Carp, Waino snubbed in Cy Young vote
November 19th, 2009 | by Ryan Boyer |The Cardinals fan in me wanted Adam Wainwright to win the NL Cy Young today.
The baseball fan in me wanted Tim Lincecum to win the NY Cy Young today.
Congrats, baseball fan.
Lincecum edged out Carpenter and Wainwright in one of the closest Cy Young races ever, receiving 100 points to Carp’s 94 and Waino’s 90 (you receive five points for a first-place vote, three for a second-place vote and one for a third-place vote). Wainwright actually received the most first-place votes (12, Lincecum received 11) but was hurt by the fact that he got only five second-place votes.
The biggest thing for me in not giving the award to Carpenter was the fact that he threw 32.2 fewer innings than Lincecum and 39.2 fewer innings than Wainwright. Yes, 192.2 innings is still a lot, but throwing that many fewer than your biggest competitors is a HUGE detractor in my book.
When looking at the “traditional” stats, Carp had a better ERA and better WHIP, but a .24-point advantage in ERA and .04 advantage in WHIP wasn’t enough to close the 32.2 inning gap. Lincecum also had 117 more strikeouts than Carpenter and 49 more than Wainwright. And please, let’s just throw the wins argument out, can we?
In examining sabermetric stats, Lincecum holds a clear advantage.
FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) – According to Fangraphs
Lincecum – 2.34
Carpenter – 2.78
Wainwright – 3.11
VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) – According to Baseball Prospectus
Lincecum – 69.8
Carpenter – 68.7
Wainwright – 67.1
PRC (Pitching Runs Created) – According to Hardball Times
Lincecum – 137
Wainwright – 126
Carpenter – 119
So when it comes down to it, I think the voters tabbed the right guy. I was surprised by the outcome because no starter over a full season has ever won the Cy Young with as few as 15 wins. It’s a good sign that we had a 16-game winner win the AL Cy Young award and a 15-game winner win the NL Cy Young award. Maybe voters are FINALLY warming up to the idea that looking at wins to evaluate how a pitcher performed is an egregious mistake.
By Mule on Nov 19, 2009
Chalk this up as less of a win for Lincecum but one for the sabermetric nerds that are now infesting the game of baseball with their bullshit.
2.24 15-7
Enough said.
By Mule on Nov 19, 2009
“The biggest thing for me in not giving the award to Carpenter was the fact that he threw 32.2 fewer innings than Lincecum and 39.2 fewer innings than Wainwright. Yes, 192.2 innings is still a lot, but throwing that many fewer than your biggest competitors is a HUGE detractor in my book.”
Carpenter threw 86% of the innings as Lincecum. Yes, that’s somewhat of a deficit, but put that into context of a position player. It’d be like one guy having 690-700 plate appearances and the other having around 600. So you’d say the guy with 600 PAs over a full season would be heavily handicapped because he showed up to bat so many fewer times. Hmmm…I wonder where we might find an example of this. Oh, I know, the 2009 AL MVP race.
See Joe Mauer’s PAs versus Mark Teixeira’s PA total. It’s roughly that kind of difference. I’d be interested to see if the two guys (Carroll and Law) who left Carpenter off of their ballot for NL Cy think about Mauer for AL MVP based on their criteria for pitchers. And you, Mr. Boyer.
By Mule on Nov 19, 2009
“Maybe voters are FINALLY warming up to the idea that looking at wins to evaluate how a pitcher performed is an egregious mistake.”
Yes, those wins are such bothersome things. Pitching in such a way so that at the end of the day you have held the opposing team to fewer runs than your teammates could score is hardly an accomplishment. You definitely want to rack up the Ks and keep your WHIP and FIP as low as possible, everything else be damned.
/sarcasm
By Mule on Nov 19, 2009
I’m waiting for the day – and it’s coming – a pitcher goes like 10-13 and beats out a pitcher who finished the year at, like, 22-5 because he put up some otherworldy “sabermetric stats” that make him look comparable to the 22-5 picther, as the voters increasingly kowtow to the “WINS DON’T MATTER” crowd.
Look, I have no problem acknowledging that wins are a bloated statistic and are often influenced by a myriad of things outside of the pitchers control, and thus aren’t the best predictor, BY THEMSELVES, of a pitcher’s performance. But over the course of a full year, factoring in that everybody takes a few hard luck losses or gets some lucky wins (though some lean a little one way or the other), a pitcher’s W-L record is still a decent metic at comparing how well each pitcher is faring at besting their opponent. And that is the name of the game…winning. It’s only “egregious” that wins are given too much consideration when it’s obvious a guy isn’t the best pitcher but is just getting the love cause he put up 20+ wins…see Bartolo Colon a few years ago, when he won 20 but had an ERA of nearly 3.50.
When ERAs are more comparable, you gotta take the guy with a 17-4 record over one with a 15-7 record, especially if he beat that guy’s ERA by a full quarter of a run.
Again, I repeat,
2.24 15-7
Enough said.
This award was a sham. And a slap in the face to Cardinals Nation. Let ‘em have “The Freak” and his dazzling strikeout totals, but may he and the Giants be forever cursed to mediocre win totals for this. I’ll take Carp and Waino any day.
I guess they thought “Comeback Player of the Year” and a gold glove award for the two would make up for this snubbing.
Nope. Not hardly.
By Mule is dumb on Nov 19, 2009
I realize this is a Cardinals blog, so the readers are Cardinals fans, but to act like new-age stats are the only reason Lincecum won is stupid. He had better than 50 more strikeouts than Wainwright and darn near doubled Carpenter up. If wins and losses matter so much, why don’t people care that Wainwright LOST more games than Lincecum? The Cy Young goes to the best pitcher, not the best pitcher on the best team.
Let me ask this: if the Giants offered to trade Lincecum to the Cardinals for Carpenter straight up, would one singe Cards’ fan object? I don’t think so.
By Mule on Nov 24, 2009
“He had better than 50 more strikeouts than Wainwright and darn near doubled Carpenter up.”
Your point? The object of the game (from a pitcher’s perspective) is to keep runs off the board and win ballgames, not necessarily just to strike people out. Yes, a pitcher who proves more capable of striking out his opponents than his peers is also likely to win more games over time, but this isn’t necessarily so. See Randy Johnson early in his career. He regularly Ked 250+ per year but was not a consistent winner nor was he always among the league leaders in ERA….UNTIL he developed more control. The object is to get people out, no matter what it takes.
“If wins and losses matter so much, why don’t people care that Wainwright LOST more games than Lincecum?”
Because he WON four more, dumbass! And Carpenter lost THREE fewer, dumbass! Can you do third grade arithmetic or are you just a sad sack piece of shit doofus?!
“The Cy Young goes to the best pitcher, not the best pitcher on the best team.
Let me ask this: if the Giants offered to trade Lincecum to the Cardinals for Carpenter straight up, would one singe Cards’ fan object? I don’t think so.”
That’s an unfair question because of their age. If you’re talking about building for the future, I think most Cardinals fans realize there is still plenty of upside to Lincecum because of his age and that Carpenter’s age will start working against him in the next few years. Three years from now, it’s way more likely that Lincecum will be a 20-game winner instead of Carpenter because he’ll be 27/28 instead of 37/38. So yeah, a Carp for Lincecum trade would make sense.
But looking back on their 2009 performance, I wouldn’t have traded Carp’s for anybody. He was the best pitcher in the league this year. No questions asked.
BTW, you are a buffoon.