Voting for Real

I saw that Haren got exactly one vote and wondered who it was. I saw him in person several times this year and think he's a worthy third-place pick. I'm glad somebody overlooked the 14 wins.

"With all due respect to the other names mentioned above, however, a ballot that includes anyone but those three guys [Lincecum, Carpenter, Wainwright] in the top three is in error." - Joe Sheehan, Monday.

Another little tidbit. Law had Vazquez 2nd on his ballot which means Vazquez finished 4th overall in voting. Also that sole vote gave Vazquez a 70k bonus.

I don't think Jurrjens was even the best pitcher on his own team.

"Saying which pitcher is the best is a lot like picking your favorite pie."

I had no idea that evaluating a basically objective question -- "Who was the best pitcher in the league?" -- was so thoroughly nebulous.

Does the same go for answering the question "Who is the best player in the league?" When some braindead writer from Philadelphia is shown to have voted for Ryan Howard next week, is the proper reaction just to shrug and say, "Well, there's no way to really know who was better, Howard or Pujols. Picking between those players is like choosing between apple and cherry pie. Any answer is basically right."

Is the proper reaction really just to say, "Sure, Pujols leads Howard in all the major objective measures, but there are infinite numbers, stats, and data sets out there with different ways to argue them, so who's really to say which ones are right -- the modern statistics that attempt to adjust for context and integrate a relatively sensible understanding of the game, or the statistics created 100 years ago, that mainly rely on countin' stuff up and seeing who has more?"

I know Baseball Prospectus has gone through some major changes in the last nine years, but this wink-and-a-shrug approach to evaluating a pretty basic, and essentially objective, problem -- "Who was the best?" -- strikes me as just a little odd.

I know the popular P.O.V. to emerge in the baseball analysis world over the last five years has been "Neither stats NOR scouts! Use all the available information! Don't put too much trust in any one number!" And that's a basically admirable perspective. Skepticism is almost always a good thing. But I'd be lying if this "apple pie" approach to voting on the NL Cy Young didn't strike me as an attempt to SEEM non-partisan, but in reality is just, frankly, a little intellectually soft.

Tim Lincecum lead both Carpenter and Wainwright in all metrics that demonstrate an understanding of what pitchers can and can't control. BP's own QERA reflects this (Lincecum: 2.83; Wainwright: 3.51; Carpenter: 3.68), as do the major metrics hosted at FanGraphs. Personally, I don't really see how watching every start from these pitchers on MLB.tv supports or refutes what that data pretty strongly suggests, and I don't really see a compelling argument for why anyone should pay attention to statistical information that doesn't even attempt to separate pitching from defense, even if there are "infinite ways" to argue about those -- outdated and unadjusted -- numbers.

I sincerely love Baseball Prospectus. I'm just baffled by this perspective on what "value" means, what's the best way to measure it, and the general validity of modern baseball analysis versus a more "traditional" approach.

Haren was the best pitcher in the league in the first half, but as he does every year, he faded in the second.

Duck and cover Will!
http://msn.foxsports.com/mlb/story/10398050/Giants'-Lincecum-wins-second-straight-Cy-Young

it will be interesting to see how the beat writers of america will handle you and Keith Law 'jobbing' Carpenter out of his Cy Young by voting for 'one offs'.

Will they hold off or dig up Law's BP roots and say 'I told you so'?

Not saying you made bad decisions, just going to be interesting how they get dealt with in the media.

So Will, you were really swayed in your thought process by an opinion from a player who hasn't faced Lincecum but nevertheless thinks he's "more hittable"? Really? That's pretty weak. Basically, it's like you asked the player "can you hit Tim Lincecum?", and he said "well, I haven't seen him pitch.....but, yeah." You should leave that sort of reasoning to The Simpsons where it belongs.

To my mind, the best argument for Wainwright over Lincecum is that Wainwright is a much better hitter. I'm surprised you didn't mention that. Or do you think pitcher's hitting is not a relevant consideration in the Cy Young balloting?

To counter-weight the previous criticism, Will, kudos for actually watching all of the performances that you were supposed to be judging. I'm guessing you were the only voter to do that. We may disagree on what is best evaluated by observation and what by data analysis, but I have only respect for the way you take the job seriously.

