As baseball season begins winding down, it only makes sense to start thinking about one thing: what on God’s green earth will I do once it’s over? Man, I sure hope the Texans are good this year (spoiler: they probably won’t be). But all jokes aside, I’m talking about player awards. Which players are most deserving of those shiny gold and silver objects that serve as leverage in contract negotiations? Well, that’s more or less what we are here to discuss today. In some awards races, it’s pretty obvious who’s going to win (looking at you, 2021 Shohei Ohtani). In other awards races, it’s truly a shot in the dark. It is often that many players are putting up remarkable numbers, so there is minimal agreement amongst the fans and actual voters as to who should win. Anyway, that brings us to today: how are this year’s premier awards races shaping up? And just before I begin, to most people including myself, the CY Young and MVP are the premier awards for each league. The Cy Young is the gold standard of awards for pitchers, determining which pitcher in each league had the best season, and the MVP (Most Valuable Player) speaks for itself. Definition notwithstanding, there are then four premier awards races. That said, we will only be covering one race in particular: the NL CY Young Race. The other races are interesting in their own right and there is stiff competition in every race, but this race stood out to me as the most inconclusive. It really is anybody’s game. There are simply so many factors to consider, and depending on which you give more weight, you will likely arrive at a different winner. Still, using statistics, facts, and logic thrown in with some corny jokes and one-liners, I’ll do my best to present my answer to this tough dilemma of an award race. With that out of the way, let’s get into the nitty gritty.

After doing my due diligence, I was able to narrow down our pack of contenders for the NL CY Young to six pitchers. It was by no means an easy task, but I believe the following list is more than acceptable: Tony Gonsolin, Sandy Alcantara, Aaron Nola, Corbin Burnes, Carlos Rodon, and Max Fried. I will also say that I did not entertain the possibility of any relievers winning because my personal belief is that a reliever simply cannot contribute to his team as much as a starting pitcher can, no matter how dominant he may be (though I must say, Edwin Diaz is an absolute menace). To decide who is deserving of the NL CY Young at the time of this writing, I will be considering many factors in my analysis: command, dominance, run prevention, overall value, and extra factors (mostly having to do with luck, ballpark, workload, etc.). For simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick with the above order, and start with command.

A pitcher’s command is vital to assess in their evaluation. Simply put, without good command, you cannot be a reliable pitcher. Because without good command, you cannot hit your catcher’s spots consistently, you’ll issue walks and hit batters more often than you’d like, and most importantly, you’ll be more likely to give up runs, which is the opposite of what your job description states as a pitcher (probably, anyhow. I doubt MLB pitchers just go on Indeed.com like I do to get a job). To evaluate the candidates’ command, let’s look at a few statistics starting with K/BB ratio. Easy to grasp, this is just a measure of strikeouts per each walk allowed. From the pitchers considered, this one is no contest. Aaron Nola (Phillies) completely outclasses every other pitcher in the league with a K/BB ratio of 8.41*. Second closest is Max Fried (Braves) who is a far cry away with a 5.38. To put into perspective how crazy this difference is, fourth place and last place in the entire National League for starter K/BB ratio are separated by only 2.51 walks per nine innings. Nola and Fried’s ratios are separated by 3.03. Backing up Nola’s K/BB ratio is his walks per nine innings (BB/9), which sits at a miniscule (and league-best) 1.16. Fried is again a fairly distant second at 1.53. There is no denying it: Aaron Nola is a paragon of pitching command. You could definitely say he puts the control in control freak. As such, the verdict here is clear: score one for Nola.

