten AL pitchers as measured by ERA.

Pitcher	Team	Innings Pitched	ERA	Strikeouts	K/9
Aaron Sanchez	TOR	192.0	3.00	161	7.55
Justin Verlander	DET	227.2	3.04	254	10.04
Masahiro Tanaka	NYY	199.2	3.07	165	7.44
Corey Kluber	CLE	215.0	3.14	227	9.50
Rick Porcello	BOS	223.0	3.15	189	7.63
J.A. Happ	TOR	195.0	3.18	163	7.52
Jose Quintana	CHW	208.0	3.20	192	7.83
Cole Hamels	TEX	200.2	3.32	200	8.97
Chris Sale	CHW	226.2	3.34	233	9.25
Ervin Santana	CHC	181.1	3.38	149	7.40

 

The voters will have a tough time choosing from this slate of hurlers.  In order to pare down the field, we have to start by eliminating some of the candidates based on key criteria that we feel reflect the value of the best pitcher in the American League.

Work, Work, Work…

The first is the total number of innings pitched in the season. This has been a key factor in many past awards and will be again this year.

Two hundred is a magic number when it comes to innings pitched for a Cy Young candidate.  Starting pitchers that didn’t work that much either had some injury issues or were not effectively able to throw deep into games.  Either issue is a deal killer when it comes to the Cy Young award.  If we rule out pitchers that did not hit the 200 inning number, then Aaron Sanchez, Masahiro Tanaka, Ervin Santana and former Pirate J.A. Happ drop from the list.  In the case of Tanaka and Happ, they barely missed the cutoff, but their strikeout totals and K’s/9 leave a lot to be desired.

Respectable ERA and a strikeout machine

Also, recent Cy Young trends tend to favor pitchers who post both high strikeout rates and low ERAs.   Since 1997, there have only been four AL Cy Young winners with an ERA over 3.00 and only three winners with less than 200 strikeouts.   This year was a bit of an anomaly as no qualifying pitcher posted an ERA better than 3.00, but many of them also did not hit the 200 strikeout mark.  Of our remaining list, Rick Porcello and Jose Quintana fail to meet this punchout threshold.  Both of these pitchers also have lower K’s/9 than the rest of the list.  Upon closer inspection, Cole Hamels barely squeaked in with exactly 200 strikeouts and he just achieved the 200 innings pitched mark.  So Cole Hamels should also be eliminated as a contender.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Since 1997, there have only been four AL Cy Young winners with an ERA over 3.00 and only three winners with less than 200 strikeouts.[/perfectpullquote]

For our choice it comes down to Verlander, Kluber or Sale.

This leaves Justin Verlander, Cory Kluber and Chris Sale as likely finalists for the NL Cy Young award.   These three pitchers had very similar years statistically, with Verlander holding the edge in ERA and K’s/9.  The award could really go to any of the three and in the words of my friend, a die-hard Tigers fan,  “I would not be upset if Kluber or Sale won”.  This shows the level of respect these three pitchers have earned.

[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Verlander was the better pitcher over more innings of work based on the statistics[/perfectpullquote]

The W/L records of the three are very similar, but that particular statistic doesn’t mean a whole lot (their W/L records are 16-9, 18-9 and 17-10 respectively and does it really matter which record goes with which pitcher?)  If you are a fan of wins-above-replacement (WAR), then Verlander holds a slight edge at 6.6 over Kluber at 6.5.  Both are well above Sale at 4.9.

Verlander was the better pitcher over more innings of work based on the statistics.  If the Detroit ace was that much better than the other two finalists, then we should be able to see it in some of the peripheral statistics.  To make a final determination, we turned to walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP) and batting average against (BAA).  Verlander had a WHIP of 1.00 and a BAA of .207.  This compares very favorably to Kluber’s WHIP of 1.06 and BAA of .216 and Sale’s WHIP of 1.04 and .227.  Over the course of 200+ innings, BAA tends to separate the wheat from the chaff.  In this case, ten to twenty points of difference is meaningful and shows that Verlander is deserving of the AL Cy Young award.  The only knock against Verlander is his team did not make the post season.  Sometimes this has an effect on the voters even though it really shouldn’t.

Justin Verlander won the Cy Young award once before, back in 2011 when he posted a 2.40 ERA to go along with 250 strikeouts.  His 100+ MPH fastball may have lost a few ticks, but he is still pitching at the highest level in the American League.  Congratulations to him for a fine season.

Photo Credit – Keith Allison – Flickr Creative Commons