Dissecting The BBA Walter Johnson Awards

The BBA announced their Walter Johnson Award winners for the AL and NL pitcher of the year. The Baseball Blogger Alliance is made up of 233 blogs that range in covering all 30 teams to general baseball. The voting mirrors that of the BBWAA and is broken up into chapters. Our little blog of stats and nonsense votes in the general baseball chapter because the BBA wouldn't give us an entire chapter of our own dedicated to some borderline unstable writing. Stonsense is what we've been throwing around the office but we're open to suggestions.

I don't have a problem with the voting outcome for the National League since the final tally was almost identical to my ballot except I had Tim Lincecum fifth and left Tim Hudson off of my ballot. Plus, Roy Halladay won unanimously. So, good job bloggers. The AL ballot, however, ugh. I thought we were making some progress in the blogosphere but I spend an inordinate amount of time at FanGraphs. Oh Dave Cameron, your site has ruined my productivity. I only get around to about two naps per day now thanks to FanGraphs. I should note, if it isn't obvious, that I use FanGraphs' WAR (fWAR) for my analysis. Let's take a look at the the final voting for the AL pitcher of the year...

1. Felix Hernandez
I have no issue with Felix in the top spot. I had Felix first on my ballot and, while I didn't think he was the runaway winner, the BBA voters did. Felix received 18 of 22 first place votes for 137 points. I thought Felix was going to win and I thought he was deserving but I would have preferred to see more love for my second pick instead of...

2. CC Sabathia
Oy. I'm afraid this will be the outcome of the BBWAA voting as well but I was hoping for a little more from my blogging brethren. Sabathia led the AL in wins with a shiny 21-7 record. Yay, wins! He finished with a 3.18/3.54/3.78 (ERA/FIP/xFIP) line and a 5.1 WAR (wins above replacement). The ERA was nice but he finished worth 1.9 runs fewer than Cliff Lee. Sabathia's 2.66 K/BB is laughable compared to Lee's 10.28 K/BB ratio. The only argument I can see against Lee to be the top choice, or second, is that he just pitched 212.1 innings. But I don't think that three extra starts for the Yankees gives Sabathia any case here. In fact, I left him off of my ballot all together.

3. David Price
Price had the second most wins in the American League with a 19-6 record but had a much shinier ERA than Sabathia. Price finished with a 2.72/3.42/3.99 line but his 2.38 K/BB ratio was also dwarfed by Cliff Lee's and Price actually threw 3.2 fewer innings. Lee also dominated Price in WAR, 7.0 to 4.3. Somebody please explain to me how Price was better than Lee and don't even think about using the "w" word. For the record, I had Jered Weaver in this spot because he was second in K/BB to Lee and led the AL in SIERA. Weaver was also worth 1.6 more wins than Price.

4. Cliff Lee
Bout damn time. Although he didn't receive one first place vote but Sabathia got three and Price got one. *aims shotgun at pitcher wins*

5. Jered Weaver
I don't have a problem with Weaver at five. Maybe I overrated him some because of his SIERA and FIP and K/BB ratio. His 5.9 fWAR was good for exactly fifth place in the AL.

So who, in my opinion, was erroneously left out of the top five? I'm glad you didn't ask. I had Justin Verlander fourth thanks to his AL second best 6.3 fWAR. I said in my ballot post that Verlander was probably a straight WAR pick since his peripherals weren't otherworldly. Not entirely true, his 2.97 FIP was third best in the AL. But his strikeout rate was down and his xFIP was higher than anyone else I've mentioned except for Sabathia and Price. Verlander finished last with only five points in the voting. Yikes.

My final choice was Francisco Liriano. He only pitched 191.2 innings but he had an AL best 3.06 xFIP and second best 3.02 SIERA. If I've lost you but you kept reading for whatever reason, that means Liriano severely outpitched his 3.62 ERA. He was roughly worth a win more than Sabathia and two wins more than Price. I don't won't to preach too much about randomness or luck because that's not what we started this site for but it should at least be recognized. Liriano was extremely unlucky this season.

I filled out all of my ballots based on who I thought the best players were and not how I thought the BBWAA results were going to turn out. I suspect the BBWAA voting will mirror the BBA's when it comes time for them to reveal their Cy Youngs. But I'll take comfort from the Bible passage that claims the nerds will inherit the Earth. Or that might have been from a Simpsons episode or I made it entirely.

Yes, The Pitching Is Good This Season

I've been having this argument with my dad over the past couple of days. He's dead set on the pitching resurgence being a product of the new "clean era" of baseball. Now that hitters are off the juice, they just don't hit for power like they used to. I feel like I've been on a crusade against steroids on baseball performance ever since Bonds wrecked the home run record in 2001. And I'm sure most of you will disagree with me too. The only, for sure, advantage we can say steroids gives a player is the ability to recover quicker from injuries. Same with HGH. Obviously, steroids will help increase strength and build muscle mass. I'm not a complete idiot. I just play one on this blog.

But Bonds and McGwire were crushing home runs long before they put up record numbers. How can we measure the extra power steroids might have given them? Five feet? Ten? Does it matter? How do we know that Selig wasn't juicing the balls from 1998 to 2002? Baseball history is full of statistical outliers. Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996. But McGwire hit 52 (dirty) and Griffey hit 49 (clean?). In 2006, Chris Shelton hit 10 home runs in April. Corey Hart has 17 home runs to lead the NL this year.

Alright, the reason this post left my brain for print was a nice article by Paul Hoynes at Cleveland.com. Get ready for block quotes...

"The game has gotten cleaned up," said Perez. "I didn't play during the [steroid] era, but I remember watching games when I was growing up. Every year there would be four or five guys hitting 40 or 50 homers. It's just not there now.

"Pitchers were using it too, but I think it's more of an advantage to a hitter than a pitcher."

Pitchers felt the wrath of the new suspension policy. Most of the initial players that tested positive for PEDs were pitchers, both in the majors and minors. How can we blindly discount that while giving all of the power credit to hitters?

Said a big league scout, "All you have to do is look at the hitters. They're just not as physical as they used to be. I don't see a wave of young pitchers coming. If there's one thing you can point to [for the rise in pitching], it's the testing they do."

I guess that's how. If you pay attention to the draft, like I pretend to, teams are drafting super athletic, toolsy players regardless of how raw their skills are. That takes time to develop. For most prospects, power is the last thing to develop. Get my back, Chris Perez...

Perez said another reason for better pitching is the natural attrition of the game.

"A lot of veteran hitters have left the game in the last five or six years," he said.

"Now it's a younger group of hitters coming in. They're inexperienced and haven't seen the kind of pitching that's up here. It all adds up."

Indeed. The power is coming back, people. Stanton and Heyward are 20-years-old and they are going to crush the ball. Bryce Harper might be the best power hitting prospect in the history of baseball. Sure, the pitching has been phenomenal this year. Baseball is a cyclical game though. Power hitting will come back. Let's give it a minute before we all point our fingers at steroids. I'm looking at you, dad.