Baseball Musings: Cy, Cy, Sabathia!

November 13, 2007

Cy, Cy, Sabathia!

C.C. Sabathia won the AL Cy Young award Tuesday afternoon, in a race that shook out somewhat differently than I thought. While I expected Sabathia to win due to great numbers and more innings than any other starter, I'm somewhat surprised that Lackey and Carmona, 1-2 in a very close ERA race, polled so low. Beckett's second place finish indicates wins still account for a big chunk of what goes into a Cy Young vote.

Or maybe Cy Young voters are becoming more sophisticated. Beckett posted better strikeout and walk numbers than Lackey and Carmona. Could voters actually be looking at fielding independent pitching numbers? All-in-all, a good vote by the writers this season.

Chien-Ming Wang did not receive a single vote.

Posted by David Pinto at 02:26 PM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)

Comments

Well it is disappointing that Beckett did not win. But take a look at the ALCS, hmm how did that turn out. Let's see CC won ZERO and Beckett won 2.

Posted by: emains at November 13, 2007 02:39 PM

The ALCS is irrelevant, voting took place before the series.

Posted by: Basura at November 13, 2007 03:12 PM

If the playoffs had been included, Beckett would have walked away with it easily. As it is, I think Sabathia's equivalent (or slightly better) performance over significantly more innings clearly put him over the top.

Of course, those innings are probably what bit him in the ass in the ALCS.

Posted by: Ben at November 13, 2007 03:42 PM

Duhh Basura, we all know the voting took place before the playoffs. Apparently you missed what I was saying about the ALCS. Not that it affected the voting, but rather, when would you want your ace to win? Beckett won 2 games whereas CC lost 2 games.

Posted by: emains at November 13, 2007 05:45 PM

Playoffs aside, I firmly believe Beckett did not win the Cy because voters did not look at stats enough. Here's my humble argument for Beckett:

First, Sabathia had to face Detroit (887 RS) 5 times, but got to face Kansas City also 5 times, White Sox twice, and Minnesota once. That's 8 games against the three lowest run scoring offenses in the American League. Beckett meanwhile faced those teams only 4 times, and had to face the Yankees (the only team with over 900 RS with 968) a whopping 4 times as well - a feat Sabathia didn't have to do once.

The AL average OPS was 0.761, batters Beckett faced this year had an OPS of 0.757 (49th percentile), batters Sabathia faced had an OPS of 0.738 (21th percentile). So that's a pretty big difference.

Second, Sabathia has pitched half his games at Jacobs Field, a known pitchers park while Josh Beckett spends the same number of games in the neutral or hitters park (depending on the number of righties/lefties in a lineup) of Fenway.

While, yes, Sabathia's overall statistics are more impressive than Beckett's, they are inflated by a greater number of favorable matchups. Beckett had more and tougher matchups than Sabathia did against high run scoring offenses. He statistically outperformed Sabathia in every way against tough teams, without the luxury of pitching in one of the games best pitching parks and in the American League's worst run scoring division. Instead, he was at Fenway, tough on pitchers, in the AL East, the games best run scoring division.

So while Sabathia did throw a whopping 20% more innings than Beckett, Beckett's commendable 200 IP were a rockier road, and his success against competition was overall more impressive.

And while wins can be a deceiving statistic, the evidence above of Beckett's challenges in 2007 make it all the more impressive that he is the first pitcher in 2 years to reach 20 wins.

Posted by: Nat at November 13, 2007 10:51 PM

Wow good job Nat. All good points, and makes sense. Of course what you sort of said but not completely is that the sportswriters would not have done that much research into those stats. If you look at the very beginning of the season back in Spring training, the sportswriters had CC as the early favorite to win the Cy Young and never really deviated from that point all year.

Posted by: emains at November 13, 2007 11:09 PM

It comes down to Beckett missing two starts with blisters - if he pitches to form he wins at leat 1 if not both starts and finishes with 21-22 W's - where he almost definitely wins - speaking of omissions - Papelbon get's 0 votes?

Posted by: Bandit at November 14, 2007 01:05 PM

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