Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Fire Up the Roy Halladay for Cy Young Campaign!


Just kidding! That would be asinine. A vote for anyone but Zack Greinke is a vote for tyranny.

2009 is quite different from last year; when Cliff Lee and Halladay split most of the key stats with "strength of schedule" hanging over the proceedings. This isn't even close. The Zombie's got the Doctor in WHIP, strikeouts, strikeout rate, ERA, FIP, shutouts, number of games played for the Kansas City fucking Royals, home run rate (by a factor of 2), opponents average, opponents OPS, opponents superlatives, WAR, VORP, number of gushing blog posts per start, ERA+, tRA, and just about everything else other than K/BB. Whew.

More impressively, as Joe Posnanski pointed out last week, he is on pace to register one of rarest of all obscure pitching feats: 200/200/200. 200 innings pitched, 200 strikeouts, and an ERA+ greater than 200. Uh, wow.

So let's hope that Halladay can eek out a second straight second-place finish ahead of Verlander and Hernandez. We should never take Halladay's 7 WAR brilliance for granted, but not even the most die-hard, the most myopic, the most mentally deficient among us can tout Roy Halladay for the Cy Young with even a shred of sincerity.

Fancypants photo of the Zombie by the AP and stolen from Daylife

13 comments:

  1. Best pitching season since Pedro 2000. It has to be.

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  2. Since you mention strength of schedule, the only thing that (slightly) bothers me about Greinke for Cy Young:

    Greinke IP vs. (best hitting clubs in AL by wOBA):
    BOS(6) NYY (0) LAA (16) TAM (12) TOTAL (34)

    Halladay IP vs.
    BOS (20) NYY (40) LAA (17) TAM (43) TOTAL (120)

    Yes, this is clearly not Greinke's fault, but that's still an enormous difference in the quality of competition they faced. Do any of the sabre stats account for quality of competition (I wouldn't think so since it's outside the pitcher's control, right?)? Not that Greinke doesn't deserve the Cy anyway.

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  4. Credit where credit is due. Greinke is the clear winner this year.

    As for last year, I am vehement in my conviction that Halladay should've won. It was close for sure, but Halladay should've won.

    Doc had Lee beat in a variety of stats: 9 CGs to 4 for Lee, 4.72 run support vs 6.13, 2 more starts, lower WHIP, 23 more IP, better K/BB, better K/9, lower P/PA, lower P/IP, way better GB/FB ratio, lower opp. OPS and OBP, way lower opp. BA, higher AGS (avg game score), the highest PRC (pitching runs created) – tied with Lee, best adjusted FIP – Lee was 6th, 2nd most quality starts in AL with 23 – tied with Lee, and a better ERC (Component ERA) and ERC%

    Additionally, Doc had much worse run support and faced much tougher competition, as shown here: (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=3700775&name=Neyer_Rob) and here: (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/unfiltered/?p=1012).

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  5. Good discussion on putting Zack's and Pedro's seasons in perspective on Fangraphs. Turn o' the century Pedro was UNREAL. Insane, really.

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  6. Yea I was reading that too. Pedro was stupid good.

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  7. It's a damn shame Halladay will have to put off his Cy Young party for another year. After that 10-1 run, I thought for certain he was going to win it. Greinke has been a stud and deserves it this year.

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  8. Grienke deserves it, but the competition he's faced is laughable. Period. George nailed it.

    Pedro's 2000 was bat-shit. I think I cried the first I saw those numbers, and actually realized what they were saying.

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  9. he's talking about 99 pedro. consider '97 and '00 pedro were very close and that's an incredible run of dominance

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  10. Pedro actually got unlucky in 1999, which makes it even more astonishing. His FIP was 1.39 and his BAbip was .343. That FIP was easily the best of his career. He also had his career high K/9 and career low HR/9 that year. You could make a good case for 2000 because of the WHIP and ERA but he did get lucky with BAbip and strand rate that year (an insane 86%, even for him that's high).

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  11. When Halladay and Pedros careers are officially over it will be an interesting debate I'm sure.

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  12. Agree that Grienke has been awesome this year, but it sucks that Halladay is going to lose two years in a row to a pitcher from the weak-sister Central. Halladay's pitched 239 innings, 7.5 per game. Grienke's thrown 7 innings per game. Grienke's ERA is impressive, but that half-inning per game that Halladay takes away from the bullpen has a lot of value, too.

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