Nobody is going to tell me that pitching wins did not have a part of the decision here. Zack Greinke had a season two years ago that was arguably more dominant than Verlander, and the discussion at the time was whether or not he could possibly win the Cy Young due to his low win-total. Last year you saw Felix Hernandez dominate hitters all season long, and again, the discussion was whether or not he should win the Cy (even though he inevitably did win). Now Verlander comes along and puts up very impressive numbers, but also 24 wins to boost his case and he wins the MVP after making 36 apperances.

The ironic part of this all is that it seems as though Granderson, Ellsbury and Bautista took votes away from each other. There was a writer in Boston who basically said he voted for Verlander because “nobody stood out” to him. That is a ridiculous argument that makes me embarrassed to say he collects a paycheck to write his opinion. The award is given to the player who provides the most value. It seems as though there has been no real discussion of the standards of the award. But then again, some writers still vote based on pitching win totals, so I won’t get too far ahead of myself.

With that said, here’s my final ranking of who I would have voted for given a ballot:

1. Jacoby Ellsbury
2. Jose Bautista
3. Curtis Granderson
4. Justin Verlander
5. Miguel Cabrera

Photo borrowed from the Bronx Baseball Daily via Google Images

Free agency has eliminated some of the luster around the post-season awards already. The post-season awards used to be the only thing a baseball fan had to look forward to this time of year. Now, they are competing with the news about the Cliff Lee sweepstakes. Heck, even my hometown Astros are rumored to be in on that. The Gold Glove awards are the first set of awards to go out. Even without free agency, the Gold Glove awards have always been the least relevant. Not only do chicks dig the long ball, but guys dig giving awards to people who actually deserve them.

Managers and coaches vote for these awards and they see players a maximum of 18 times a season. This is just one reason why players tend to repeat as winners. Another big reason is what I would call the gap between traditional numbers and advanced numbers. Traditional coaches and managers still focus on errors and if they are really sophisticated, putouts, assists, and total chances. There has been an explosion in fielding analysis over the last decade. The most exciting of which is The Fielding Bible by John Dewan. Dewan rates players by the number of plays they should make. This depends on the balls hit in their zone and the probability that other players at that position would make the play. He has released two books on the subject and now has annual awards of his own. Below are the awards at each position based solely on his analysis. The winner of the Gold Glove Award will appear to the right. We will start with the American League

1B Daric Barton. . . . . . .+27 1B Mark Teixeira. . . . .-1
2B Orlando Hudson. . . .+22 2B Robinson Cano. . . .+7
3B Jose Lopez. . . . . . . . .+25 3B Evan Longoria. . . .+17
SS Alexei Ramirez. . . . . .+20 SS Derek Jeter. . . . . . .-17
LF Carl Crawford. . . .. ..+22 OF Ichiro Suzuki. . . . ..+15
CF Austin Jackson. . . . ..+33 OF Carl Crawford. . . ..+22
RF Ichiro Suzuki. . . . . . .+15 OF Franklin Guitterez.+20

To be perfectly fair to the voters, they only picked one truly bad fielder. Big Tex has been good in the past, but his selection highlights the problem. He was good in the past, but not good this season. Guitterez is another example of this even though he was still very good. Substitute Austin Jackson and these selections almost seem reasonable. Why they continue to select Jeter is anyone’s best guess. Novice fans will look back in ten or twenty years and think Jeter was a good defensive shortstop. He has only been above average on a couple of occasions. 2010 was not one of those occasions. You will notice that catchers were not included. The Fielding Bible system doesn’t rank them. Joe Mauer won this year in the American League. I am just assuming that a rigorous study of the position will point the fingers at someone else. Now, we can move onto the National League.