Next, we’re looking at dominance. While not nearly as important as command because it is not a necessity in order to be an effective pitcher, dominance is still a good point of reference for evaluating a pitcher’s performance when used in tandem with other factors. I define pitching dominance simply as the ability to make hitters look silly; it’s when hitters' performances are just flat out anemic against a particular pitcher. Examples of dominance include hitters striking out more often than usual, chasing lots of pitches, and also swinging and missing at pitches in the strike zone. This in mind, let’s take a look at five metrics that can be most aptly applied here: O-Swing% (percentage of swings at pitches outside the strike zone), Sw-Str% (Swinging Strike%), K/9 (strikeouts per nine innings), and SLG/wOBA against. Max Fried is the best of these pitchers at getting hitters to chase. His O-Swing% sits at 37.2%, good for first in the National League. However, in terms of Sw-Str%, Fried ranks last for our candidates at 11.8%. Corbin Burnes (Brewers) leads the pack with 15.2% with Carlos Rodon (Giants) right behind at 13.9%. This is not especially shocking, as Burnes leads the National League in strikeouts with 200 and has a curveball and slider that each have insane whiff rates of nearly 50%. Burnes undoubtedly has some of the nastiest stuff for a starting pitcher in baseball. That said, Rodon has a higher K/9 ratio at 11.36 versus Burnes’ 10.98 as Rodon has pitched 13 less innings. If Rodon had pitched as many innings as Burnes has, he would likely be the leader in strikeouts considering he has struck out only nine less batters. Evidently, Burnes and Rodon are neck and neck in this category, but as they say, the show must go on. Luckily, I do think there is one determining factor that can help us decide on a winner here and that is general hitting performance against these pitchers. Carlos Rodon’s SLG and wOBA against are both lower than Corbin Burnes’. Hitters have put up a .322 SLG and .260 wOBA against Rodon versus a .336 and .269 against Burnes. For sabermetrics rookies, wOBA (weighted on-base average) measures how often batters reach base (in this case against a particular pitcher), but assigns different weights to each method of reaching base because, for example, a double is more valuable than a single when it comes to scoring runs. Anyway, the fact is that Rodon has done a better job (even if only slightly) at giving up fewer extra base hits and letting fewer batters reach base in general. And to really sell you if you’re not sold already, Rodon has also allowed 6% percent less hard contact than Burnes, meaning batters aren't squaring up the ball and are making solid contact less when facing him. In light of all these facts, I think we can give this one to Carlos Rodon, but it is very close. Onto the next category.

Now we enter arguably the most important category depending on who you ask: run prevention. Unless you love chaos, when you think of how good a pitcher is, you think of how well he can prevent runs from being scored. This is fundamental baseball theory: if you can consistently allow a low number of runs when you pitch, you consistently give your team a chance to win the game. However, not all run prevention metrics are created equal. The most popular run prevention metric is of course ERA (earned run average). However, it is too simplistic to really capture how good a pitcher is at preventing runs; it can give you a sense of his ability to do so on a surface level, but that is where its usefulness ends. Since it does not control for certain factors (defense, batted ball type, park conditions, weather, etc.), it will not play a major role in our assessment. The primary alternative to ERA is FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching). As I mentioned in my previous post, FIP is a step up over ERA. It takes into account that a pitcher cannot control how well his defense plays and judges him on the three things most in his control: home runs, strikeouts, and walks. This is an improvement over ERA, but there is yet one more metric that is even better: SIERA. Unlike FIP, SIERA actually does take into account balls in play, specifically the types of balls in play (i.e. ground balls, fly balls, and line drives). This provides for a more accurate picture of pitching performance because it is reasonable to assume that a pitcher with a high ground ball or pop up rate is going to allow less hits and therefore runs than a high fly ball or line drive rate pitcher. Other than that, these metrics are incredibly similar; the only other differences are that the formula for SIERA is much more complicated and that home runs are not taken into account. In the National League, Aaron Nola has the lowest SIERA with a 2.86. This is an impressive number, considering his ERA sits at 3.43, suggesting the Phillies defense has not been too kind to him and that he has been generally unlucky. A prime example of this bad luck can be seen through Nola’s xERA (expected ERA) being 2.61, nearly a run off his standard ERA. If luck was on his side, Nola would potentially lead the league in starter ERA. On the other end of the spectrum, you have Tony Gonsolin (Dodgers) who has a 2.10 ERA, but a 3.77 SIERA. That’s a difference of over one and a half runs, which is far from minor. He also has a 3.11 xERA, which is also more than a run higher than his ERA. Upon further inspection though, these discrepancies all make perfect sense. The Dodgers defense ranks as a very elite defense in the MLB, posting the second highest DRS (Defensive Runs Saved) at 71 and eighth best UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) at 6.2. However, the Phillies rank in the bottom ten in the MLB for both of these categories. As such, Nola has been victimized by a horrific defense despite generally allowing contact conducive to getting outs and greatly limiting unnecessary baserunners through walks, while Gonsolin has benefited enormously from a stellar defense and has given up worse contact. This all in mind, the verdict here is a bit complex, and my decision may be controversial to some of you, but it all depends on what you value more. I believe one has to consider circumstances and luck because they are a real factor at play here that can dramatically change how someone’s season is perceived to be, often unfairly. Nola did not deserve the bad luck he has had this season, therefore, I do not think he should be punished for it. As such, I am going to give this category to him because his actual skill level and performance, of which SIERA is a superior indicator, are much better than surface metrics indicate. That said, I will warn you all that SIERA isn’t perfect, and you will soon find out why.

