The good news, as it applies to Felix Hernandez, is that a starting pitcher can have 15 victories and still win a Cy Young Award.
We learned that last year, when Tim Lincecum rightfully was proclaimed the best pitcher in the National League, despite a 15-7 record. Zack Greinke won the AL Cy Young after going 16-8, meaning that the two award winners combined for as many victories as Denny McLain had all by himself in 1968.
Which brings us to Hernandez. The Mariners’ ace has an 8-9 record, which would be a lot better if he pitched for somebody other than The Hitless Wonders.
Hernandez leads the American League this year in innings pitched. He’s fourth in ERA. Add those together, and he just might be the best pitcher in the AL — and that really should be the point of the Cy Young Award.
Many, many times over the years, voters have acted as though victories are the sole measure of a pitcher, ignoring the fact that wins are team-dependent. Once upon a time, for example, they gave a Cy Young Award to Lamar Hoyt and his 3.66 ERA, simply because he had a 24-10 record.
The Cy Youngs won by Lincecum and Greinke last year reflected an evolution in the thinking of the voters. Finally, they seemed to recognize that win-loss record is not necessarily the best measure of a pitcher’s quality.
So, who is the front-runner for this year’s award? Rather than look at wins and losses, we’ll consider Runs Saved Against Replacement. Sounds complicated, right? And it is, kind of.
RSAR takes into account a pitcher’s ERA, innings, and home park, and then computes how many runs he has saved over a hypothetical replacement pitcher.
Hernandez has a 2.71 ERA in 182⅓ innings this year, while pitching in a home park that reduces scoring by about 16 percent.
The Mariners play half their games in Safeco Field, so we’ll adjust Hernandez’s ERA by roughly 8 percent (there’s some additional math involved because the Mariners don’t play road games in Safeco). That gives him a park-adjusted ERA of 2.93.
The American League ERA is 4.17, which puts the hypothetical replacement ERA at 5.00 — 20 percent above the league average. That means that for every nine innings, Hernandez allows 2.07 fewer earned runs than a replacement-level pitcher. Over 182⅓ innings, that’s 42.01 runs.
All of that places Hernandez in a three-person race for the title of this year’s best pitcher in the AL. Here are the top 10 pitchers thus far in the league, in terms of RSAR:
Pitcher RSAR
CC Sabathia 42.34
Cliff Lee 42.05
Felix Hernandez 42.01
Jon Lester 36.57
Clay Buchholz 36.32
Jered Weaver 35.60
Trevor Cahill 34.34
John Danks 33.41
David Price 31.19
Andy Pettitte 31.04
Now, it’s not as though anybody will settle a bar argument by pulling out the RSAR stat — “Oh yeah? Well, Sabathia’s RSAR is 42.34, so take that!” But it’s a good measurement of a pitcher.
The value of a starting pitcher involves two factors — preventing runs and pitching a lot of innings. RSAR considers those and converts them into an easily understood metric — runs saved.
The part about a mythical replacement pitcher might sound complicated, but it’s an important distinction.
Ervin Santana of the Angels has a 4.12 ERA — barely better than the league average. If we compared him to an average pitcher, his value would be about nil.
But Santana has pitched 153 innings, meaning that he has a great deal of value.
Or look at it this way: If Hernandez hadn’t pitched this year, who would have thrown those 182 innings? It wouldn’t have been an average pitcher; it would have been a replacement-level pitcher.
Because of that and his effectiveness, Hernandez ranks among the best pitchers in the league.
Now he just needs the Cy Young voters to recognize that it’s not his fault he pitches for the Mariners. Maybe they’ll buy the notion that 10 or 12 wins are enough to be declared the best pitcher in the league.
Question or comment for By the Numbers? You can contact Greg Jayne, Sports editor of The Columbian, at 360-735-4531, or by e-mail at greg.jayne@columbian.com. To read his blog, go to columbian.com/weblogs/GregJayne
