Brian W looks at the Cy Young contenders.
It seems that lately the media has written off Roy Halladay in the Cy Young race, with Zach Greinke the clear favourite. Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez get some consideration, but generally it seems to be a race between Greinke and C.C. Sabathia. When I took a quick look at Greinke's numbers, something jumped out at me. First, a look at the standard stats for the contenders.
GS IP H ER BB SO W-L ERA CG SO
Greinke 29 205.1 177 50 42 216 13-8 2.19 6 3
Halladay 29 214.0 214 72 30 189 15-9 3.03 7 2
Hernandez 30 207.1 175 58 63 193 15-5 2.52 1 1
Verlander 31 210.0 189 78 57 239 16-8 3.34 3 1
Sabathia 31 213.1 184 81 58 178 17-7 3.42 2 1
From these numbers, it seems Greinke is a runaway leader. The only real knock against him is the lack of wins, but playing for KC, that's expected. Sabathia will likely pick up some votes from people who rely on the win-loss record when deciding, especially if he reaches 20 wins. No problem so far. Now let's look into the opposition these pitchers have faced.
Opp Win% >500 <500 NY/BOS OPS
Greinke .485 11 18 0 .754
Halladay .531 22 7 8 .776
Hernandez .516 20 10 1 .759
Verlander .502 16 15 3 .762
Sabathia .487 15 16 3 .752
Despite pitching for the Royals and thus not getting to pitch against them, Greinke still has the lowest quality of opposition faced (Sabathia is surprisingly close). Somehow Greinke has managed to go the entire season without ever facing the Yankees or the Red Sox. On the other hand, the Jays have been altering their rotation to get Halladay to face those two teams as much as possible (5 against NY, 3 against Boston). None of these pitchers comes anywhere near the level of opposition faced by Halladay. Despite playing for a team that is far below .500 and facing the best teams in the league Doc is still third in ERA and has put up a 15-9 record. To me, that deserves Cy Young consideration. Will he win? Of course not, and to be honest, I'm not sure if he should. How much should Greinke be punished for playing against bad teams? He's done as much as could be asked of him and might have done just as well had he faced the top teams more often. On the other hand, Halladay would likely have won 20 games pitching against the teams that Greinke has faced.
I haven't been able to find a pitching statistic similar to support neutral win-loss record which attempts to incorporate quality of opposition. If any Box reader knows of a stat that does this I'd love to see the numbers for these pitchers.
What do you think? Does Greinke's amazing ERA give him the trophy? Does CC win 20 and take the Cy? Or should there be a campaign to give Doc the recognition he deserves?
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20090917204200491