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With Johnny Cueto taking the mound tonight against the Brewers, it’s only fitting that we take a look at the NL Cy Young race and the major threats around the league challenging the Reds ace for the title.
Cueto leads the NL in wins-above replacement (ESPN) with a WAR of 4.6. The closest to Cueto is Washington’s Jordan Zimmerman (4.0) and New York’s R.A. Dickey (3.5). Stephen Strasburg posts a WAR of just 2.7, but multiple other factors bring Strasburg into the conversation.
From an ERA standpoint, Cueto ranks third among NL starters with a 2.52 ERA. Jordan Zimmerman has posted a 2.45 mark, and Dickey an impressive 2.82, 5th best in the NL. Pittsburgh’s A.J. Burnett is also worth discussing, as he has posted a 3.19 ERA, but more importantly, he’s tied with Cueto and Dickey for most wins at 14. Dickey and Burnett each have only three losses, compared to Cueto’s five.
Less impressive in the strikeout category, Cueto ranks 23rd in the NL with 115 on the season. Strasburg leads the league with 160, while Dickey is close behind at 156.
Only Dickey has thrown three complete games this year, while Cueto is one of seven pitchers to throw a pair of complete games. (Mat Latos also has two complete games.)
Diving into sabermetrics, Cueto leads the NL in ERC% at 1.29. In DIPS, Strasburg has thus far posted a NL second best 2.76, Dickey ranked fourth at 2.97, and Cueto eigth at 3.15. In DIP%, however, Jordan Zimmerman ranks second at 1.42, with Cueto currently in fourth at 1.25. Finally, in K/9, Stephen Strasburg leads the NL at 11.31. Dickey has racked up K/9 of 9.16 with his famous knuckleball, while Cueto is ranked 34th in the NL at 7.06.
At this point in the season, it seems that the top two candidates are Cueto and Dickey. (Strasburg would likely round out the top three, but if he is being limited on innings, it may be tough to continue to post high numbers.) The good news for Cueto is that Dickey, who has recorded two one-hitters this year, seems to have hit a slight bump in the road. Dickey has recorded two of his three losses over his last three games. Cueto, on the other hand, has won his last five starts, and eight of his last ten appearances.
The national hype this year has obviously surrounded the 37-year-old Dickey, with Cueto getting an All-Star snub. It will be a very close race as we near the postseason, but another will likely be in the back of everyone’s mind: Cueto is the ace of the team with the best record in the MLB, while the Mets are 13 games back of the Nationals in the NL East and three games below .500. The Cy Young is in fact an individual award, but let’s not pretend that such circumstances will go unnoticed.
Cueto doesn’t get the press for some reason. He just quietly goes about his business. He isn’t flashy, he just get’s it done. But, if there is a pitcher on either coast that has numbers close to Cueto, expect that pitcher to get the votes.
I doubt the 2010 brawl helps Cueto’s chances. Sportswriters tend to remember stuff like that at awards time. Juan Marichal overcame his brawl. Carl Mays …. Not so much. I doubt Cueto gets any first place votes from Missouri.
I would have to think that AJ Burnett with the Pirates is in this discussion also and might be a front runner depending on the reminder of the season.
I don’t know what this thing you have for Burnett is, but he doesn’t hold a candle to Cueto as of today. ERA+: Cueto 166, Burnett 116, and for reference, Latos 106. Oh, that’s right, you only care about wins.
His wins, his ERA, his team in a division race. I am willing to bet he finishes higher in the voting then Cueto does. May not agree with it, but will to bet it happens.
@Racine Red:
I say wins is the most important metric for judging a pitcher. Perhaps because I have an unclear idea of the other metrics. Please tell me the number one metric for you, and explain so a Liberal Arts major can understand.
Matt explained this very well, but I’ll give you an example of why wins is a poor statistic to measure a pitchers’ effectiveness. Tommy Hanson, Yu Darvish, Jake Westbrook, Phil Hughes, Max Scherzer and Ian Kennedy all have ERAs above 3.78, but sit with 10 wins or more. Cliff Lee, Ryan Dempster, Jeremy Hellickson, Edwin Jackson, and Joe Saunders, have an ERA below 3.78 and have six wins or less.
I hope Johnny can go on a silly run to end the year to get the hardware. Who was the last Red to win the Cy Young? Have we ever won one?
@Jmac84:
No, not yet, but everyone expects Todd Frazier to win it next year.
@Jmac84: The Reds have never had a cy-young winner that I can find.
@seat101: ERA+ is a metric that uses ERA as a standard and neutralizes it based on the ballpark and the league. Therefore an ERA+ of 100 would be an average pitcher as far as his ERA is concerned. It is rather crude for an “advanced metric” but it and the offensive equivilent (OPS+) are nice, “quick and dirty” indicators of performance for a player. I don’t have one metric I like to go to for pitchers. I tend to look at everything. As far as advanced metrics for pitchers maybe the best is FIP (Fielding Independant Pitching) but it, like all stats, isn’t perfect. For offense I tend to look at OPS+ first but again, it isn’t perfect by any stretch… I don’t put a ton of emphasis on wins for a pitcher as a pitcher has very little control of the offensive support he has behind him. Now a pitcher with a lot of wins who doesn’t have much run-support is probably going to be a good pitcher in most cases though.