1B Albert Pujols. . . . . . . . ..+6 1B Albert Pujols. . . . . . .+6
2B Chase Utley. . . . . . . . .+16 2B Brandon Phillips. . . .+3
3B Chase Headley. . . . . ..+25 3B Scott Rolen. . . . . . . .+3
SS Brendan Ryan. . . . . . ..+31 SS Troy Tulowitzky. . ..+16
LF Matt Holliday. . . . . . . .+14 OF Michael Bourn. . . .+23
CF Michael Bourn. . . . . . .+23 OF Shane Victorino. . …+3
RF Jay Bruce. . . . . . . . . . ..+25 OF Carlos Gonzalez. . ….-5

Let’s give the voters for the NL some credit. They voted for only one below average fielder and that was Carlos Gonzalez. Gonzalez was above average in left field and he remained there all season he might have been a decent selection. The rest could generally be called good fielders, but they were the kind of fielders that coasted on reputation. Scott Rolen immediately comes to mind here. Troy Tulowitzky was legitimately second and missed a good chunk of time. In a full season he might have eclipsed Ryan, but I tend to doubt that. Yet, when you look at a year when the voters get about a third of the selections right and call it a good year it is time to put that baby to bed.

Photo of Phillies Ace Roy Halladay by Icon SMI

Going by the numbers for this award, I analyzed the following metrics: wins minus losses plus strikeouts, walks minus intentional walks (because that’s usually situational), WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched), ERA minus SIERA (a new Baseball Prospectus stat that reflects a pitcher’s true ERA). Points were also deducted for wild pitches, balks, hit batters and home runs allowed.

Additional stats not taken into this analysis were the winner’s complete games (9) and shutouts (4 of those 9 games). One of these games being a Perfect game (no hits or walks allowed).

The winner is Phillies Ace Roy “Doc” Halladay

The Stan Musial Award

Albert Pujols Photo by Icon SMI

Going by the numbers for this award, I analyzed the following metrics: runs scored, RBIs, total bases, added the number of intentional walks to add weight to that stat (it usually shows the reluctance to face a certain batter), stolen bases minus times caught stealing, batting average, OBP and then I subtracted strikeouts.

I would have persoanally preferred to see new blood win this award, but Pujols is well deserving of it this year! He beat Reds 1B Joey Votto in runs, RBI, total bases, walks (with 30 more intentional walks than Votto), less K’s with more hits, doubles and home runs. How could Pujols not win it when you look at it that way?

*denotes Honorable Mentions

Photo of Braves OF Jason Heyward by Icon SMI

This year the BBA has renamed their awards as advised by the BBWAA, so the best NL  rookie for 2010 is named after Hall of Famer Willie Mays (not Hayes). As a warning, please note that defensive ability did not play a part in this decision like I would have liked it to. Therefore, this is based solely on offensive ability (sorry Buster) when analyzing runs, total bases, runs batted in, stolen bases less caught stealing, intentional walks, batting average and on base percentage minus strikeouts.

What hurt Posey (and to a lesser extent Walker) was his late call up. Hayward and Sanchez had over 30 and 40 more games played than he did. What also did him in was a lack of stolen bases although his play behind the plate should really bring him closer to 2^nd place. Either way, Heyward wins hands down.

Also of note: I did not, for better or for worse, include a rookie pitcher in this list although Garcia of the Cardinals could have gotten a fourth or fifth place standing in my book.

The Goose Gossage Award

Photo of Braves Closer Billy Wagner by Icon SMI

This BBA award is something special as we (the BBA) received the permission to use the name of Hall of Famer (Rich) Goose Gossage  for the best late inning reliever award (I took into account non-closers with the inclusion of the unofficial Hold stat which I think is more telling of a clutch performance than the save). For this award I analyzed the following stats: saves plus holds minus blown saves (do they have a stat for blown holds yet…that might be a hole in this analysis, I admit), earned run average minus SIERA (a new Baseball Prospectus stat) plus walks/hits per innings pitched (WHIP), plus strikeouts, less wild pitches and balks, wins minus losses, minus home runs allowed.

Although Wagner didn’t have the most saves(37), he made up for it with a win differential of 5 and lows in ERA, SIERA and WHIP (0.87) and high strikeout total (104, second only to Marmol out of this bunch). What hurt Marmol was his a win differential of -1 to go along with higher ERA (2.55) and WHIP (1.18) even though he gave up fewer HRs. Wilson, like Marmol, also had a higher WHIP (1.18) and lower strikeouts (only 98), but had more saves (48). He also gave up 3 HRs had a SIERA of 2.72 while earning 3 wins and 3 losses.

*denotes Honorable Mentions

Editor’s Note: No, I am not a Braves fan!

Image via Wikipedia

Who was Connie Mack?

