CY ON THE WALL
Anonymous survey of voters points to deGrom collecting NL hardware
LET’S not assert with full confidence that Jacob deGrom should construct a new trophy case in his Florida home, or craft an acceptance speech, or plan every last detail of a members-only dinner with R.A. Dickey, Dwight Gooden and Tom Seaver.
On the other hand? He shouldn’t book an expedition to the South Pole or anything for when the award is handed out in November.
The early indications look very encouraging for deGrom, his monster season clouded by the Mets’ chronic, comic lack of run support, to win his first National League Cy Young Award and join Dickey, Gooden and Seaver as the only Mets who received this honor from the Baseball Writers Association of America.
The Po s t conducted a survey in which 14 of the 30 voters for the award — two representing the market of each NL team — agreed to participate on the condition of anonymity, and the results are quite telling: The overwhelming majority of those surveyed do not intend to penalize deGrom for his wonloss record, 9-9 with one start left. Furthermore, most won’t count it against deGrom that his Mets fell out of the pennant race before kids left home for summer camp.
All of the voters agreed that they would incorporate modern analytics into their criteria at least moderately, another good sign for deGrom, although the Nationals’ Max Scherzer and the Phillies’ Aaron Nola, likely to finish in second and third place, respectively, can score a few analytical points.
If you want to look for the historical comparison to deGrom’s odd 2018 résumé, with his 1.77 ERA easily leading the NL and his 259 strikeouts trailing only Scherzer, two obvious cases emerge. The first is Hall of Famer (and former Met) Nolan Ryan, whose 8-16 record for the 1987 Astros clashed dramatically with his 2.76 ERA and 270 strikeouts, both of which led the NL. Ryan tied Gooden for fifth in the NL Cy Young voting, gathering zero first-place votes and a total of 12 points. Consider that the NL’s retroactive leader in Wins Above Replacement (Baseball-Reference.com’s measure) that season, the Dodgers’ Bob Welch with 7.1, wound up in eighth place with three points; Ryan tallied 5.4. For all intents and purposes, WAR did not exist 31 years ago.
The second is Felix Hernandez, who posted a 13-12 record for the 2010 Mariners even as he paced the American League with 2.27 ERA and finished second with 232 strikeouts, and his 7.1 WAR topped his competitors as well. King Felix broke ground by becoming the least-winningest starting pitcher to capture the Cy.
DeGrom presents a further test because he will undercut Hernandez by either three or four wins, and if he loses to the Braves in his final start Wednesday night at Citi Field, he’d own a record below .500, an indignity that has never been sported by a Cy Young-winning starting pitcher; Dodgers closer Eric Gagne went 2-3 when he received the 2003 NL award.
Nevertheless, to steal from Bill Murray in “Meatballs,” it just doesn’t seem to matter. Twelve of the 14 respondents said they’d look minimally at a pitcher’s won-loss record. Two said they would do so moderately, with zero opting for “Heavily.”
“Not even remotely,” one voter opined.
“It’s just not in their control,” another voter pointed out. “I think there’s an important distinction between the fact that wins matter to pitchers and even fans — they do! — and how they should matter when evaluating their performance. We have so many better ways now to determine how good a pitcher is at his job, which is giving his team the best chance to win by preventing runs.”
What about the pitcher’s workplace environment, the stakes? The Mets began the season with an 11-1 flourish, only to fall 10 games under .500, 28-38, on June 15. The only true impact deGrom had on the NL pennant race was the occasional spoiling of other team’s aspirations. Nola helped the Phillies make a surprise playoff run that fell short, whereas Scherzer kept the disappointing Nationals afloat sufficiently that they were just eliminated last week.
Our crowd is split on this one. Two respondents said they considered the candidates’ team success very relevant, five a little relevant — and seven minimally relevant. It appears unlikely the Mets’ struggles will seriously derail deGrom’s chances, and plenty of previous Cy Young Award winners, including Dickey and Hernandez as more recent examples, pitched for lousy clubs.
“I care a little more about a team’s record in a pitcher’s starts than his own individual record,” one voter explained. “The team’s overall success, and a pitcher’s part in it late in the season, can be a tiebreaker if the numbers are really close.”
“I do give consideration to how a pitcher fared against his division and playoff contenders,” another voter offered. Since deGrom pitched well against virtually everyone, he need not sweat such details.
“There is something to be said for pitching in higher-stress games, but it’s also harder for some guys to get amped up for meaningless games,” another voter wrote in an email. “I do think the quality of competition and the defense behind each pitcher matters, though.”
Which presents the perfect segue to the third question: Analytics. DeGrom leads the NL in FanGraphs.com WAR (8.3), while he trails only Nola, 9.8 to 9.2, in the B-R.com calculations for pitchers. His 211 ERA+, which factors in ballparks, destroys Nola’s (170) and Scherzer’s (165). Scherzer, who will start Tuesday night, putting him in a position to start again on Sunday if he chooses, leads by a hair in strikeout-to-walk ratio, 5.686 to deGrom’s 5.630.
Want to dig deeper? Some will. DeGrom permitted fewer hardhit balls — 28.8 percent, as per MLB.com’s Baseball Savant page, than Nola (31.6 percent) Scherzer (32).
Six voters said they would rely heavily on analytics, seven said they would moderately do so and the 14th respondent classified his analytics utilization as “moderate to heavy.”
“I am looking at a lot of factors,” one voter declared. “ERA, strikeouts per nine innings, weak contact, and more overrides won-loss record in a big way.”
“Innings and ERA mean the most to me, as I still lean toward what actually happened over what should have happened,” another voter wrote. “But I want to contextualize those numbers as much as possible by accounting for differences in home park, team defense, etc.”
You know that the Mets’ team defense has stunk, right? Just another obstacle that deGrom has overcome.
And barring a surprising outcome, on Nov. 14, deGrom will overcome history and get rewarded, rather than penalized, for negatives out of his control.