Yeah, but he didn't watch until after he voted so it was basically a pointless exercise

I just added Vazquez to the chart, since it seemed germane given the way the final voting turned out. Here again, I think Will's point as far as voting on the basis of total value--as suggested by a counting stat like SNLVAR--has merit, and obviously he wasn't alone in that consideration. The other thing that seems noteworthy is that even if Carpenter had gotten Will's Haren vote and Keith's Vazquez vote, he would not have won; he needed to overtake Lincecum or Wainwright on a few ballots, not simply appear on all of them. Wainwright got the most first-place votes, but also the most thirds, which is a pretty interesting comment on an interesting difference of opinion on the possible criteria right there.

no offense, but i'm not particularly thrilled to learn that the voter had no idea until today that he was voting on the Cy Young. and that the decision was made in hours, not days. and that it was made BEFORE watching video of all the players. and that it was sealed with a phone call to a single player.
BP lobbied for this, and the premise was we'd get a more thoughtful and quantitative vote from their representatives. This one seems more like an intuitive, haphazard vote.

Dismayed by your process, that's for sure.

Perhaps I'm jaded beacuase everytime I see Lincecum he looks as dominant as anyone I've ever seen, but the player who hadn't faced Lincecum sounds like a complete moron and a guy who won't be facing big league pitching for much longer.

And my favorite pie is any. Great race this year, all 3 top guys would be deserving winners.

It is interesting comparing Chris Carpenter to the other pitchers on the list. If he had gotten another 4-6 starts with the same effectiveness, he definitely could have won the Cy Young Award. It makes me curious though. What is the difference, value-wise, between 34 starts from Adam Wainwright and 28 by Carpenter plus 6 from injury replacements. I would assume that 34 starts from an excellent pitcher would be better than 28 by a dominant pitcher and 6 from fringe type pitchers, but i have no stats to back me on that. I would be interested in hearing anyone's comments/opinions.

Kind of interesting that Haren has the highest WARP3 and the lowest SNLVAR and SNWP of the pitchers on the chart.

I guess I don't quite understand the intricacies of WARP/SNLVAR enough to comprehend the difference or know which metric is better for determining the best pitcher...

Considering Jurrjens before Vazquez is absurd. Maybe if you're building a dynasty league fantasy team, but not in assessing this year's performance.

One interesting side effect of the Internet has been a change in the way people process written information. Media today make it technically possible for a person to communicate everything they are thinking, all day every day - and people have come to expect that people who write for Web sites do just that.

Will explained how he came to his results in a short article. A person has to be allowed to have said and done more than he actually reports. This is a thorough community but BP staff aren't always writing white papers.

As media become ever more interactive, it's reasonable to expect that articles themselves will probably eventually die out in favor of Google Wave-type media and Twitter-like communication - information on demand. People should grow increasingly reticent to commit to any thought in a format that could be seen as permanent, since it's so easy for one or 750 words to disproportionately affect your livelihood.

Modern pitching stats provide a greater level of analysis than anything we've ever had, but by universal admission there are gaps in the data. It is no wiser to vote in lockstep with a set of numbers than it is to ignore them altogether. This is not the AL MVP race where the numbers are so overwhelming. Margins of error are such that excoriating Will for contemplating a few outliers in this race is the same sort of bullying groupthink that the Plaschkes of the world engage in. I for one prefer a person who is willing to admit that he thought a little different. It's not like Will went with wins or "makeup." Ultimately, the problem we are dealing with here is a voter sample size issue. The number of voters should be increased to render out the furor.

Taking away points because pitcher A appears to be more hittable than pitcher B when in fact pitcher B was in fact significantly more hittable in real life strikes me as pretty specious. The fact is that Wainwright's BBA was .240 and Lincecum's was .206. I suppose you could argue that the hitter's were better in the Central division, but given that 2 playoff teams came out of the West, and 2 NL West team's play in hitter's parks, that line of reasoning seems pretty suspect. Also, the league MVP was on Wainright's team, so he never had to pitch to him. It's pretty much a given that whoever Lincecum pitched against had a better hitting team than the Giants. Lincecum HR count certainly benefited from pitching in The Phone Company Park as all of the HR he gaave up were on the road, but it didn't seem to have helped Matt Cain or Barry Zito much.