He is only the manager with the most wins of all time with 3,731 from 1894-1896, 1901-1950! He was a player/manager for the Pittsburg Pirates from 1894-1896 and then with the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League from 1901-1950 for a total of 53 seasons. When you manage one team for as long as he did you are going to experience good and bad years. The more seasons you manage, the more difficult it will be to end your career with a winning record. This is true with Connie Mack as he had a .486 winning percentage due to his 3,948 losses. In those 50 years in Philadelphia he had 10 seasons with 100 or more losses! But he also had 5 seasons of 100 or more wins while managing 9 pennant winning teams with 5 World Series titles. The only manager that comes close to Connie Mack was John McGraw with 2,763 wins (both are Hall of Fame Managers) and the closest active manager to them is Tony LaRussa with 2,638.

It is these all time leading marks that have inclined the members of the BBA to name the award for the best NL manager for 2010 after Mr. Connie Mack (who was nicknamed “The Tall Tactician”).

My 2010 NL Manager of the Year Prediction

Honorable Mentions: Bud Black, San Diego Padres and Bobby Cox, Atlanta Braves (in his final season)

3. Bruce Bochy, San Francisco Giants

His team ended the regular season in a tight race going down to the last game of the season and ended with a 92-70 (.568) record. His team was not thought of to win their division at the start of the season then their GM brought in players like OFs Cody Ross (FLA) and Pat Burrell (waivers), INF Mike Fontenot (Cubs) and RP Ramon Ramirez (BOS). They also agreed to trade newly re-signed C Benji Molina to Texas in order to make way for rookie of the year candidate C Buster Posey.

2. Charlie Manuel, Philadelphia Phillies

What’s amazing about their season is not their Major League leading record 97-65 (.599), but rather that it was done despite probably the second most injuries of any other Major League team (my guestimate would have the Red Sox as the most injured team of 2010). During the 2010 season the Phillies had the following players with injuries: Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins (on again, off again), Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino, Carlos Ruiz, Placido Polanco, Chad Durbin, Jamie Moyer, Brad Lidge, JC Romero, Joe Blanton, J.A. Happ and Ryan Madson. Wow! He would have come in first, but the Phillies were favored to win the NL East and with the addition of Roy Oswalt, that further solidified that thought given how they stuck around amid all of those injuries.

Image via Wikipedia

1. Dusty Baker, Cincinnati Reds
The Reds were not suppose to finish ahead of the likes of the Cardinal or the Cubs and many thought that without their young Ace Edinson Volquez, who was out due to Tommy John surgery until mid-season at the earliest, might even place behind the Brewers. Yet they finished with a 91-71 record due in part to their NL leading offense led by MVP candidate 1B Joey Votto. He eaked out 91 wins out of a starting rotation that featured rookie Mike Leake who never saw an inning of minor league play until his rehab assignment after being placed on the DL late in the season after being reassigned to the bullpen in order to limit his innings.

Kaleb and Delino photo published/authorized by Gatoraide

13-year MLB veteran (most recently of the Chicago Cubs) Delino DeShields helped surprise Kaleb Cowart of Abel, Georgia with the 2009-10 Gatorade National Baseball Player of the Year award. The Gatorade Player of the Year program is celebrating its 25^th year in recognizing elite high school athletes throughout the nation.

Delino surprised Kaleb with the news that he is this year’s winner while Kaleb was taking a baseball team photo at Cook High School. Delino himself earned both State Baseball Player of the Year honors and State Boys Basketball honors in 1986. (Picture of Delino surprising Kaleb with the award is attached – let me know if you would like additional shots and I can send over).

Kaleb: photo published/authorized by Gatoraide

Kaleb joins two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Dwight Howard (2003-04, Southwest Atlanta Christian, Atlanta) and 2010 NCAA Final Four MVP Maya Moore (2006-07, Collins Hill, Suwanee) as the only high school athletes from the state of Georgia to earn Gatorade National Player of the Year recognition in any sport.

In celebration of the larger 25^th anniversary, Gatorade will host 10 polls online that will allow consumers to decide who is the greatest all-time Gatorade Player of the Year in boys football, girls volleyball, boys and girls soccer, boys and girls basketball, boys baseball, girls softball, and boys and girls track & field.

