Clayton Kershaw and Corey Kluber have won the National League and American League Cy Young Awards, respectively.
Kershaw was a unanimous winner, with Johnny Cueto and Adam Wainwright finishing second and third, respectively. Madison Bumgarner finished in fourth place (obligatory caveat: votes were due before the postseason commenced), while Jordan Zimmermann, Cole Hamels, Zack Greinke, Doug Fister, Jake Arrieta, Craig Kimbrel, Stephen Strasburg and Henderson Alvarez rounded out the ballot. The award marks Kershaw’s third Cy Young in four seasons.
Kluber, a breakout star with the Indians, edged out Mariners ace Felix Hernandez, who finished second. Kluber received a total of 169 points in the voting, while Hernandez received 159. Rounding out the ballot were Chris Sale, Jon Lester, Max Scherzer, David Price, Phil Hughes, Wade Davis and Greg Holland. Kluber posted an 18-9 record with a 2.44 ERA, 10.3 K/9, 1.9 BB/9 and a 48 percent ground-ball rate in 235 2/3 innings.
Felix was completely rob of the CY Young!
Kluber was Better check the stats
He was better at like 2 stats. Felix bested him in almost all the stats, even the saber metrics.
And what about FIP?
this is why no one takes these baseball writers seriously.
Right, He was better at a couple more stats than Felix. FIP is one of those stats.
I don’t know, FIELDING INDEPENDENT PITCHING is a pretty important thing to be better at. You know, what with the job of the pitcher being pitching, independently of the fielding, and all…
FIP is not accurate enough by its lonesome. Jeff Sullivan’s article on the matter today summed it up best.
I’m not a huge fan of FIP. Every pitcher has fielders. I get the point, but getting an out of a perfectly placed first pitch on a grounder to SS is better than a strikeout that takes 11 pitches. FIP says the strikeout is always better.
That’s why you consider innings as a whole. Predictively, going forward, unless you’re an excellent contact manager and get groundouts and popups, it’s better to just limit homers, get strikeouts, and limit walks. Quality of contact is always going to be a consideration, but Cleveland *did* have a very bad defense behind him.
According to FIP, the hitter got himself out, not the pitcher and his perfect pitch. That’s what bugs me most out sabermetrics. It has no “feel” for the game and they have no idea how to calculate things like sequencing.
Sabermetrics are not any different from most statistics. It’s all about large samples to eliminate noise and make it so sequencing and random variation doesn’t affect results. Sequencing isn’t a skill. Sequencing of events is luck, and doesn’t carry predictive value going forward. It’s why RE24 is a retrospective stat to analyze past results and not predict future true talent levels.
I meant pitch sequencing, and it is a skill. That and command is what separates your Felix Hernandezs from the Hector Noesis. You know pitchability. It’s why sabermetrics say Chris Young was the worst starter in baseball last year despite being one of the biggest reasons the Mariners made it as far as they did.
Sabermetrics don’t say Chris Young was terrible. People who don’t understand sabermetrics – and thus give it a bad name – do. In fact, stats-savvy people have been writing articles in support of Young all season and acknowledge his contribution to Seattle. Pitch sequencing/keeping batters guessing is a skill, yeah. I thought you meant hit sequencing leading to runs being scored. Chris Young breaks FIP because he pitches up in the zone and induces pop-ups. Pop ups are as good as strikeouts and I have a feeling the next big breakthrough in sabermetrics is going to revolve around exit speed and exit angle for batted balls. Pitchers can definitely control the contact they induce. They can’t control where it’s hit and if it lands for a hit, but they can definitely use pitch sequence to keep batters guessing, get them to hit it on the weak part of the bat and either send it straight up into the air, or into the ground. That’s an area of baseball analysis I really want to see headway in. I have a feeling we’ll see that Edwin Jackson and other guys who FIP loves but generate terrible runs-allowed results, will suffer under this analysis.
