ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Time to explain.
Washington Nationals right-hander Max Scherzer was named the winner of the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night. I was one of two Washington-based voters for the award. Since a local candidate was involved, I was all the more focused on a blind-taste-test approach to the voting, which led me to prioritize individual ranks in 10 categories (in no particular order, and with an acknowledgement of mild redundancy): Innings pitched, ERA, strikeouts, strikeout-to-walk ratio, WHIP, batting average against, on-base percentage against, on-base-plus-slugging percentage against, fielding independent pitching (FIP) and WAR.
After running through each of those categories and mapping out each pitcher’s position in them, it was clear to me that Scherzer should be the recipient of the award. My assumption before looking through those numbers was that Scherzer should be the winner, though it would be close. Those numbers made the decision apparent for me, and by a wider margin than I expected.
I put a personal emphasis on workload, which is why my voting looked like this: Scherzer, Madison Bumgarner, Jon Lester, Johnny Cueto and Kyle Hendricks. Scherzer and Bumgarner were first and second, respectively in innings pitched. Cueto was third. Bumgarner led the league in pitches thrown and Scherzer was second. For Scherzer to face so many hitters and throw so many pitches, yet lead six of the categories I focused on, made him the obvious winner, from my point of view.
The trickle-down effect for a starter leading the league in innings pitched is massive for the bullpen, especially in this era, when Cueto led the NL with just five complete games.
It also penalized the excellent Hendricks, who led the league in ERA, ERA-plus and Scherzer by a wide margin in both categories. As we’ve learned of late, ERA has it flaws. Which prompted me to include FIP as a consideration. When FIP is mixed in, Scherzer and Bumgarner are right behind Hendricks despite a large disparity in workload. Chicago Cubs pitching worked in front of an historically great defense. It strongly influence the results for Hendricks and Lester. That was not the case for Scherzer.
There’s no perfect way to determine the Cy Young winner. But, in my first vote, this is how I went about it. That process showed me that Scherzer was more than worthy for his second Cy Young Award and first in the National League.
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