FTW

The American League Cy Young

The junior circuit is how-do-you-say, balls deep, in talent this year. I think it’s fair to say with about a month or so left, the field has been narrowed down to four, possibly five, starting pitchers.  Of those pitchers, only Jon Lester and Justin Verlander have a shot at making the playoffs.  Zack Greinke, Roy Halladay, and Felix Hernandez realistically share a one-percent shot at making the playoffs between them.

Unlike the MVP award, the Cy Young award has some flexibility when it comes to playing for a non-contending team.  In essence, it’s the awarded to the best pitcher and that pitcher thus far is none other than Mr. Zack Greinke.

However, I’d like to step outside the confines of statistical analysis at least for this article.  Much more than dominating the competition goes into being a dominant pitcher.  Obviously, there’s the old, often over-used, cliche of leading your team to the playoffs. Retired baseball players use this when calling games and we, the statistical community, often bust their nuts for doing so.  Maybe there’s something to it though, maybe…

It’s naive for the statistical community to ignore the market in which a player works.  Dealing with the pressure in a major-market like Boston, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles is a skill.  Obviously we can’t judge how Roy Halladay or Zack Greinke would react to expectations, but we also cannot ignore how certain pitchers possess an innate ability to ignore pressure situations.

Statistics also fail to capture how a pitcher contributes on off-days.   Roy Halladay of the Blue Jays hasn’t just pitched a terrific season, he’s managed to help improve Toronto’s stable of youngsters (ask AJ Burnett).  Such a skill is impossible to quantify, but the MVP race is often decided by the influence of teammates.  The symbiotic relationship shared between two batters hitting in the three and four holes is incredibly important, at least if you’d like to see pitches over the plate.

More importantly, let’s consider  the psychological impact that an ace-pitcher like Greinke or Halladay has on the rest of the team.  All of the pitchers listed in the Cy Young race are “stoppers”.  In addition to going out there are throwing seven-strong, they’re breaking four game losing streaks.  Slides and losing streaks are contagious, if you don’t agree then you’ve never stepped foot on a field (Thanks! Joe Morgan).  Once again, It’s terribly naive to believe that a starting pitcher only contributes on the mound, simply because we’re unable to quantify his psychological impact.

The voting public may rely on ridiculously rudimentary statistics like Wins, ERA, and Strikeouts but they also watch the games, and understand the impact of the players.  It would be nice if they diversified their scouting portfolio to include RAR, WHIP, xFIP, Swing% and every other available statistic, but that’s a lot to ask.

Watching a pitcher dominate goes a long way to establishing just how dominant he actually is.  Sifting through statistics is probably a fairer way of determining the best pitcher in the league, but it clearly misses a large portion of a pitchers’ make-up.

Greinke’s well ahead of the competition at this point and it’d be a shame to see him lose it, but you have to ask yourself just how effective he’d be in New York or Boston.  We’ll obviously never know, but surviving your weekly date-night shots on Page 6 cannot be easy.