You can cast your vote for your favorite athlete of all-time once per sport, per day at http://playeroftheyear.gatorade.com.

Former notable Gatorade Players of the Year include:

•        Peyton Manning, Super Bowl Most Valuable Player

•        Lisa Leslie, WNBA all-time leading scorer and rebounder

•        Alan Webb, Reigning American record-holder in the mile

•        Emmitt Smith, NFL all-time leading rusher

•        Cat Osterman, Softball Olympic gold medalist

In addition, make sure to enter the Gatorade Player of the Year sweepstakes where you could win a trip to the 2010 Gatorade High School Athlete of the Year Awards ceremony and the ESPY Awards.

For more information about The Gatorade Player of the Year program and its 25^th anniversary celebration, please visit http://playeroftheyear.gatorade.com.

Baseball Bloggers Alliance Announces Formation of Goose Gossage Award

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance is pleased to announce the formation of the Goose Gossage Award.

Starting with the 2010 Major League Baseball season, the Goose Gossage Award will be a postseason award given to the top relief pitcher in each league.  “It’s hard to picture anyone more worthy of having his name on an award such as this,” said BBA founder Daniel Shoptaw. “Mr. Gossage embodies what so many people think of as the classic relief pitcher, and the BBA is honored that he has agreed to lend his name to this award.”

Richard “Goose” Gossage was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008 after a 22-year major league career in which he had 310 career saves and recorded a 3.01 ERA in 1,002 games played. He was a nine-time All-Star, finished among the top vote-getters for the Cy Young Award in five different seasons, and was named the 1978 Rolaids Relief Man of the Year.

The Goose Gossage Award will be voted on by the membership of the BBA.  Team chapters will have two votes each for either the American or National League ballot.  The General Baseball chapter will vote in a manner determined by its members.

“At the end of the 2009 season, we voted on awards mirroring those of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, though we did not have a separate award for relievers,” stated Shoptaw. “Due to the popularity of that voting, we decided that it was important to differentiate ourselves from other voting organizations.  With the addition of the Goose Gossage Award we have taken the first step in that direction.“

The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in 2009 and numbers 142 blogs across baseball, representing 29 of the 30 major league teams and including numerous general baseball blogs.  Award balloting for the BBA is a transparent process, as no ballot is counted unless it is posted on the voter’s blog.

The official website of the BBA is located at www.baseballbloggersalliance.com.  The BBA can be found on Twitter by the handle @baseballblogs and the hashmark #bbba.  Members of the BBA may also be heard at Blog Talk Radio each Tuesday night with their call-in show, BBA Baseball Talk.

Many around baseball have heard of Ernie Harwell, the longtime voice of the Detroit Tigers, and he will be recognized on May 5 with another honor to add to his Hall of Fame resume. On that date, Harwell will receive the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award from Fordham’s WFUV Radio Spring Gala. The ceremony will take place on a Wednesday evening at the Gotham Hall in New York City.

Harwell spent 55 years in broadcasting, 42 of those years were spent as the main color person for the Tigers as he sat in the booth in Detroit from 1960 to 2002. Even though he is known for his time with the Tigers, he did spend some time with many other organizations.

His career actually began with a team called the Atlanta Crackers in 1946. After two years, he moved on to the Brooklyn Dodgers. After that stop, he traveled across town to the New York Giants and then went south to the Baltimore Orioles before becoming the voice of the Tigers in 1960. Some of the Awards that have already been thrust Harwell’s way include his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, an induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1998 and an induction into the Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

Some other awards that are going to be handed out that night are as follows. Multi-time Grammy winner who is remembered for being an exceptional singer, mandolin player and drummer, Levon Helm, will receive the WFUV Sound and Vision Award. Also on stage will be seven time Emmy Award winning television journalist Bob Schieffer to receive the Charles Osgood Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism. One of the main people who are scheduled to attend and speak at the event is New York City Major Michael Bloomberg.

The famed Detroit Broadcaster, Harwell, will be the third recipient of the Vin Scully Lifetime Achievement Award for Sports Broadcasting. The first winner of the award was none other than former Dodgers play by play man Vin Scully, who has also been inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Last year’s winner was Dick Enberg who has made a name for himself over the years from his work with CBS Sports.