It’s not that the strikeout is always better. It’s that controlling what happens to a batted ball that stays in play is not a skill that pitchers possess. The larger the sample size, the more a pitcher will regress to the mean of the league, given his batted ball rates.
Given that a pitcher can’t control what happens to that ball, and given that every strikeout is an out 100% of the time (dropped third strikes notwithstanding), a strikeout always is a successful result while a batted ball is not always a successful result.
It’s not like we’re comparing apples and oranges here. We’re comparing a delicious apple with another slightly more delicious apple. You have to have some way to pick apart two extremely good performances and figure out which one was better.
Except they don’t always “regress” to the mean. Cueto is a perfect example. He has ALWAYS every single year outpitched his FIP. That’s seven years of pitching. How many more years until he regresses to the mean?
Cueto is a very common example of a pitcher who sabermetrics acknowledge likely has an ability to control his batted ball profile, inducing a low liner rate and a high fly ball rate with many of his fly balls bordering on pop up exit angle. Cueto is someone – like Chris Young – who induces batted balls which *many* sabermetricians acknowledge break the DIPS theory. There will always be exceptions to the rule, but that doesn’t make FIP any worse of a stat. It just backs up the point that analysts need to consider all information together. Tony Blengino did an excellent article back in mid-August about Cueto’s contact management and how adept he is at inducing weak contact and strong batted ball results to complement his strong fielding-independent profile.
The answer is four. Four more years. Definitely four.
The big knock against Felix’s “FIP” was one game against the Nats where he gave up like 4 or 5 homers. Felix’s “xFIP” was better than Kluber’s. Felix lost because Kluber finished strong and had a few more wins. Whatever.
They pitched to a draw via xFIP, essentially. Kluber’s xFIP- was 68, with a raw xFIP of 2.57. For Felix, 67 and 2.51.
He gets advantages from things like isolating his runs-allowed from his defense, looking at his catcher framers (Zunino > Gomes) and his ballpark.
fWAR, FIP, K/9, HR/9 is not insignificant. They were a draw in IP (Felix got one more out) and starts (both had 34), while Felix bettered him slightly in xFIP (2.51 to 2.57) and a bit in BB/9 (1.75 vs. 1.95) and a bit more in ERA (2.14 vs. 2.44). They were actually only four runs allowed apart, 72 vs. 68 with Felix lower, because Felix allowed 12 unearned runs while Kluber allowed 8. Kluber has a 22.9 K-BB%, while Felix has a 22.2 K-BB%, and Felix had the better framer. Kluber had a 66/64/68 ERA-/FIP-/xFIP-, and Felix had a 58/70/67 split in those three stats. They’re basically even in many stats with small advantages either way. I’d pick Kluber, but I don’t mind Felix being slightly ahead. I don’t think it’s a landslide either way, and the voting reflected that.
You’re giving the voters too much credit. They saw Kluber with 18 wins and Felix with 15 and voted accordingly. They may have gotten the right result, but for the wrong reason.
I absolutely disagree. Completely, wholeheartedly, 100%. I don’t think you’re giving the voters enough credit. CY has been moving along better than MVP as far as embracing sabermetrics, because team performance is less of a consideration in the definition. I think the voters did their due diligence here and rightfully recognized it was essentially a draw. Do I think they looked at fWAR, xFIP, etc.? No. Do I think they might have seen a combination lots of strikeouts, not a lot of walks, low ERA, finished strong, 236 IP, poor team defense, good framers, worse home park for Kluber? Maybe.
Take out the “good framers” argument (which I still think is beyond most voters) and I essentially agree with your conclusion. I think they saw two pitchers who were very close , and then looked at some of the things you mentioned (strikeouts, K/BB ratio, ERA–which Felix actually was better in), and then one you didn’t mention (wins). I doubt that more than two or three voters considered fWAR or fFIP, let alone even know what they are.
