The Sports Beat

Since a couple days ago I talked about not who should win the AL MVP but about who will win it, today I’m going to do mostly the opposite in analyzing the AL Cy Young race.  Why the change?  In this case there’s really only three guys with any sort of realistic shot, and one who stands alone as the clear-cut favorite.  That man is Cliff Lee.

Lee leads the league in winning percentage, wins, and ERA, and is second in innings pitched and third in WHIP.  He’s also got a nifty 5.58 K/BB ratio and holds the eighth spot in overall strike outs.  So, he’ll be winning the damn thing.  Done.

The only other two options are Francisco Rodriguez and Roy Halladay.

K-Rod likely will end 2008 with the all-time saves record, but other than that somewhat noteworthy acheivement (sardonic emphasis on somewhat), he’s really having a rather average season for a quality closer.  He’s on pace for a 2.81 ERA in 68 innings.  Yawn.

That leaves us the Canadian Ace, Mr. Halladay.  Roy has thrown 20.1 more innings than Lee and has a slightly better WHIP (1.04 to 1.08), but the tall righty’s ERA stands at .21 runs per 9 higher than his contemporary.  So, based on the discrepancy in records (Lee is 17-2 and Halladay is 14-9), Lee’s going to win.  The problem is I’m not sure he should.

I view the Cy Young as the award for the best pitcher in the league.  The best pitcher is the guy who gives his team the best chance to win as often as possible, in my humble opinion.  That means performance and durability are essential.  And Lee falls just short of matching Halladay in that combo.

The difference is innings pitched.  When two pitchers have ERAs within a small range of each other, if one pitches substantially more innings than the other, he is more valuable.  Call it the certainty factor.

Halladay’s 20.1 extra innings at a 2.64 ERA are tremendously valuable.  Finding the necessary relievers to provide those innings at that success rate is costly, and places a stress on the rest of the pitching staff.  Having a guy provide as many outs as Halladay is a huge benefit to his team.  So, it’s important to understand that if a guy throws five shutout innings, that’s tremendous, but giving up 2 runs over 7 or 8 innings is actually better in the abstract. 

Thus Roy Halladay is more valuable than someone like Pedro Martinez in his later Boston years, despite the fact that Pedro was more dominant.  Rich Harden is a great current example–he’s more dominant per outing but contributes less overall to his team.  Come playoff time, you’d rather have the zeros up on the board–it’s a tiny sample size and you can tax your pen as much as you need to–but during the regular season, which the Cy Young is based solely upon, you sometimes choose quantity over quality.

So, what does all this mean?  Nothing.  But for those of you who haven’t realized what a pitcher Roy Halladay is, appreciate him now, because he might just be a shell of his former self in a year or two from, of all things, overuse.

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