The Gala has attracted some of the most famous names in entertainment and sports. The presenter for Harwell’s award will be Baseball Hall of Famer and former Detroit Tigers outfielder Al Kaline. Harwell will be further honored during the night with a special video tribute that has been narrated by well known sportscaster Bob Costas.

Journalist Charles Osgood will present his own award to Schieffer, the host of CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

WFUV is New York’s Rock and Roots Station and is licensed to Fordham University. Its relationship with the University spans 60 years and the station receives about a quarter-million listeners every week.

Each year, BaseballEvolution.com doles out Mark Redman Awards for both leagues, recognizing pitchers who began the season surprisingly well but crashed back to earth in the second half of the season.  New Arizona Diamondback Edwin Jackson won the 2009 AL Award.  Does that have any predicative value for Jackson’s 2010 season and beyond?

Baseball Evolution first created the Mark Redman Award in 2006, so we only have follow-up data for a half dozen pitchers.  Let’s see what we can glean from it:

Jose Contreras 2006: 13-9, 4.27 in 196 IP

Jose Contreras 2007: 10-17, 5.57 in 189 IP

Jose Contreras 2008: 7-6, 4.54 in 121 IP

Jose Contreras 2009: 6-13, 4.92 in 131.2 IP

The inaugural AL winner certainly continued to tumble after a poor end to the 2006 season.  In fairness, Contreras was listed as a 34-year old in 2006 and may in fact have been much older.   His decline may not be relevant to Jackson, who won his award during a season in which he was primarily 25 years old.

Jeremy Bonderman 2007: 11-9, 5.01 in 174.1 IP

Jeremy Bonderman 2008: 3-4, 4.29 in 71.1 IP

Jeremy Bonderman 2009: 0-1, 8.71 in 10.1 IP

Here is a far better comparison, since Bonderman was 24 when he won his award and is a fellow Tiger to boot.  The record and ERA here are misleading, as the former 1st-round pick struck out 145 batters while walking 48 in 2007 before fanning just 44 and walking 36 in fewer than half as many innings the following year.  Bonderman’s record and ERA weren’t far worse in 2008 only because of a fluke of small sample size.

And with Bonderman, the lack of a meaningful sample size is the real story.  He certainly lost effectiveness after his Redman win, but he more starkly lost his health.  After averaging 30 starts per season in his first five big league seasons, Bonderman has made only 13 over the past two years.

Garrett Olson 2008: 9-10, 6.65 in 132.2 IP

Garrett Olson  2009: 3-5, 5.60 in 80.1 IP

Olson, too, lost playing time in the season following his Redman Award, but in his case, it was not due to injury.  The Seattle Mariners were in contention last season, and could not afford to put up with bad Olson outings the way that perennial cellar-dwellers like the Baltimore Orioles could in 2008.  So even though Olson’s 2009 numbers were a substantial improvement over what he managed in 2008, the M’s put him in Triple-A for two stints totaling nearly two months and shuttled him between the rotation and the bullpen while he was in the majors  And actually, in his 11 starts, Olson went 3-5 with a 6.49 ERA, which isn’t an improvement on his 2008 numbers.

Like Bonderman, Olson was 24 in his Redman season, so his failure to recapture the success he had in the first half of 2008 is applicable to Edwin Jackson.

Derrick Turnbow 2006: 4-9, 6.87 in 56.1 IP

Derrick Turnbow 2007: 4-5, 4.63 in 68 IP

Derrick Turnbow 2008: 0-1 15.63 in 6.1 IP

Relievers are notoriously fickle.  That said, Derrick Turnbow had one of the most drastic turnarounds of any reliever in history.  Turnbow was one of the most effective closers in baseball in 2005.  Four years later at the age of 31, he was out of baseball.  Clearly, the turning point was the summer of 2006, although Turnbow was at least serviceable in 2007.  His situation is certainly different from Edwin Jackson’s as a starter, but there’s no denying that his disastrous second half in 2006 was a bad omen of things to come.

John Maine 2007: 15-10, 3.91 in 191 IP

John Maine 2008: 10-8, 4.18 in 140 IP

John Maine 2009: 7-6, 4.43 in 81.1 IP

Not much to analyze here.  Maine has seen his effectiveness and durability steadily decline in two years since winning a very tight Redman Award over Jason Marquis.  It is worth noting that Marquis has been pretty solid over the past two seasons (although he still falters in the second half).  Had he gotten the Redman nod over Maine, this analysis would look a bit better for Jackson and the D-backs.