Felix was so dominant this year that they named a statistic after him. Making MLB history didn’t win him the award. He was robbed.
Felix broke a long lasting record
So did Phil Hughes (with a record breaking strikeout-to-walk ratio) if we’re going based on records.
Felix was the man this year (as he is every year), but Kluber is deserving of the win.
So did Yusmeiro Petit! Just robbed!
Many pitchers break a record each season. It’s a whole-season award. I also think Phil Hughes’ K/BB and Yusmeiro Petit’s batters retired records are as impressive.
Agreed
Blashphemy
Kluber had a higher WAR, lower FIP, and better K/9 and HR/9
And Felix had a lower ERA, lower RA9, lower BB/9, lower H/9, higher GB%, and lower xFIP.
I don’t think he was robbed. Could have gone either way. But there’s definitely a legit case for Felix.
Agreed. This was an extremely close race that could have gone either way. I don’t think Kluber is any more right than Felix. You can make a good argument for either. And by the way, I live in Portland and while I don’t bleed Mariner blue, I do root for them when I make the pilgrimage to Seattle 10-12 games a year.
It was extremely close. Isolating Kluber vs. Felix is hard, but I think they made a very defensible, fine decision. I’m happy.
Not really. Kluber had lower FIP, Felix got 1 more out. It was incredibly close, and the voting showed that.
nope corey kluber deserved it
he should report it to the police.
Didn’t see this coming.
If Felix didn’t win it this year, what will it take for him to win it again? What a joke. Oh well.
Pitching on the east coast. I know the frustration.
When was the last time a player on an east coast team won a major award
This year. Jacob deGrom, RotY. Or, if you want a Cy Young or MVP, 2012, R.A. Dickey and David Price. In 2013, Wil Myers won AL RotY, too. In 2012, Harper won the NL RotY. Also, in all of these cases except I guess Myers and deGrom, there was a better choice not on the East Coast in, respectively, Kershaw, Verlander and Frazier/Miley.
Dickey won CyYoung in 2012, Price did that same year.
Cleveland is not on the East Coast. Kluber has far, far less name recognition than Felix, a future Hall of Famer. Voters actually looked at all the numbers and saw a draw, IMO. Kluber was deserving, and Felix was deserving. If there was ever a year to will co-Cy Youngs, this was it, IMO.
Just like Josh Beckett in 2007. Oh wait…
It’s not a joke. You can argue all day, and essentially it could have gone both ways. The voting was incredibly close, and could have gone either way.
No, it’s all good, the joke to me is that Felix is going to need an even more monstrous season to win it again, that’s all. Even though this year woulda been the year for him to win it.
Or, yknow, there could just be worse competition. Felix was great. Felix could also have been better and not crumbled a little down the stretch. I’m obviously speaking quite specifically, as Felix was still very good, but Kluber was excellent competition. A 7.3 fWAR/7.0 RA9-WAR season is nothing to sneeze at, and neither is a 269/51 K/BB ratio. Kluber had a monstrous season as well. Both were fantastic.
Felix had a 1.66 ERA in Sept. Kluber had a 2.09 ERA in Sept.
I don’t care about Felix’ ERA when he allowed four unearned runs that were directly his fault in a single September start. I don’t care about the R/ER distinction, especially when it’s the pitcher who makes the error that causes them to be unearned. Whose fault were those four additional runs? Felix made the throwing error and then allowed those unearned runs to come in. How are those not credited/subtracted from his runs-allowed value? ER/R distinction is subjective. He still imploded and surrendered those 8 runs that day, regardless of how many of them are considered earned. That’s a large reason why I feel Felix faltered down the stretch. He had a meltdown start near the end of the season. If those runs are included, he throws up a 2.55 ERA post-All Star break. Still good, but not as dominant as the 2.16 he has not including those runs.