I think there has been a gradual recognition among voters for the Cy Young award that pitchers should be evaluated on statistics over which they have more control. The few recent instances where we’ve seen pitchers with better ERA and K/9 chosen over pitchers with more Wins is a reflection of that. Of all the statistics, Wins seems like the least indicative of who has pitched well. Wins depend on offense, fielding and bullpen – virtually all of which are out of control of the starting pitcher. Eventually ERA itself will be seen as a step on the way to better evaluation metrics.
@dn4192:
Burnett has fewer innings, less K’s, his ERA is more than half a run higher and his team will finish behind ours. I don’t see him getting more votes than Johnny. I agree that Dickey is the mina competition, and I think Bumgarner or Kershaw could sneak in with very strong finishes.
And he is like 14-3. Again I think W/L is the first thing the voters look at then ERA.
Who actually picks the CY Young winner? I am thinking writers do and if so I am willing to bet that ERA+ is not something many of them know yet use. I am willing to bet they look at Wins and ERA. Outside of King Felix from a season or so back how my CY winners not been at the top Wins wise?
@LWBlogger:
Thank you for the primer.
@seat101: Wins, somewhat like saves, are not necessarily good indicators of how well a pitcher is actually throwing because they are so circumstantially and team dependent. It’s not terrible to consider wins, but one has to take it with a grain of salt that if Joe Pitcher leaves after completing the top of the 5th and giving up 6 runs, and then his offense scores 7 in the bottom, viola, we have a winner. Some might argue that the wins one gets with a heavy offense equals out for the 7IP, 1 ER losses…. the other stats can tell you so much more about what the pitcher is doing as an individual.
It also can demonstrate the difference between process and result: Do you sign a guy with a 3.25 ERA who had bad luck with losses or a guy with a 4.5 ERA who hit double digit wins?
The writers do vote. One BWAA writer from each team’s market has a vote and gets to vote 1 through 5. They use a weighted formula to determine the winner. If I had a vote, at this point of the season, I’d vote 1) Kershaw 2) Dickey 3) Cueto 4) Strasburg 5) Bumgarner. I think Kershaw’s lack of wins will eventually hurt him and Strasburg’s inning limit will effect his votes as well. I think the award is Dickey’s to lose.
@seat101: It is barely scratching the surface. There are so many new metrics and some are really good. The difficult thing is not to fall in love with one of them to the detriment of trying to get the whole story. Also, don’t ever stop trusting your eyes. When the stats and eyes disagree, I tend to lean to the stats but I’m skeptical. When the stats and eyes agree on something, it’s usually the truth.
@dn4192:
I don’t disagree with you, but Johnny is 14-5, and I bet he ends up with more wins than Burnett. Barely any difference as it is now.
@dn4192: That tide is turning quickly. Don’t forget that Feliz Hernandez won the Cy Young the year he went 13-12. He finished second the year he went 19-5.
To me leaving up to “Joe” sports writer is the problem….
Zack Grienke (AL, 2009) and Tim Lincecum (NL, 2009) both won with far fewer wins than other pitchers in their league.
CY Trivia: Since 1980, four pitchers have won the Cy Young Award in both leagues: Roger Clemens (7), Randy Johnson (5), Pedro Martinez (3) and Roy Halladay (2).
More CY Trivia: Roger Clemens had 18 seasons between his first (1986) and last (2004) Cy Youngs.
Cy Young?…He isn’t even good enough to be an All-Star.
Cueto is 4th in the NL in WAR (Fangraphs) and 22nd in xFIP (Leake is actually 21st). In the conversation for Cy Young? Yes. Winner? Not at this point.
@Matt WI:
Thank you, too.
Did you know it is “peanut free night” at the Florence Freedom game tonight?
That is a new one to me.
Just wondering, seeing how Mike Trout is pretty locked up ROY and maybe even MVP… HOW did the Reds and all the other teams (he went 25th) miss this kid?
We took Mike Leake. Major league ready starting pitcher from day one. Even if he ends up being a marginal #4-5 starter, if you nail a big league starting pitcher in the draft that’s better than a hitting prospect. I don’t think anyone projected Trout to come on like this. If you knew he was going to become what he has you’d say “Why wasn’t he picked #1 overall?” And even then, that was the draft that the Nats took Strasburg and that’s still a better pick than Trout. Funny thing, sports…
@dn4192:
I don’t know about other teams but the Reds had bigger fish to fry.
Bigger fish to fry? don’t get me wrong I love Mike Leake, but this kid is a stud, think what the Reds would be like with him in CF, Bruce in RF and Ludwick in LF this season….
Matt Garza shut down for the year. Good thing we didn’t pull the trigger on THAT one.
Have to admit, after the past week or so I’m not particularly confident in 3/5 of our rotation.
@eric nyc:
We are fine. Nothing looks unfixable. If we could just get Dusty to drink 5-Hour energy on the nights Arroyo pitches……
@dn4192: Still, in 2009 we all thought Bruce was going to be Mike Trout and Drew Stubbs was going to be the next Eric Davis. We still had a rotation being led by Aaron Harang and anchored by some kid from the DR named Johnny no one was quite sure about. Starting pitching was the way to go. Hopefully Leake still has some ceiling. Hitting prospects are always a ridiculous gamble.
So true. It’s easy to say “wish I knew then..”, but you have to put it into context of how things were at that time. Hell, the Reds had just traded Josh Hamilton believing they had two of a kind in him and Bruce.
Trout —– Fish
Sorry. Just did it for the halibut.