First, I applaud Will for being so transparent about his voting. Yes, its a bit embarrassing that he didn't know he had a vote and had to hurry his submission. But he owned up to it up front; I would be much more troubled had he tried to sweep it under the rug.

Second, his ballot is not unreasonable. It is not as though he put Carlos Zambrano on his ballot. If I had a vote, my ballot would have been a little different, but so be it. Reasonable people can have reasonable differences.

There are, however, two things in the article which I find disturbing.

First: "Lincecum is more dominant, while Wainwright is the better pitcher." Huh? You can be better by being less dominant? Maybe its just sloppy writing, but as written it is so utterly illogical that he shouldn't be allowed outside, to say nothing of allowed to vote.

Second, Will seems to suggest that he was swayed by one player -- that's right, a sample size of one (who didn't even face Lincecum!!) -- who said "people are starting to figure him out". Really? Other than hearsay from a passive observer, what is the evidence of this? The league-leading VORP? The 10.4 SO/9? Yeah, they're really drawing a bead on the guy.

Again, I don't think Will turned in a silly ballot, and the above arguments are a bit harsh in light of that. But I do think it is fair to suggest that some of the new voices in the BBWAA aren't that different from the old.

Great ballot thanks for the explanation of it

Will, I am not sure what you mean. On the one hand, you say the following:
"I made a quick check of the stat pages, a couple of calls to Joe Sheehan and John Perrotto, and then turned in my ballot." On the other hand, you later mention that you asked 3 players and 1 scout for their opinions. Was that after you turned in your ballot, a kind of effort to seek confirmation, or was it prior to handing in the ballot as a way to distinguish between Lincecum and Wainwright?

Looking at my Oliver projections list of park-adjusted pitching, leaders in runs saved for 2009 only

National           American

1. Lincecum  63.7  1. Greinke    58.9 

2. Haren     52.5  2. Sabathia   35.0

3. Vazquez   50.6  3. Verlander  34.6

4. Carpenter 49.7  4. Halladay   32.9

5. Jimenez   48.5

6. Wainright 42.3     

So I don't have any problems at all with how Will or Keith voted.

Lincecum is still getting better each year

      wOBA  HR%  BB%  SO%

2007  .280 .028 .101 .266

2008  .272 .021 .093 .303

2009  .251 .020 .076 .303

I can see the logic in giving Adam Wainwright extra points for having two more starts than Tim Lincecum and six more starts than Chris Carpenter. Still, the fact remains that despite what the player said, it wasn't Wainwright who was the most unhittablee -- it was either Lincecum or Carpenter, likely the former.

I like to use OPS to evaluate a pitcher, must as it is useful with a hitter. There is a significant correlation between OPS and runs scored, to the point where a simple back-of-the-envelope formula such as 450 + (2000)(OPS - .600)gives a reasonable estimate of the runs a team scores in a 162-game season. Thus, an increase of one OPS point is worth about two runs to a team over the course of its season. Five more OPS points is worth about 10 runs, or one win.

Lincecum not only has the lowest batting average against (.206 to Clayton Kershaw's .200), he also had the second-lowest OPS (.271 to Dan Haren's .260), the second-lowest SLG (.290 to Kershaw's .282), and the lowest OPS (.561).

Carpenter's OPS was close at .581, but Wainwright's .646 OPS wasn't even close. Yes, Wainwright had two more starts than Lincecum, but he completed only one of them compared to Lincecum's four and Carpenter's three. Lincecum had two shutouts, Carpenter one and Wainwright none. Lincecum tied for the league lead in both categories.

Even though Wainwright had two more starts than Lincecum, he pitched only 7.2 more innings. And in those few extra innings he yielded 48 more hits and 7 more home runs.

Wainwright harder to hit than Lincecum? If so, Adam had HORRIBLE luck.

According to ESPN, Wainwright received nearly a run and a quarter more run support than either Lincecum or Carpenter. Why WOULDN'T he have won more games?

Aside from wins, it is hard say that Wainwright -- despite his allegedly being harder to hit -- came CLOSE to Lincecum, or to Carpenter (with the exception of a big innings gap over Chris).

