National League Cy Young Race: Nobody has a clue
The 2016 National League Cy Young race has rekindled old debates, while also sparking new ones. Should we decide based on ERA or FIP? Would it be better yet to use DRA as our baseline? What place do batted-ball stats have in determining a Cy Young winner?
All of these questions, and more, are at the forefront. The National League doesn’t really have a favorite, like the American League might. Trying to sort through all of it can seem messy and impossible, but I’m going to try anyway because I am a foolish person.
I want to get something out of the way real quick: No, I’m not going to consider Clayton Kershaw. Yes, he’s undeniably the greatest pitcher of his generation, but he’s only pitched 129 innings this season. Is this drawing an arbitrary line in the sand? Of course it is, but all awards are subjective anyway, so let’s move on from Kershaw.
A large part of this race hinges around the widely varying opinions people have on a single pitcher: Kyle Hendricks. The 26-year-old Cubs starter has pitched to a line of 2.03/3.38/3.69. That ERA really pops out at you, as it leads the league by nearly a third of a run. I would never advocate handing a pitcher the Cy Young based on ERA alone, but that statistic is certainly hard to ignore.
Much has been made of Hendricks’ ability to limit hard contact. Batted-ball stats have been around for some time, but in 2016 they’ve shifted to the center of the pitching conversation. There is a sense, among baseball fans, that there is a hidden skill that is not being properly accounted for in pitching to contact.
This is, to an extent, true. FIP still remains the most widely-cited modern advanced pitching metric, but it only accounts for the “three true outcomes”, which are walks, home runs, and strikeouts. It clearly doesn’t capture the whole picture. Hendricks leads the league for highest rate of soft contact at 25.6 percent, and is second only to Tanner Roark for lowest hard contact rate, which helps to explain how he’s beating his 3.38 FIP by over a run.
Baseball Prospectus’s DRA is a decidedly better pitching statistic than ERA or FIP, but even it has limitations. DRA accounts for roughly 70 percent of all runs allowed on a pitcher’s watch, up from the 50 percent that FIP accounts for. Still, that 30 percent creates a world in which Robbie Ray (2.51 DRA) rates ahead of Noah Syndergaard (2.85) and Madison Bumgarner (3.26). Ray is no doubt having an underrated season, but you could be forgiven for seeing that comparison and having a good, hearty laugh.
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Jose Fernandez, who is an excellent starting pitcher, is tied with Max Scherzer for the NL lead in DRA-based WAR at 6.4. However, he holds the highest opposition line drive rate among qualifying starters and holds a relatively high hard contact rate of 32.6. This makes it difficult for me to throw my non-existent Cy Young vote to him. His co-leader in DRA, however, is third in the league in soft contact rate and has only allowed a more under-control hard contact rate of 28 percent. Scherzer is also fifth in FIP, third in fWAR, and first in B-Ref’s version of pitcher WAR.
What about the young Noah Syndergaard, you might ask? B-Ref has him third in WAR while Fangraphs has him first. DRA-based WAR positions Syndergaard fourth in the National League, behind Scherzer and Fernandez and the aforementioned Robbie Ray. He’s top-10 in both soft contact rate and hard contact rate allowance.
His swinging strike rate is an eye-popping 14.5 percent and he leads the league in FIP, to boot. Of course, that swinging strike rate puts him behind Max Scherzer at 15.2 percent, and you can start to see a pattern emerging. Scherzer is rated well by nearly every statistic and seems to bridge the gap between the old and new, the power pitcher and the contact pitcher.
Kyle Hendricks has had an extraordinary season and it should not be discounted simply for not looking conventional. He would be a deserving Cy Young winner should the award be given to him. Syndergaard or Fernandez would also be deserving winners.
However, if I were to vote on the award today, my choice would be Scherzer. He’s the only candidate, in my opinion, who comes across well by both conventional methods (ERA and K%) and less-conventional methods (DRA and batted-ball rates).
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