Baseball Musings: Wins Still Matter

November 08, 2005

Wins Still Matter

Congratulations to Bartolo Colon, the winner of the 2005 AL Cy Young Award.

Colon, who led the league with 21 wins, was listed first on 17 ballots and second on the other 11 for 118 points in voting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. He was the only pitcher named on every ballot, easily beating out New York Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera, who received 68 points.

Once again, the win total carries the day over the actual ability to keep runs off the board, the real job of a pitcher. I would have voted for Santana, easily the best pitcher in the AL this year in terms of fielding independent ERA.

I'm a bit surprised that the White Sox pitchers did so poorly in the voting. Buehrle had a great year and deserved many more third place votes. I'm also surprised that Kevin Millwood's ERA lead didn't garner him more votes. Lacking any other evidence, you'd think the ERA leader would deserve as much attention as the wins leader. It seems to me that the AL voters are in the John Kruk school of what stats are important in evaluating pitchers.

Update: As a commenter to this post points out, Jayson Stark makes a very good case for Santana. He winds up chiding the voters:

None of this is meant to disparage the man who won this award -- because we can think of 30 teams that would be thrilled to employ Colon. All we're saying is that it's way too easy to count up wins and cast a Cy Young vote.

Maybe that approach made sense four decades ago, the last time an Angels pitcher won himself a Cy. But it was also a lot harder to turn on a computer back then.

Posted by David Pinto at 02:13 PM | Awards | TrackBack (0)

Comments

This angers me. Colon was maybe the fourth-best pitcher in the AL this season. Why are these stupid voters so blinded by win totals? I'll write more about this later on one of my sites, but for now, this just frustrates me.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at November 8, 2005 02:24 PM

cy young, gold gloves, whatever......the voters suck, end of story

Posted by: benjah at November 8, 2005 02:30 PM

Maybe start up a Baseball Bloggers Association to come up with better awards and more deserving winners. Best starter, best reliever, best hitter, best overall player, etc.

Posted by: rbj at November 8, 2005 02:35 PM

I would have been ok with either Santana or Rivera. Colon . . . not so much. And yeah, how did Cliff Lee get more votes than Buerhle, Garland and Millwood combined?

Posted by: Will at November 8, 2005 02:40 PM

Given the absence of a good #1 candidate among the starters, I would have given it to Rivera.

Posted by: Crank at November 8, 2005 02:48 PM

Bizarre. Santana so very clearly had the better year. He was better in innings, K/9, K/BB, HR, ERA, IP/GS...everything. Colon beat him in run support. It's just ridiculous. And, if not Santana, as others point out...what about Buehrle? His numbers were clearly superior. The nod to Rivera was clearly a career achievement award...in a field of supposedly average performacne. But what's up with Cliff Lee? I guess win/loss is the only stat that matters. Score another for the Flat Earth Society. They seem to be doing very well these days, across so many varied topics.

Posted by: Dave S. at November 8, 2005 03:26 PM

You've gotta be kidding me. Cliff Lee pitched against the White Sox in his first two starts of the season (0-0, 8.10) and never faced them again. I had almost forgotten he was on their roster. Wins and saves are all that matters, clearly.

Posted by: Scott at November 8, 2005 03:50 PM

The Empire has struck back. The Sabermagicians are taking a beating and falling like flies. Now, Riccarddi and Beane are the only things that stand in the way of Jim Bowden and total supremacy.

Posted by: JABES at November 8, 2005 04:10 PM

The Empire has struck back. The Sabermagicians are taking a beating and falling like flies. Now, Riccarddi and Beane are the only things that stand in the way of Jim Bowden and total supremacy.

Tell me that's a lame attempt at a joke please.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at November 8, 2005 04:16 PM

Benjamin - I'm willing to bet that it is, considering the words "Jim Bowden" and "total supremacy" has likely not been used outside of a buffet or a hard-fought game of Parcheesi.

Posted by: Will at November 8, 2005 05:04 PM

Jayson Stark fights back

Posted by: Chris at November 8, 2005 07:32 PM

Stark basically hit all the points right on the head. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the voters royally screwed this one up.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at November 8, 2005 07:46 PM

Upon hearing the results, my first question was: Does Aaron Gleeman kill self or others? But he's surprisingly cool about it.

Posted by: Jurgen at November 9, 2005 01:09 AM

I'm and Angel fan, so I'm happy that Colon won, but I don't really think he deserved it - especially the way his last few starts went. I wonder who the voters are? What kind of rules do they have for voting? I told my daughter that maybe this was to make up for Orlando Cabrera not getting the gold glove, instead of Jeter.

Posted by: JudyB at November 9, 2005 04:20 AM

I am an Angel fan too, and I agree that there were better pitchers in the American league than Colon, but we'll take this because it has been 41 years, and because Cabrera should have got the gold glove over Jeter. Colon is a "Horse" and had a good year - no doubt about it. The Angels would not have got where they did without him. The voters are the BWAA - Baseball Writers Association of America - and we have to at least give them credit that they know what they are doing. So this might be a sour taste in the mouth of all of the statistic freaks, but us Angel fans love it!!

Posted by: Bob Eddy at November 9, 2005 08:59 AM

Cy Young is the all-time leader in career wins by a margin of almost 100. It's not unreasonable to have wins be criteria for the award named after him, is it?

Posted by: bruce at November 9, 2005 10:33 AM

Bruce: They would not be unreasonable if the award was simply given to the pitcher with the most wins. But the Cy Young Award was established to honor the best or most outstanding pitcher in the league. Bartolo Colon was not the best pitcher in the league nor was he the most outstanding. He just won a lot of games because the Angels scored nearly 7 runs a game when he pitched.

Posted by: Benjamin Kabak at November 9, 2005 11:03 AM

"Us Angels fans love it!" Why not be a BASEBALL fan first. As a Yankee fan, I'm even a little embarrassed that Rivera beat out Santana. I love Mo, he may be my favorite player ever, but in terms of pitching contribution, Santana was so clearly the best this season. And the Twins won more games started by Santana (24-9 with Santana on the hill vs. 22-11 with Colon on the hill of the Angels, DESPITE the fact that the Angels scored 1.32 mor runs per game for Colon than the Twins did for Santana, and that the Angels bullpen blew exactly 0 saves for Colon). If wins are the insisted measure, why not look to that stat? These awards are basically meaningless.

Posted by: Dave S. at November 9, 2005 01:48 PM

...or rather, incidentally meaningful.

Posted by: Dave S. at November 9, 2005 01:49 PM

You may well ask, who are the voters? I checked into
it. This award should be canceled. More & more papers
aren't allowing their writers to vote on awards. Too much
"becoming the news" (yes) & potential conflict of inter-
est. Papers no longer allowing include: NY Times (I'm
guessing this includes the Boston Globe/ownership, the
Baltimore Sun, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the
Washington Post, & the LA Times. Per Kepner's article
in the NYT, Sheldon Ocker voted for Cliff Lee 2nd, left
Mariano off entirely, & said it was probably because
Mariano had been good for so long, it was just another
good season for him. I'm not lying. A dude named
Glen Krevier is Pres. of the AP Sports writers, & I
heard an interview w. him. He balks at losing the
glory of this vote for what threadbare voters remain
eligible. Krevier said there are "rules." I doubt very
much he'd share them with me, but someone with
some authority needs to get a copy of these rules.
This sham has got to stop.

Posted by: susan mullen at November 11, 2005 10:00 PM

wow

bartolo colon got at least 6 runs/ start

man if roger clemens did, he'd have won every start.

Posted by: lisa gray at November 12, 2005 01:06 AM

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