Winning Isn't Everything, It's... Nothing?

So... 13-12 was good enough to get King Felix the AL Cy Young award.  As I've been informed about 32 times today, that is the lowest win total of any awardee in a non-interrupted (see '81, '94, '95) season.  There has been much debate, but most agree that we have seen a dramatic shift in voting tendencies over the past few years.  Former winner, future Hall of Famer and current MLB network talking head, John Smoltz, is in favor of a rubric of sorts, an objective measure that "recommends" the winner.  I've seen enough BcS malarkey to feel confident that such an algorithm cannot be effectively constructed.

There is, of course, a middle ground.  While Felix Hernandez fell many wins behind CC Sabathia, the former outshone the latter in several other statistical categories, such as IP, WHIP, and Ks.  I have a favorite "meta" stat that seems to be wildly accurate in synthesizing all of this data.  It's called WAR.  That stands for Wins Above Replacement.  I've mentioned it before and, again, I shan't derive the equation, but, basically, it represents the number of additional wins that any player contributes to his team above and beyond those of a AAAA (think Jeremy Sowers, ouch) player.  To evidence my contention, the top 62 all-time in WAR are either in the Hall of Fame or definitely will be (think Clemens or Pujols).  Of the top 100, 95 fall into these categories, 2 more will likely get in someday via the veterans committee (Whitaker, Grich) and 1 is Pete Rose.  The long and short of it is that, historically, WAR is pretty damn accurate in defining the best players (#1 is Babe Ruth).

Felix Hernandez was #1 among AL pitchers in WAR this year, as was Zack Greinke in 2009, Cliff Lee in 2008 and CC Sabathia in 2007.  In fact the only time since 2002 that the best in WAR did not win the AL Cy Young was 2005 when Bartolo Colon took it over Johan Santana based on Bart's 21 wins.  That vote was widely disparaged then and widely referenced today as the genesis of the current outlook on pitching supremacy.  Still, as previously mentioned, this statistic is not omniscient, is imperfect and should not be the only metric to evaluate a player.  The easiest example of this is this years NL Cy Young vote.  Roy Halladay won with the 2nd best WAR, while Ubaldo Jimenez finished a distant 3rd despite a better WAR.  The watchword here is consistency.  In the 2nd half Ubaldo was a pedestrian 4-7 with a 3.80 ERA.  His ERA in July was 6.04.  Granted 15-1 and a 2.20 before the break is pretty damn impressive.  Hell, on June 7th Jimenez was 11-1 with an 0.93!  Halladay, on the other hand, never went less than 5 2/3 and pitched at least 7 innings in a remarkable 29 of 33 starts.  He walked 30 in 250 2/3 innings and his ERA was between 1.80 and 2.53 from May onward.  Regardless of the nearly un-hittable stretch that Jimenez put together early in the season, they play 162 games.  If the winner had been picked at the break, no doubt that it would have been Ubaldo, but Doc showed up from April to October and was clearly the superior overall performer. 

Another quick example, because it is my favorite.  In 1990 Bob Welch of the Oakland A's won the AL Cy Young with a 27-6 record and a 2.95 ERA.  Those sound like awesome numbers, right?  Wrong.  Roger Clemens was 21-6 with a 1.93.  Dude gave up 7 home runs in 31 starts.  His season translated to a 9.5 WAR.  So Welch must have been 2nd or 2rd, right?  Tied for 9th?  Sorry, I can't even tell you where he ranked because baseballreference.com only lists the top 10, which included such all-time greats as Steve Farr and Greg Hibbard.  Hibbard tied teammate Bobby Thigpen (the 57 save season) with a 3.5 WAR.  Welch's was 2.5.  Here's a little perspective... Bud Black had a 3.0 for the Indians.  Black was 13-11 with a 111 ERA+.  Remember Sergio Valdez (6-6, 4.75)?  Mike Walker (2-6, 4.88)?  Kevin Bearse (0-2, 12.91)?  No?  Lucky you.  They all started for the Tribe in 1990.  They all had WARs between 0 and -1.  This means, wait for it, any of them could have won 23 or 24 games for the Bash Brother Athletics.  And they gave it to Welch.  Sheesh.  It's nice to find some enlightenment these days.

Cheers.