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AL
Cy Young: The Vote Was Decided, But Was the Performance? I knew I had to write this article once the awards came out, and I knew I'd be conflicted. It's hard being a Jays fan and trying to convince others that Roy Halladay was not the best candidate for the award. After seeing what he did through the season, I know how much he helped the Jays. Without him, they would have been lost. Hey was a key piece of the puzzle, and I am happy that he got the award. The problem is I have a responsibility not to let my happiness for Halladay cloud my judgment. And when I look at the numbers, it seems to me that Hudson comes out on top. What's that, you say? Tim Hudson? The
guy who pitched 26 fewer innings and won 6 fewer games than Roy Halladay
was the better pitcher? Yes, that is what I've come to the conclusion
of. I think it's safe to say that we all know that all these pitchers
pitched better than Halladay, however not for nearly as many innings,
and pitching more innings effectively is a major consideration. So
it's not so much who is the better pitcher as who was the pitcher
who helped their team more. No, not "most valuable" cause
we don't want to get into the whole "How can someone on a team
that didn't make the playoffs be valuable" argument, but merely
which pitcher made the biggest difference for his team with his own
performance. Halladay won with a decisive 136 points in the votes
and 26 out of 28 possible first place votes. Second came Esteban Loaiza
with 63 points and the other 2 first place votes. Then came Pedro
with a mere 20 points, and only 3 second place votes; no first place.
Finally, Hudson came in 4th with a mere 4 seconds and 3 thirds for
a total of 15 points. Let's take a look at what the voters saw::
What you'll immediately notice is what should have been expected. Pedro leads in almost all the categories where it just measured how effectively he pitched when he was on the hill, however he didn't pitch often enough to get the number of wins or innings of Halladay. What we need to do is break this down some more. Not to put them on an even playing field, exactly, but to see how much Pedro's lack of innings actually hurt the team. What we see is the following, where we use Roy Halladay as the standard to be looked up to.
So what does all that mean? I purposely left out stats that were percentages for one simple reason. We're now going to calculate what the pitchers who "picked up the slack" so to speak in the innings department had to accomplish in order to give the team a performance equal to Halladay. So here are those numbers.
Now, these numbers have some obvious flaws. For one, it's impossible for the White Sox to take 2 losses off their record in the 79.1 innings. Also, Halladay had so few walks, the teams would have to allow negative walks in order to reach his numbers. This can be corrected using WHIP instead of H and BB individually. Finally, it is impossible for either team to strike out negative batters, but this simply aids the teams. They don't have to strike anyone out to equal Halladay in that department. So, let us convert those numbers back into things we can be familiar with. These are what each team's pitchers could allow in the innings that Pedro, Loaiza, or Hudson did not pitch in order to come up with Halladay's numbers.
Yes, it does look flawed, but that is to be expected. The OBP is as low as it is because of the difference in walks, where the team actually has to allow negative walks to catch up to Halladay. That saves the OBP significantly, but walks aren't factored into SLG, thus the huge difference. For what it's worth, all the complications in that formula don't change things much. For example, adding errors only accounted for .003 of OBP. I was just trying to get as accurate of an approximation as possible. The point is, both results show that the replacement pitcher for Pedro or Loaiza would have to pitch simply mediocre at best, and the replacement for Hudson could be of a minor league quality. Sure, some numbers look impressive (WHIP especially), but keep in mind that this is just if they want to match Halladay right on. Ultimately, to match him it's the runs that matter, and not how they obtain them. An ERA of above 5 should be relatively easy to obtain (and it is. The White Sox team without Loaiza has a 4.41 ERA, and the Red Sox team had a 4.81 ERA without Pedro. The A's face an easy task of only needing to allow an 8.31 ERA or better, with a team ERA of 3.82 outside Hudson.) Basically, it seems like all three teams easily could have handled what needed to be accomplished in order to put their team into a similar position as Halladay put his. Hudson particularly stands out, not simply for the ERA, but for the enormous difference in slugging that the team can allow. This shows how much he dominated Halladay in slugging percentage. It is shown earlier in the stats of the players themselves, but it really emphasizes it too see what other players could allow to put their team into the same position. The point is that it's hard to justify giving Halladay the award when you actually consider the value of his innings. Certainly one could argue that it goes beyond replacement value, as Halladay pitching allowed relievers to be rested for other games, but there's only so far one could take that premise, and it certainly doesn't hold true with Hudson, who simply started two fewer games. Again, we have a case of voters blinded by the record over performance. Still, Loaiza's record looked pretty impressive, and he had a better performance as well. Of course the problem with him is the whole year people were saying he'd "come back to Earth" so writers had somewhat of a bias against him, thinking of the season as a fluke. If I were a baseball writer in Toronto, my ballot would look like
the following: ...But I'd be the first to congratulate Doc on his victory.
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©Copyright 2003
Phil Orr
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