MLB – Cy Youngs for Jacob deGrom and Blake Snell reflect the impact of the analysis



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On April 10, at his third start in 2018, Jacob deGrom allowed four runs in six innings in a negative Marlins decision. The four points came in the fifth inning. Yadiel Rivera hit the helicopter over third base and the ball went out of Todd Frazier's glove for a single in the battlefield. Derek Dietrich hit the next pitch for a simple ball on the ground in the right field. Miguel Rojas followed with a field player in the hole, Frazier dipped, but he glanced at his glove for another infield single. After a sacrificial volley, Justin Bour lined up a fastball and moved away from the opposite pitch, the ball coming clean the fence in the left field for a two-point run.

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The entire sequence lasted seven rounds and consisted of a hard-hit ball.

It was the worst DeGrom outing of the season.

The 30-year-old right-hander of the New York Mets would make 29 more starts and allow three races or less in each. He finished the season with a series of 24 consecutive starts in which he pitched at least six innings and allowed three points or less, an all time record. Essentially, the man did not have a bad start all season, so even though he only had 10 wins, it's not surprising that DeGrom is your winner of the Cy Young National League.

He finished the season 10-9 with a 1.70 ERA, the smallest number of wins for a pitcher from Cy Young – Fernando Valenzuela had 13 for the Dodgers in 1981, and Felix Hernandez won 13 for the Mariners in 2010. Fifteen years ago DeGrom may not have won, but voters have learned not to overemphasize victories, as was the case in 2005, when Bartolo Colon (21-8, 3.48 ERA, 157 withdrawals) beat Johan Santana (16 -7, 2.87 ERA, 238 outs) for the honors of the American League Cy Young.

The Mets have awarded DeGrom an average of 3.5 support runs per game. On four occasions, he did not allow a run and left without any decision (not to mention the start of a race on May 13). He allowed one point in 10 starts and only had 4-2 in those games. He allowed five points twice and broke the record (2-3). So ignore the record of wins – defeats – deGrom was brilliant and dominant. Since the mound was lowered in 1969, he is now only the sixth pitcher to finish with a BPM of less than 2.00 and at least 250 strikeouts, joining Tom Seaver (1971), Vida Blue (1971). ), Steve Carlton (1972), Dwight Gooden (1985) and Pedro Martinez (1997 and 2000).

Jacob deGrom won the NL Cy Young Award for his performance on the mound and not for his lack of support for the race. Patrick Gorski / USA TODAY Sports

In the American league, The southpaw, Blake Snell, of Tampa Bay Ranges, had an outstanding season, finishing 21-5 with a points average equal to 1.89 and 0.178. He became only the fourth starter of the DH era to finish with a MPM of less than 2.00 (joining Pedro Martinez, Ron Guidry and Roger Clemens) and on his 11 encounters after a short stint of shoulder fatigue at the DL, he went to 9-0 – – win nine starts in a row – with an ERA of 1.17. Snell starts with a fastball that averages 95.8 mph and mixes with a curved bullet and a scan slider (plus a modification). Against the two brittle balls, the batters hit .115 and stoked 58% of the time in appearances at the plate ending with those shots. Good luck.

The big blow against Snell as winner of Cy Young: he has launched only 180 innings, the least for a starter winner of Cy Young in an off-game season. Only Clayton Kershaw, when he launched 198 innings in 2014, had won as a starter while throwing less than 200 innings. Runner-up Justin Verlander kicked in 33 ⅔ of innings more, but the performance gap remained strong enough for Snell to feel like the right choice. The debate would have been more difficult if Verlander had pitched 230 innings or if we compared Chris Sale – who launched 155 innings and did not qualify for the title of ERA – at Verlander.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this year's votes is that, although deGrom and Snell easily won, they did not unanimously make the best pitchers with the leading indicators. At the NL, deGrom had a comfortable margin over Max Scherzer in FanGraphs WAR (8.8 to 7.2), but Baseball-Reference WAR tells a different story:

Aaron Nola: 10.5
deGrom: 8.6
Scherzer: 8.8

According to Baseball-Reference.com, Nola – who finished 17-6 with a run of 2.37 out of 212 – had one of the best throwing seasons in recent history, the best since Randy Johnson in 2002 and the tenth best since. the mound was lowered in 1969. Its 10.5 WAR at BR is better than its 5.6 WAR at FanGraphs.

In LA, Snell led Sale and Verlander in the benchmark WAR baseball game, but ranked only eighth in the WAR FanGraph war:

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Verlander: 6.8
Sale: 6.5
Gerrit Cole: 6.3
Trevor Bauer: 6.0
Luis Severino: 5.7
Corey Kluber: 5.6
Carlos Carrasco: 5.1
Snell: 4.6

For those who are questioning about WAR, the difference in value between Nola and Snell feeds their arguments, even if it's relatively unique cases. So what's going on?

Obviously, sites calculate their launch WAR in a very different way. FanGraphs basically examines the innings, take-outs, walks and circuits, makes a park adjustment and reaches a value. It ignores authorized executions or allowed hits. Baseball-Reference starts with the allowed innings and adjusts according to the quality of the opponents, the defense of the team and the park factor.

Baseball-Reference loves Nola, to a large extent, because it gives him a huge fit for the Phillies' bad defense – 0.64 points per nine innings. B-R estimates that the Phillies' defense cost Nola about 15 points, which would reduce the number of points from 57 to 42 points. Nola pitched into a neutral park, while DeGrom pitched into a pitchers fleet, which also widened the gap. The Phillies defense may have hurt Nola; on the other hand, his .254 BABIP was tied for the fourth lowest among the starters, so the balls in play were turned into outs a big percentage of the time.

FanGraphs, meanwhile, sees that DeGrom had a higher exit rate and lower walking and walking rates and felt that he had a much better season. Their calculations do not take into account Nola's success rate or starting rate, nor the fact that he gave less points than expected, as he kept the batters at .129 average with runners in scoring position.

For similar reasons, FanGraphs does not consider Snell as valuable as the other AL starters. Snell had a BABIP even lower than Nola at .242. His walking rate was a bit high, almost twice as high as Verlander's. His 88% success rate was the highest of majors – in fact, the highest since FanGraphs since John Candelaria in 1977.

As good as Nola was with the riders in the scoring position, Snell was even better: the batters hit 0.088 against him (10 for 114). Baseball-Reference has play-by-play data going back to 1954, which is the lowest number ever recorded for at least 100 batting batters with RISP (Nola's .129 mark is tied for seventh overall). with all replacements).

It is certain that Snell will probably not reach this figure in 2019. But he did it in 2018 and is the winner of Cy Young. Maybe Nola really had a historic season. It's deGrom, however, which goes with the material.

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