But by baseball rules you don’t include those runs. And if you suddenly want to include those 8 unearned runs (and for good measure, the four other unearned runs that Felix gave up), then you have to include the 8 unearned runs that Kluber gave up last season. After which, Felix still has the better “run average,” 2.59 to 2.75.
2.75 to 2.59 paints a starkly different picture than 2.14 to 2.44. Just saying. And we still haven’t adjusted for team defenses, framing, and park. But, yes, I look at runs then at defense. I don’t really care about the R/ER distinction until I look at overall defense and adjust based on how good the defenses are.
Well if you think about it, Felix’s error had nothing to do with how he pitched. So while he “earned” those runs by making the error, the runs scored as a result of his fielding, not his pitching. Not sure how people who quote FIP as a stat struggle to understand that concept.
They’re unearned runs, but they’re still Felix’ fault. He still gave up those runs. He faced many batters after that error and none of the runs (except for the guy who reached *on* the error) were unearned until he recorded a second out, which would have been the third. The runs after that out were also unearned. It’s those runs I mostly have an issue with being singled out. But like I’ve said, I hardly care about the distinction between unearned and earned runs. They’re runs.
Was there some other year when Felix was allegedly robbed?
What a joke.. Poor King Felix. We love you man! Thanks for a great season..
Kluber was better down the stretch but I thought Felix was winning it by having the lowest AL era in years plus he had the MLB record for 7+ innings allowing 2 or less runs.
The AL ERA as a whole is lower than it’s been in years. Sale bested him in ERA+, and Greinke, back in 2009, posted a 2.16 ERA, just barely higher than Felix’ 2.14. There’s also the matter of the unearned runs that got chopped from Felix’ ERA to give him the title over Sale.
I can’t believe Kluber beat Felix
This was based off his one start in Toronto. Felix set a major league record this year and was better than Kluber in almost every stat. Kluber is deserving and had a great year. He was not, however, better than Felix.
I really doubt that voters looked at one start and/or the stats generated from it.
Well, they didn’t look at the entire season or at context. As an example, Lloyd pulled Felix after the 8th regardless of his pitch count. He thought that Felix throwing 120 instead of 105 would destroy his arm. He cost Felix like 4 complete games. Lloyd also messed around with the rotation and cost Felix like 2 starts. I bet Felix would like to have those potential wins and 20+ innings back.
There is a reason Lloyd often pulled Felix after 7 . His ERA in the 8th inning was 4.50 and his ERA in the 9th was 20.25. His ERA after 100 pitches was 4.00, almost double his regular ERA.
Based on what? 1.1 innings? Are you you using that as your argument? Get out of here. He throws a perfect 9th and that gets cut in half.
And you’re using what exactly to back your argument? The knowledge that you can make better pitching decisions than Lloyd McClendon?
Last August I came on here and said that Kluber was the best pitcher in the AL. A bunch of people threw stats at me.
Kluber absolutely dominated.
Felix got robbed
Wow, Hughes was in the running. What a difference Minneapolis made for him.
This was a great CY Young race, hard to go wrong with either one since their peripherals were so dang similar. Just had to go to the one that had the edge on WAR. Congrats Kluber!
Kershaw baby! Should be 4 in a row.
At least he gets the 2014 MVP to make up for it.
At what point do they change the name of the award to the “Clayton Kershaw Award”? (This coming from a huge Giants fan).
Maybe Kershaw’s award; Lets wait 5 more season
Matt Harvey will push him for it as soon as next season.
I’m not as sure. Using 2013 as a lens, take a look at Kershaw vs. teams over .500, and then look at Harvey vs. teams over .500
Its not even close.
Yea right. Nobody in the game today can replicate what Kershaw did this season (other than Kershaw), and this is coming from a Giants fan.
It looks like the only way the Giants fans are nice to Dodgers is when they win the World Series and feel bad for us. Of course I’m kidding, it’s nice to read your comments.
Harvey is not even close to the same level as Kershaw. We will see how Harvey comes back from TJ and how big is the decline in velocity and secondary pitches.