Jonathan Sanchez 2008: 9-12, 5.01 ERA in 158 IP

Jonathan Sanchez 2009: 8-12, 4.24 ERA in 163.1 IP

Finally, we found a Redman winner who was legitimately better the following season.  Sanchez and Jackson won their awards at the exact same age.  The difference was in their component ERAs.  Sanchez had a Fielding Independent ERA (FIP) of 3.90 in 2008, over a full run lower than his actual ERA of 5.01.  Jackson had a FIP of 4.34 last season, nearly three-quarters of a run higher than his actual 3.62 ERA.  Redman issues aside, we would expect Sanchez to improve on his 2008 ERA and Jackson to decline from his 2009 ERA based on the ratios of strikeouts, walks, and homers for each pitcher.  Sanchez was unlucky in 2008 while Jackson was fortunate in 2009.

Conclusions

Looking solely at the season following a Redman Award, we total the following:

The Redman Year: 61-59, 4.97 in 908.2 IP

Year After Redman: 38-51, 4.78 in 712 IP

This isn’t at all what I expected.  I figured that with the first part of a Redman season being so uncharacteristically dominant, the following season would necessarily be a letdown.  It turns out that the second half of Redman seasons tend to be uncharacteristically bad as well, so the following season tends to feature some evening out.  The win-loss record of Redman winners tends to get a little worse while their earned run averages improve a bit.  Neither trend is very statistically significant.

But there is something to be gleaned here.  Check out those innings pitched totals.  After averaging 151 innings per season during their Redman years, these six pitchers averaged just 119 the following season.  Remove the one reliever from the group and we see a decline from 170 to 129.  When we move one more year past the Redman season, things get even worse.  A disastrous second half could be indicative of an injury for starting pitchers – injuries that recur in subsequent seasons and become career-threatening in some instances.

This is particularly bad news for Edwin Jackson, who already had so many injury red flags surrounding him that you might think a swarm of NFL coaches were watching instant replays near him.  Jackson surpassed his 2008 innings pitched total by just over 30 last season, which is the point at which we can expect injury trouble in the subsequent season due to the sharp increase in workload.  Furthermore, Jackson had 18 starts in which he threw over 100 pitches, three in which he surpassed 120, and one dubious start in which he was asked to throw 132 pitches.  Since Jackson regularly throws his fastball in the mid-to-upper 90s, these high pitch counts take their toll on him more so than they would for a soft-tosser.

The ironic part of all this is that the D-backs purportedly traded the younger, cheaper, and more-talented Max Scherzer for Jackson because they believed that Scherzer was an injury waiting to happen.  On the contrary, Jackson is unlikely to reach 150 innings in 2010 and I will go on record as saying that he will not reach 200.  Things could get even worse beyond 2010, but focusing just on this upcoming season, Edwin Jackson is extremely unlikely to spend the entire season healthy and effective.

With the lack of depth in their starting rotation, the Diamondbacks can ill-afford to have that happen.

Congratulations to Tim Lincecum for winning the 2009 NL Cy Young award, just a couple short days after Zack Greinke‘s victory for the AL counterpart. But an even bigger congratulations is in order. A congratulations to the BBWAA voters.

