November 18, 2010

Hernandez Wins Cy Young Award

Felix Hernandez wins the AL Cy Young award, and the voting was not even close. The King took 21 of 28 first place votes, beating out David Price 167 points to 111. CC Sabathia finished third with 102 points. Jon Lester beat out teammate Clay Buchholz to finish fourth. The biggest surprise to me is that Cliff Lee only appeared on three ballots. While I don’t think Cliff pitched well enough to win the award, his amazing walk rate should have put him in the top five on more ballots.

With this vote, and last year’s awards, the wins column seems to be out of style in choosing the top spot. That’s a great stride forward for the BBWAA. Congratulations to Felix Hernandez!

9 thoughts on “Hernandez Wins Cy Young Award

  1. James

    Awesome, rbj. It’s a damn shame that Craig Counsell couldn’t have been included or somehow involved.

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  2. Cyril Morong

    Here are the top 15 in WAR from the AL from Fangraphs

    Cliff Lee 7.1
    Justin Verlander 6.3
    Felix Hernandez 6.2
    Francisco Liriano 6
    Jered Weaver 5.9
    Jon Lester 5.6
    Zack Greinke 5.2
    CC Sabathia 5.1
    C.J. Wilson 4.4
    Colby Lewis 4.4
    John Danks 4.3
    Gavin Floyd 4.3
    David Price 4.3
    Ricky Romero 4

    Now the top 10 from Baseball Reference

    1. Hernandez (SEA) 6.0
    2. Buchholz (BOS) 5.4
    Weaver (LAA) 5.4
    Sabathia (NYY) 5.4
    5. Price (TBR) 5.3
    6. Lester (BOS) 5.0
    7. Danks (CHW) 4.9
    8. Pavano (MIN) 4.6
    Wilson (TEX) 4.6
    Liriano (MIN) 4.6

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  3. Bill Petti

    I wrote about this a while back (see here: http://bit.ly/9W6zXW). To me, this year presented a great test for how far the voters have come. Felix winning is a step in the right direction, but a great indication of progress could be seen in how Lee faired. Given that he only showed up on 3 ballots tells me we’ve still got a long way to go.

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  4. pft

    Weaver should have been in the top 5.

    Lee missed too much time (6 starts) like Buchholz, and also he did not pitch as well after leaving Seattle.

    Not walking guys is great, but runs determine if a team wins or loses. Lee allowed too many runs, and did not pitch enough relative to King Felix.

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  5. Bill Petti

    I’m not sure that 6 starts should make or break one’s Cy Young chances, but fair point. The point wasn’t that Lee was the obvious choice over Hernandez, but that Lee’s performance on the ballot would tell us how deeply voters are looking to non-orthodox metrics to value performance.

    As for runs being most important, that’s true as far as it goes. However, Lee’s FIP was better than Hernandez. He also played half the year in one of the most hitter-friendly parks while Hernandez enjoyed one of the most pitcher-friendly.

    Also, if you drill down, giving up less bases per out recorded is fundamentally what determines wins and losses (since it determines runs allowed). If you look at Bases Allowed (includes TB, BB, HBP, and IBB) per Out for the AL in 2010 you get the following:

    Hernandez: .506 (13.67 per 27 outs)
    Lee: .512 (13.83 per 27 outs)
    Weaver: .539 (14.55 per 27 outs)
    Buchholz: .553 (14.94 per 27 outs)
    Cahill: .554 (14.95 per 27 outs)

    Again, Hernandez isn’t blowing Lee away. This also reflects the job Weaver did this past year.

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  6. Cyril Morong

    Here is what someone said at The Book blog

    “I don’t think that’s a coincidence—my impression is that the voters basically voted the ERA list. Since Baseball-Reference’s WAR is calculated using actual RA, there should be a pretty strong similarity between an ERA list and the WAR list (at the top of the list, anyway, since these guys are also the guys with the most innings pitched).”

    http://www.insidethebook.com/ee/index.php/site/comments/to_bbwaa/#comments

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  7. David Pinto Post author

    @Slideshow Bob: WAR is a conceptual framework, not a formula. So if researchers come up with different ways of estimating run creation or prevention, they can plug those numbers into the WAR framework.

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