2019 Awards Thread

“half-season flukes” are the best part of the all star game thankyouverymuch

I do understand the appeal--I think I'm generally viewed as the naive "narrative" guy around here--but I've long thought that the All-Star Game should be for the best players within, I don't know, a two-year window at least (preferably a little longer than that). If it comes down to a 37-year-old Willie Mays having a good-not-great season or Bernie Carbo tearing up the league--how's that for a timely example?--I want Mays in there.

(Hypocrisy interlude: I haven't actually watched more than a few minutes of an All-Star Game in at least a decade.)

I generally feel the same way about awards, unless the guy with the great story also has a legitimate statistical argument--i.e., I enjoyed seeing journeyman knuckleballer R.A. Dickey win. But I don't want Minor to win because I see no credible argument that he's the best pitcher in the league.

Alfredo Griffin was the greatest all star ever.

Search your feelings. You know it is true.

And with awards I’ll take things a little more seriously.
But there’s 50 or whatever all stars every year, we got space for a few randos every year.

I don't think there's any serious support for Minor because a lot of people suspect the BR number is fishy. This is definitely a case where comparing the two versions of WAR can be illuminating.

Great comeback season though, and definitely worth rooting for.

Let me clarify:

I am sure that just as Trout has been the best player in the game this year (again). deGrom has been slightly better than Scherzer. This is the point I am making.

What the BBRAA says on the matter is of no consequence. I didn't watch the Oscars last year either.

Thanks you for your attention.

i'm just needling morbs. there's no real acrimony on my part. and i interpreted morbs's response the same way.

Clem, at equal stats, I think a lot of us would give the award to the underdog if only because it makes this beautiful moment for him and the other dude already has all the awards; one more, one less, who cares. There is just a tendency as baseball fans (non-Yankees) to want to see happiness well spread.

In the case of Minor it is also refreshing to see a 92/93 mph fastball in contention. It doesn’t happen often that a less than 95 mph fastball pitcher wins the Cy Young.

These days, I mean.

Stats being equal (or even close), I totally understand that, and have been on the underdog side myself. Again--and Baseball Reference notwithstanding--I just can't get my head around the idea that they're close this year.

It's actually not that rare for an AL pitcher with a FB average less than 95 mph to win the CY Young: Porcello, Keuchel, and Kluber twice did it and that's just the past 5 years.

Still, go Minor.

for your eyes only

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2019-al-cy-young-voting-guide/

Verlander and Cole are scheduled to get two starts each--games 156/57 and 161/62, unless they're held back the last two for the playoffs. Verlander dominates Baseball Reference's leaderboards, old stats and new, but I still think they're close enough that Cole could overtake him.

more eyes only

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-2019-nl-cy-young-voter-guide/

As much as I wanted to see Scherzer win another (clinching my HOF bet...which is pretty safe anyway), it's clearly deGrom's award now--he may even win lopsidedly. He leads both Baseball Reference and Fangraphs in WAR, and if you look at Scherzer's season, he was dominant for one month (June), and the rest of the time he's either been hurt or mediocre. deGrom, meanwhile, has been just as untouchable as last year the whole second half.

He also, eventually, because of his late start, might be the first starting pitcher whose HOF case is viewed through a radically different lens than the one that's been more or less in place for decades.

This AL Cy Young is something else. I see one thing after another naming Verlander, but Cole just plows ahead. He's pitched six innings tonight: 2 hits, no walks or runs, 11 strikeouts.

Another 14 K's, no runs in 7 IP. There's very little separating them, although I still feel that Verlander is the sentimental favourite of the voters (i.e. we owe him for past years when he could have/should have won).

it's going to be a close one though right now i think Verlander has the edge. He's way ahead in bWAR, and a bit behind in fWAR.

both of them have one more start, and considering how well both have pitched over the past month it might only wind up making the choice more difficult for anyone who's on the fence.

if it stays as it is, it'll be Verlander/Cole/Bieber/Morton/and....idk, Rodriguez or Giolito? In that order.

i think DeGrom wins it in the NL, and i suspect the voting will be something like DeGrom/Scherzer/Ryu/Strasburg/Flaherty in that order.

Greinke is the forgotten man in the Cy voting due to league splitting, but he might wind up w/18 wins and impressive stats all around. He gets the honorable mention plus the extra HOF bonafides.

the Mike Minor arguments are kinda interesting but i don't entirely buy them.

cole has more strikeouts, fewer homers allowed and a significantly better FIP/xFIP

verlander has more innings and better WHIP. verlander also has (among qualifiers) the highest LOB% (88.5) and far and away the lowest BABIP (.218 -- next-lowest is samardzija at .238; cole's is .277)

i think that explains why cole leads in fWAR -- verlander seems to have been luckier -- but i don't really understand why verlander is so far ahead in bWAR when their outcomes are so similar

verlander's BABIP, for a season, is the 11th-lowest ever for a qualified pitcher

regarding the BABIP thing, a full 25% of the hits he’s allowed have been home runs. idk how that measures historically, but it seems absurd, and certainly could give the false impression that he’s gotten lucky