Lincecum also had a higher quality start percentage than either of the other two, although Carpenter was very close (79% to Lincecum's 81%) and Wainwright wasn't too far behind at 74%. So it appears that even though he pitched 13 games in which he yieldeed one run or less -- winning only 10 of them -- Lincecum was the most consistent of the three.

And of course Tim showed how hard he was to hit by blowing both Cardinals away in the strikeout department. Despite a .297 BABIP to Carpenter's .272, Lincecum beat Chris by about 0.6 hits per nine innings. And with Wainwright coming in at a .309 BABIP, Lincecum blew Adam away in the hits yielded department.

That balls weren't hit very hard against Lincecum is demonstrated by the low SLG he yielded. He had the third-lowest home run percentage (although Carpenter was slightly ahead of him).

Now, let me give full credit to Will for recognizing Lincecum's full potential before anyone else did so publicly. Before Lincecum had thrown a single pitch above Single A ball, Will picked Tim as his franchise pitcher for the next 10 years -- and indeed in the first three, Tim has been the best starting pitcher, with Roy Halladay likely being second.

And Will's opinion of Tim this season may have been slightly skewed (although I know Will tries hard for objectivity, which is why I say MAY have been skewed) by seeing Tim in one of his rare bad starts.

Lincecum had temporarily lost the best pitch in baseball according to Fan Graphs, his change up, had lousy control and generally pitched awful that night. I suspect he had Will squirming in his seat.

But from that game on, Tim yielded only 5.55 hits per nine in his seven remaining starts. In his next start after Cincinnati he began throwing more curves and sliders, and a couple of starts later he had the change up back.

Yes, despite what the batter who hadn't faced Lincecum said, Tim isn't a two-pitch pitcher. He had his fastball, curve and change up when he arrived in San Francisco on Willie Mays' 76th birthday, and the following winter he further honed the change up and added his slider.

According to Fan Graphs, last season 21% of Tim's pitches were change ups, 18% were curves and 5% were sliders. That doesn't sound like a two-pitch pitcher to me.

I suspect Will has good respect for the hitter he asked about Lincecum, but I think the guy gave him some bad goods. He said Lincecum was a two-pitch pitcher, which just isn't true at all. Lincecum's change up is considered by Fan Graphs to be the best pitch in the game, and when he came up, his curve was considered to be his toughest pitch to hit. His slider is in that same ballpark, although he doesn't throw it as often. He threw it more late in the season.

And for the hitter to say Lincecum was more hittable than Wainwright certainly flies in the face of Tim's clear advantage in strikeouts, hit rate and home run rate.

It is possible that when the hitter faces Lincecum next season, he will change his opinion. And if batters were truly figuring out that Tim was a two-pitch pitcher (which he wasn't) late in the season, why did Tim's hit rate keep dropping?

The facts don't seem to support the hitters' opinion, no matter how respected he may be.

A vote for Lincecum was great IMO. A vote for Carpenter wsa good. A vote for Wainwright came either from misinformation or an over-reliance on wins.

I believe that Wainwright finished only third in the voting despite having the most first-place wins than either Lincecum or Carpenter illustrates this fact.

It's as easy as one, two three.

Wainwright had one more first-place vote than Lincecum.

He had two more votes total than Carpenter.

Yet the spot he finished in was indeed three.

Rightfully so IMO.

Wow....we were all told off by a baseball player. LOL

What an idiot.

One very basic point. If Will and Law had crossed out the controversial names and written in "Carpenter" in that slot, the final result would not have changed at all.

Of course, that won't stop talk radio chuckleheads from burying the "Stat heads" for their decisions.

What happened to Will's Unfiltered post on this?

A couple notes:
1) People talk about me "leaving Carpenter off." There's only three slots, so I left a lot of people off.
2) Carpenter would have been my fourth, by a slim margin to Haren. Is calling someone the fourth best pitcher in baseball really that much of an insult?

Wow. Will put together a reasonable ballot, as did Keith. Controversy ensues. I wish I could go back to my IBA voting and see what order I put them in. I *think* I had Lincecum, Wainwright, Carpenter as my top picks, but somehow I remember putting Vasquez on my ballot, too. Pretty sure I left off Haren.

Anyway, thanks Will and Christina for having the courage of your conviction and explaining your official votes to your readers. I'm sure you expected us to dissect your processes. Thanks again.