I wouldn’t count on Harvey having a Cy Young season next year, since he’s coming off Tommy John surgery, But maybe in 2016 tho.
Giants fans have always shown a lot of respect for Kershaw. I’ve always had a similar level of respect (and envy) for Bum, Cain and Tim. Congrats giants fans on the recent, and hopefully last, world series ring.
Pretty sure Kluber winning caught everyone by surprise.
King Felix. And I’m not even a Mariners fan. At least they got Kershaw right.
Not being a Mariners fan and picking Felix isn’t that surprising. Now if you were an Indians fan, it would be.
Not because Kluber won. But because you’d be an Indians fan.
It could have gone either way. I don’t think you can make a decisive argument that one should have won by a large margin.
i can. the guy with more votes deserves it more. having a good season doesn’t earn you the award, it just earns you a shot at it. two awesome pitchers. somebody had to be second in voting.
I love these decisions. I would have been fine with Felix, but I’m happier with Kluber. More strikeouts, similar walks, more hitter friendly park, worse defense, worse framing. Felix is excellent at taking advantage of his defense and park, and I have them at about a draw, but I’m still happy Kluber won. They’re extremely close.
I really dont care (both deserve it), but actually feliz is better in the road and have better numbers against 5 top offensive team in the league
His road numbers couldn’t have possibly been helped by getting to take on the depleted Houston and Texas offenses and having good pitcher parks somewhat mitigating the offenses in Oakland and Los Angeles, could they have? He faced better offenses overall, though. I did forget that consideration. They each faced average hitters with exactly a 100 wRC+ in 2014, but projections favor the guys Felix faced. They’re incredibly close any way you slice it, and the voting (169-159) reflects that. 10 point differences among a 30-voter sample are hardly meaningful enough to crown one over the other. This Cy Young debate will be talked about for awhile, I’m guessing.
Felix dominated everywhere, not just at Safeco.
That’s not how park factors and home ballparks work, at all. And Felix is indeed dominant. Nobody would deny that. So is Kluber, though.
I said nothing about park factors and home ballparks, nor who should have or shouldn’t have won the award, just wanted to point out that the only thing Felix “took advantage of” was his own dominance over the entire league anywhere any time.
Good to see that performance and not pub/reputation still holds weight with some.
Corey Kluber, Jake Westbrook, Ryan Ludwick amazing this trade in hindsight.
I wonder how many 1st place votes that next to last start vs the Jays cost Felix. 8 runs (4 ER) in 4 2/3 innings when his team needed the W.
Felix also is at fault for the other 4 runs, too. It was his own error that led to those runs. They can’t be pinned on anyone except for Felix.
Kluber Was a slight better very deserving the voters did right
That 4 HR game against the Nats at the end of August cost King Felix.
The vote reflected reality; that this was close.
I’d like to know who the one guy who watched baseball this season was, who decided “yeah, there’s 5 guys in the AL I’m going to put on my ballot before Chris Sale.”
I HATE the White Sox but that guy was the goods.
Yuzo Hayakawa of the Kyodo News
I think the right decision was made. The only thing Felix had on him was ERA (and BB/9 too) but you have to take park factors into consideration. And while W/L record shouldn’t really be indicative, he did have more wins despite pitching for a weaker team and I think that is notable too.
I agree with you about a weaker team, But the wins depends team’s offense, You remember the time he pitch 16 game in a row 2 run less, he got 13 undecisve and one lost
Congrats CK!
Thought Kluber was some type of soft-tossing control guy. With 269 k’s, boy was I wrong.
Had a better fastball in 2014 than guys like Sale, Scherzer, Verlander, and Felix to name a few: fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=sta&…
Wow! I’m very pleasantly surprised that the voters picked Kluber. Not that Felix would have been an awful choice, but Kluber was a little better. It was a tough call and for once the voters chose right!
