NL Cy Young

As of today the 17th of November we now know all the award winners for this past season, I really don`t see any surprises, Judge and Bellinger were complete locks for ROY, while I defy anyone to read my AL MVP article and still argue that Altuve should`ve won the award, I expected him to win it, and while Votto was the best overall hitter not by much but nonetheless was, the 59 HR put anyone over the top, that`s 2 short of the highest total ever by a steroid-free player, in the Cy Young, Sale basically shot himself in the foot on the second half and despite that, it took a historic run from Kluber to reach him, and there was really no doubt who would win, but I'm here today to talk about the NL Cy Young race.

For the second year n a row, we owe Kershaw`s back for the existence of such race, last year the fact that he wasn`t the winner is mind-boggling, consider this, in 2003 Eric Gagne won the award with an incredible season, but here are the numbers of the top 3 candidates.

Gagne 82.1 IP   1.20 ERA   .30 ERA-   3.7 WAR

Prior 211.1 IP   2.43 ERA   .57 ERA-   7.4 WAR

Schmidt 207.2 IP   2.34 ERA   .56 ERA-   6.7 WAR

*Using WAR from Baseball Reference, will explain why the change, in the end of the article

Anyway, a hell of a year for NL pitchers, but as you can see, picking Gagne was no cake walk, on a per inning bases Eric still had the highest WAR, but Prior and Schmidt had very strong years

Now let`s look at the award, last year, the following 3 were the top 3 1rst place vote-getters, the actual top 3 finish was Scherzer, Lester, Kendricks

Scherzer 228.1 IP   2.98 ERA   .70 ERA-   6.2 WAR

Hendricks 190  IP   2.13 ERA   .51 ERA-   5.0 WAR

Kershaw 149 IP   1.69 ERA   . .42 ERA-   5.6 WAR

It`s pretty obvious that Clayton was significantly better than both Scherzer and Hendricks, and that the main reason Max won it, was the fact he pitched 38.1 Innings more than Kyle and 79.1 more than Clayton, but here`s my point, this insane advantage in Innings lead to a 0.6 lead in WAR, a cumulative stat, the ERA- shows Kershaw was as better compared to him, as Gagne was compared to Prior and Schmidt, all of this makes for a very good case in favor of the Dodger ace, and if you gave it to Gagne you should give it to Kershaw, or at least some consideration that reflects on a closer race.

Now this year once again Clayton had his season cut short by a back injury, and along with that developed a little bit of an HR problem, that gained more attention in the postseason considering he broke the all-time playoff record for HR allowed by a single pitcher, with all that in mind he still lead the NL in Wins, ERA, K/BB ratio, a lot of that can be tracked to his 87.4 LOB%`, which also lead baseball and the interesting thing is if it was any other regular pitcher, most analysts would say, well this guy will regress that LOB% is not sustainable and eventually his HR issues will expose him, but since is Kershaw this might`ve just been an anomaly and next year he`ll bring back that HR/9 to his career norms, and he could also just find a way to pitch aroun such issues, you don`t know, what we do know is he is the best in the game and you expect him to just find a way to continue his greatness.

So here are the numbers for the 3 finalists this year

Scherzer 200.2 IP   2.51 ERA   .57 ERA-   7.3 WAR

Kershaw 175 IP   2.31 ERA   .56 ERA-   4.6 WAR

Strasurg 175.1 IP   2.52 ERA   .58 ERA-   6.5 WAR

Here`s my take on it, one all 3 pitchers had very similar results given the proximity of the ERA-, Strasburg, and Scherzer were more dominant and kept the ball in the ballpark, something Clayton struggled with, but in the end that doesn`t really matters, what matters is that whatever the level of dominance Max had, he this year wins it on his 25 IP edge, why, because all of three had basically the same outcomes, FIP is great for some stuff, but you shouldn`t use it as award criteria, you should use it for helping project future performance, all in all what I'm saying is all 3 pitched to relatively the same outcome, Max with more dominance, and more IP, but it`s the IP edge that gives him the award.

Lastly, from now on I'll use Baseball Reference WAR version for pitchers since it takes into account ERA, not WAR, which makes a lot more sense when measuring the value of the player. HR isn't the only way to allow runs