Lastly, we’ll talk about all other factors, focusing primarily on overall accumulated value using WAR (Wins Above Replacement). This all encompassing metric represents the number of wins a player is worth compared to a “replacement level” player from the minor leagues who adds zero value to his team. It can be very helpful when you want a good idea of how important a certain player has been to his team’s success and how much he contributes in general. It’s incredibly accessible and getting used more and more to evaluate players each season. According to Baseball Reference, Sandy Alcantara (Marlins) leads the National League in WAR with 6.6, and it’s not particularly close. The runner up is Max Fried with 5.3. But now that I told you this, you’re probably scratching your head thinking to yourself: “What? But how can Alcantara be the most valuable pitcher? You haven’t even mentioned the guy and we’re seven paragraphs in!” To that I say, you make a very good point. However, I didn’t feel the need to mention Alcantara earlier because he was never the best or worst out of our candidates in any of the prior categories we’ve looked at. However, now that that has changed, let’s talk about Alcantara. He has been the centerpiece of a hapless Marlins team and and in my opinion is the most deserving pitcher in the National League of winning the CY Young (Bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?)

It all starts with workload and strength of schedule. Alcantara has been an absolute workhorse for the Marlins. He has pitched nearly 20 more innings than any other National League starter at 195.2, has hurled four complete games (most in the majors and an incredibly rare sight in today’s MLB), thrown 19 quality starts (second best in majors) and has faced playoff teams (teams that would be in the playoffs if the season ended today) 18 times. Nearly three quarters of his starts have been against playoff teams. Take a second to appreciate that because that is an absurdly difficult schedule for a pitcher to have. Not a single other one of our contenders has even had half of their starts be against playoff teams. Yet, despite this tougher level of competition, Alcantara has still managed a 2.36 ERA (2.97xERA), 3.07 FIP, and 3.53 SIERA along with a great 2.22 BB/9, all of which place him in the top fifteen for National League starters (he ranks third and seventh in the first two), and he’s also held batters (many of whom have been pretty darn good hitters) to a .215 batting average, .325 SLG, and .259 WOBA. I’ll concede that his SIERA looks ugly compared to these other metrics, but this is not due to batted ball type: Alcantara is in the top five and better for ground ball and pop up rates. We also know that he has solid control, so strikeouts have to be the culprit here. And upon closer review, this is definitely the case: Alcantara is not a high strikeout pitcher. His K/9 rate of 8.02 only ranks 27th in the National League, and that’s the thing about SIERA: I like using it and it’s very accurate, but I think it is flawed in that it gives high strikeout pitchers a little too much love (though still not as much as FIP). It doesn't matter how you get outs as a pitcher, as long you’re getting them one way or another. Getting outs wins ball games, plain and simple. As such, I will not hold Alcantara's comparably high (but still very good) SIERA against him in this particular case. Next, we need to consider the fact that Alcantara plays for the Miami Marlins. “What of it?” you may ask. Well, firstly, this team has been horrendous for years (2020 does not count, sorry) and is destined for another 90-plus-loss campaign. I think it’s fair to say that team morale on a consistently contending team will always be better than on a consistently losing team as the possibility of making it to the playoffs and winning a championship makes a player want to perform better. Of course, we cannot quantify that, but we must still consider it because the intangibles matter a lot too (surprising to hear from a “numbers guy” I know, but it’s a fact). In addition, Alcantara hardly has much of a rooting section. The Marlins rank dead last in the National League and 29th overall in game attendance (which, if anything, really puts the Athletics into perspective this season), so that’s not helping matters either. It’s no secret that pitching in front of an energetic, dedicated, and large fan base can certainly help yield better performance (perhaps a subject I will explore separately), but Alcantara does not have that in the slightest. And to close out my argument, there’s also Alcantara’s WPA (Win Probability Added). This metric is a counting stat that measures how much a player adds or subtracts from a team’s win expectancy in each individual game as a result of their actions (i.e. Aaron Judge hits a home run, and the Yankees’ win expectancy that game goes from 80% to 88%, so Judge is credited with 0.08 WPA). Alcantara leads the National League with 4.8, fairly far ahead of second-place Fried at 4.2. This goes to show how impactful Alcantara’s performance has been and his quality performance in high leverage situations. Clearly, Alcantara being far and away the most valuable pitcher in terms of WAR is no fluke; the man is the real deal.

With all of this in mind, I think we can officially crown Alcantara the NL CY Young winner (as of now). He may not jump out as the absolute best when delving into the advanced metrics, but he was still among the best in nearly every category I presented. In my analysis, I tried to take a holistic approach that considered all factors and not just the numbers. Having done so, I realized the answer here was clear (to me at least). The fact of the matter is that no one else has been able to bear with the difficulties in support and schedule like Alcantara has and been able to perform at such an amazingly high level anyway. As a result, he definitely takes the cake for me, but we’ll see if the voters agree come wintertime. In the meantime, stay tuned for more posts. I will likely do my first statistical correlation piece next and conduct some experiments on my own to provide the necessary empirical data. So, with that, I will sign off and until next time.

*All statistics and data used in this piece are from Fangraphs, Baseball Reference, Statcast or ESPN, and are valid as of September 2.