They seem so close across the board. One edge to Verlander is that Cole's given up seven unearned runs, Verlander only two. I doubt these guys get pulled mid-inning very often, but how many bequeathed runs have they been charged with?

a full 25% of the hits he’s allowed have been home runs

that is pretty crazy, but his HR/FB is, at 15.5%, roughly average (and actually lower than cole's 17.3%). if he induced more grounders or strikeouts -- something more in his control than BABIP -- he'd have given up fewer homers. i think the 25% is because he should theoretically have allowed more base hits rather than that he theoretically should have yielded fewer homers

anyway, while i like JV, i'm rooting for cole because it makes the pirates look even worse. and fuck them

JdG seems to have locked it down tonight

Not even close anymore. In the space of 3-4 weeks, it's gone from a coin flip to deGrom winning near-unanimously. Scherzer still leads in a couple of categories--FIP and K/BB--otherwise, it's hard to make a credible case for him.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/jacob-degroms-remarkable-run/

If deGrom adds a third Cy Young to the one he'll win this year, I think he's a definite HOF candidate. As I mentioned above, I think that 10-15 years down the road, the criteria for starters will have continued to evolve to a point that looks very different from what we're used to. Without even getting into newer stats, If deGrom has three Cy Youngs, ~150 wins, and a very low lifetime ERA, I think that'll make for a good case. There a few two-time winners not in the Hall, but everyone with three or more is in. I don't think voters will really hold a late start against him, not if he continues to pitch really well into his mid-late '30s, and a low win total because he never got any run support won't mean anything. There might be a possible comparison to Santana, but, "narrative"-wise, I think a career that's basically over at 31 is a bigger obstacle to overcome than a late start and excellence in your 30s.

And who knows? He might win four Cy Youngs.

It all depends on ligaments and hips.

Four Cy Youngs might never happen again!

My questions for the NL CY is if Strasburg and Corbin are going to get votes, what a trio. Wouldn’t want to face them in the post-season.

Strasburg is def gonna get a decent number of votes. Beginning to wonder if he may rise up to #2 in the end, due to having a very excellent season along w/recency bias in terms of his past month (vs the performances of Scherzer and Ryu).

strasburg leads the majors in baseball prospectus WARP

Four Cy Youngs might never happen again!

But that's one area where usage patterns don't matter at all--there's got to be a Cy Young winner every year.

I was wondering, though--as starters pitch fewer and fewer innings, will closers again become more of a factor in Cy voting? If the main argument that sent them into exile is they pitch so many fewer innings than starters--certainly true when the gap was, say 250+ innings to 70--will the same argument hold if it's 170 innings vs. 70 high-leverage innings?

Semien MVP?

I've been saying all through this thread that Trout has it clinched, but a couple of days ago Posnanski said he's sure that Bregman will win. The main point of the piece was that, while Trout has lost three or four MVP votes he could've/should've won, he's at least lost every time to an MVP-caliber season--no Morneaus or Dawsons in there. He thinks Bregman will continue that pattern.

Verlander did almost everything he needed to do to clinch--300th/3000th strikeout, win, 12 K and no walks--but, what else, two of the four hits he gave up were HR, so he got dinged for three runs. I honestly think there's an opening for Cole to take it tomorrow if he throws up another 90+ Game Score-type start.

soon enough -- maybe not today; maybe not tomorrow -- we're gonna look back and wonder why trout didn't win like seven MVPs

not playing full seasons is going to be the story. bergman is a deserving winner this year

bregman

If Trout supplied more value in less time (not clear), it makes no sense to penalize him.

Catch-22: Houston's piling on runs today and Cole's pitching well, but in terms of what he needs to have a chance at the Cy, the extra runs may hurt more than help. He'll get the win, but I figure he needs eight dominant innings, and he'll probably be pulled after six.

cole with 10+ strikeouts in mlb-record ninth straight outing

bregman: 8.4 bWAR
trout: 8.3
semien: 8.1

WAR's great for narrowing the field, but once you have, and it's that close--surely within the margin of error--I'd discard it and look at everything else.

I would still pick Trout for MVP, despite the missed time.

and look at everything else

Including ballpark factors wrt Semien/Oakland Coliseum!

park factors are in WAR, right?

That's what I meant--WAR has taken park, position, etc. and determined that these three guys essentially provide equal value. So you look elsewhere in deciding your vote, things that aren't factored into WAR. I know I don't get a lot of agreement here, but in a close vote, I'd want to weigh when the player was at his best against, for instance, when the team took hold of a pennant race. Rendon was fantastic when the Nationals surged in August or whenever it was; I know Bellinger will likely win, but I think there's an argument to be made for Rendon. (And stepping into the breach after Harper's departure, that counts in my mind too.) In the AL, the fact that Bregman overtook Trout when Trout was hurt (and playing for a team going nowhere anyway), while Bregman's team had long since more or less clinched their division, that's an argument for Trout.

I know it drives some people up the wall when I post about such stuff. But I don't think that's any more specious than deciding player A deserves the award over player B because player A had a 0.3 edge in WAR (while player B might have had the edge in someone else's WAR calculation).