Just what am I getting at, you ask? As we’re all aware of, there have been several outrageous Cy Young awards given out almost solely due to a pitcher’s run support. 1967 may have been the worst, when Jim Bunning garnered only 1 first place vote despite obviously pitching more and better quality innings than NL winner Mike McCormick. Then there was a young Tom Seaver losing to Fergusen Jenkins in 1971 when threw 286 innings for an extraordinarily low 1.76 ERA (192 ERA+ and 1.93 FIP), while Jenkins‘ only sizeable lead was in IP (325 vs. 286) and Wins (24 to 20). In 1984, Rick Suttcliffe swept all of the 1st place votes despite pitching 68 less and worse innings than Doc Gooden for the NL. In the AL that year, relievers Willie Hernandez and Dan Quisenberry took the top two spots while Dave Stieb‘s league crowns in ERA and IP garnered him only a 7^{th place finish*. In the 90′s we’ve seen Bob Welch beat out} Roger Clemens^{‘ season for the ages in 1990, we’ve seen Kevin Brown’s majestic 1996 largely forgotten due to} John Smoltz^{‘s 7 Win lead, and again to another one of Atlanta’s future Hall of Famers two years later in an even worse voting catastrophe –} Brown ^{finished third in balloting despite facing 100 more batters than winner} Tom Glavine ^{whilst striking out 100 more! The new millennium brought us Pedro in his prime losing to Barry Zito because of 3 wins and 30 innings pitched in 2002, Randy Johnson losing to Roger Clemens in 2004 despite his significantly better totals in ERA, IP and strikeouts, all because of 2 measly wins (16 vs Clemens’ 18), and Johan Santana’s third place finish while leading the AL in ERA, WHIP and strikeouts and topping Cy winner} Bartolo Colon ^{in Innings Pitched in 2005.}

^{But now, 41 years later, the two Cy Young award winners won just 31 games COMBINED.}

^{Let that sink in for a second. Thirty-one wins. Zack Greinke pitched himself to 16, Tim Lincecum 15 and that equals Thirty-one! As a point of reference,} Denny McLain ^{in 1968 won 31 games by himself, and was the last pitcher to surpass the 30 win mark.}

^{Finally, after more than 100 years since the Win-Loss record was created and widely used as a measure of effectiveness, we are seeing its perceived value die out. Sure, it’s been spited in favor of Saves on more than one occasion, but that’s no better. For decades, voters who sought out value in other measures have been silenced, even if it was just ERA. But their voices slowly grew louder. And now in 2009, they are the majority. For the first time ever, more voters than not blatantly favored other, more complete statistics to determine Cy Young Award winners. Widely speculated to be Greinke’s biggest competition,} Felix Hernandez ^{garnered 3 more wins (19) and lost the Cy to Greinke in a landslide. Lincecum had two candidates perceived to win against him, in} Chris Carpenter ^and Adam Wainwright^{, who had 17 and 19 wins respectively, and defeated them with his modest 15, albeit narrowly.}

^{What led to this? In the AL, Greinke beat out Hernandez in ERA (2.16 vs. 2.49), Strikeouts (242 vs. 217) despite 9 less Innings Pitched, and gave up significantly less home runs (0.43 HR/9 versus Hernandez’ 0.57). By traditional standards, it’s crystal clear why Greinke should have beat out King Felix. But in the NL, in addition to his lack of wins, Lincecum was behind Carpenter in ERA by nearly a quarter of a run per 9, and Wainwright also had a genuinely great season even if you do ignore his league lead in Wins. By looking at statistics that sportswriters have passed on for generations, it really was a 3-horse race. But diving into the more analytical numbers tells us a very different story…}

^{(tERA and FIP WAR were created by Graham MacAree and Tom Tango, respectively, and can both be found on Fangraphs.com)}

^{tERA and FIP WAR are two metrics that encompass pitching skill by filtering what a pitcher cannot control. FIP WAR is a Wins Above Replacement model of the FIP statistic, which weighs strikeouts, bases on balls and home runs allowed and by itself presents them on a scale similar to ERA. tERA, like FIP, weighs strikeouts, bases on balls and home runs allowed, but also weighs batted ball data such as line drives, ground balls and fly balls allowed, and then presents them on an ERA scale.}

^{(Not familiar with FIP? Ask Zack Greinke! Someone needs to tell him to move out of his mother’s basement.)}

^{…These two statistics are as close to a “Best Pitcher in Baseball” statistic as you can get right now, at least until further development in the Hit-, Field-, and Throw F/X systems. In other words, they do what ERA and W/L record were seen as supposed to do for decades. And just which two pitchers just so happen to be at the top of the list? Why, it’s our two} Cy Young Award ^winners!

^{Now, I’m certain that most voters on the BBWAA panel didn’t look at these stats – heck, I would bet that 90 percent of them never even heard of them. But voters have never hit the nail on the head with the Cy Young award like they did this year.}

^{And that it’s happening at the sunset of the dubbed “}Moneyball^{” decade makes it read like poetry.}