There is an argument saying that having the same value in fewer games is more valuable, depending on the team situation. If a team has a viable 6th starter or is a stretch where they only need 4 starters, the team gets more total value from a great when available pitcher than a lesser pitcher who pitches every start. This is especially true if the pitcher can be "saved" for the postseason and the team is very likely to make the postseason anyway.

This was the the theory of the red sox signing Smoltz.

OTOH, if they lack the flexibility or have too many pitchers who are unreliably available, it can be a disaster.

That said, I would not have voted for Carpenter either. I find it interesting that Joe Sheehan has such a vehement statement in defense of Carpenter, when two of the primary BP pitching value stats, WARP3 and SNVAR, have Carpenter 5th and tied for 3rd respectively, which makes as a marginal choice by the BP stats.

question for Will, or anyone who has good inside info - is it typical practice for the AP (or the BBWAA) to release a voter's ballot before notifying the voter? in the past i've seen plenty of articles by voters who are listing their ballots, before and/or after the process, but i don't recall the AP doing it for them.

it could be that i'm reading this incorrectly, and the reason that Carroll and Law had their ballot contents included in the original AP story is because both were very quick to write articles including those contents, which the AP then picked up. just curious.

There are different ways to measure things, but I submit that aside from tthe team statistic of wins, more than half will favor Lincecum, close to half will favor Carpenter and not many will favor Wainwright.

You make a good point that the OPS of the batters Wainwright faced was nine points higher than that of the batters Lincecum faced. But Wainwright's OPS was 85 points higher than Lincecum's.

Adam's OPS was almost 10 times higher than the difference in the OPS of the batters he faced and those that Tim faced.

Yes, that nine point difference adds up over 905 plate appearances. So does the 85 point difference.

Wainwright got 12 first-place votes, so obviously at least a dozen people think he has something special going for him. But aside from wins I see the evidence tilting heavily in the favor of Lincecum and Carpenter.

By the way, I think Haren is underrated and at one time during the season I thought he was the best pitcher in the league. But unfortuately for Dan, he really fell apart toward the end.

He posted ERA's of 4.95 and 4.79 in August and September. Dan was great in April, June and July. He was good in May. But the last two months of the season he wasn't very good.

I thought overall he was very good. But I didn't think he was close to Lincecum or Carpenter.

Dan gave up 27 homers, for crying out loud. That is 10 more than Lincecum and Carpenter combined. It is within seven of "the big three."

At the end of July I might have voted for Dan to win the Cy. By the end of September he seemed to me to have pitched himself out of the top three or four.

That is a very good point -- and one that perhaps points to the advisability of having say five players voted for.

I think the problem with the player's argument is that he's saying that Lincecum relies on deception, with the implicit assumption that once hitters get used to his delivery and the deception wears off, Lincecum won't be as good as Wainwright. That might be true and it might be a valuable insight from the player about how Lincecum's career will play out...

But, clearly the hitters are still being deceived (or it has nothing to do with deception and just has to do with stuff) as the K rate and other stats in this thread demonstrate. Given the Cy Young is a reward for past performance and not for future performance, the player's comments about deception and underlying hittability are as irrelevant as if I said I was leaving Carpenter off my ballot because he's so much older than the other players and isn't likely to maintain this performance in the future.

In other words, Will should have ignored this player's comment when deciding his vote, but maybe factored it in when projecting future performance.

I think it is a small sample thing. Entering last season, Lincecum had yielded 14 of his 23 homers at home and had a much higher ERA there. This past season he pitched MUCH better at home.

Overall in his career, his home ERA is 2.84, while away it is 2.97. That's actually a rather small home/away split. His homers went from 14/9 prior to 2009 to 14/19 now.

Interestingly enough, Tim's WHIP is 1.151 both at home and away.

Tim has a lot of splits that are eerily similar. For instance, his OPS with RISP, with no one on and with runners on are .602, .609 and .606 respectively.

His OPS with 2 outs, RISP, with the game tied, one run, two runs and three runs are .594, .596, .591,.584, .601 and .602.

His OPS at home is .608; away it is .608. His first-half OPS is .615. His second-half OPS is .600. His OPS against right-handed hitters is .599; against lefty hitters it is .617.