As a Padres fan, Kluber’s win is bittersweet. On the bright side, it shows our farm system is capable of producing something successful at the ML level.
On the down side . . . we gave him away. For nothing.
Well, basically nothing. I just realized it was for Ryan Ludwick, who was entirely worthless for us. (My apologies).
Everybody is saying Felix was robbed… Kluber had a higher WAR (by a full win!!), a lower FIP, and more strikeouts; Felix had a lower ERA, lower xFIP, higher GB%… could’ve gone either way. I’m not sure who I’d vote for, but to say that Felix was “robbed” is a gross overstatement.
Finally someone that agrees
Those are the same 6 stats (+RA/9 & BB/9) I was trying to boil it down to and I still couldn’t really say who I would for vote for. Felix was Cy worthy but I tend to be a sucker for K’s.
Kershaw is obviously the most deserving candidate, but if the postseason was included, I think Bumgarner would have placed 2nd.
No votes for deGrom? :/
Only played 2/3rds of the season.
This Mariner fan was pulling for Felix Hernandez, who perhaps had his best season, but Corey Kluber was deserving.
For the voters and all the people who would give Kluber the award over Felix: If your season came down to one game would you still pick Kluber to pitch over Felix? No way I say.
By that argument, if your season came down to one game and you could choose Kershaw or Bumgarner, who would you pick?
I would roll the dice with Bumgarner.
Exactly! Yet Kershaw won the Cy Young. That’s your exact argument, only in a NL version.
But I would not have voted for Kershaw to win the Cy Young.
It’s a regular season award based on what happened during the 2014 regular season. What you’re talking about is simply who you think the best pitcher currently is, not who had the best 2014 regular season. Also, Clayton Kershaw is miles better than Madison Bumgarner. Kershaw is wrapping up a Hall of Fame peak.
Yet the question was who would you want to pitch one winner take all game? So far Kershaw, as great as he is, has failed in those situations and Bumgarner has excelled.
Are we talking regular or postseason? Kershaw is obviously the better pitcher. He just has not got it done in the postseason.
And yet, if asked for a game tomorrow, I’d still take Kershaw. He’s simply a better pitcher. Looking just at their postseasons and ignoring hundreds of other innings is odd to do. Kershaw has been the best pitcher in baseball for four years running.
I’ll bet you haven’t see Kluber pitch 3 games.
You’d win that bet. Would you pick Kluber over Felix if your team’s season was on the line?
I would strongly consider it if all I had was the data from the 2014 regular season. Yes, I would. They were essentially equals, so I would strongly consider picking Kluber.
That’s not a very definitive answer in favor of Kluber. I would strongly consider a few guys but I’d still pick Felix over Kluber 10 times out of 10.
Just remember, Felix is on a whole other level when something is on the line. The last game of the season? He struck out something along the lines of 7 Angels hitters in 3 innings. So I too would pick Felix if the season was on the line.
I would. Klubot is incredible to watch and anecdotally implodes less often.
You could make a solid argument that both deserved it, but that’s not how it works; there’s only one award per season.
One of these pitchers had to get hosed.
There’s one award, but they were ten points apart. A few vote switches and we could’ve seen a tie at the top, which would’ve been fitting. It has happened before in the Cy Young, and in the MVP voting, so it’s not unprecedented.
Tanaka was robbed.
he hardly pitched in the 2nd half
If you’re serious, I disagree. Had he pitched a full season, things would be different.
Congratulations to Kluber, and Indians fans. Good to see some new names in the ALCY mix. I’m hoping Sale continues to shine too. Just not against my A’s!
Kershaw has 3 Cy Youngs and likely a MVP before the age of 27, I wonder what his peak will look like. I’m only kidding, I don’t expect him to best 2014’s ridiculous GB%, K/9, and BB/9 numbers but it’s so fun to dream.
Would Bumgarner have had a shot if postseason performance factored into the votes?