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Numbers suggest Price got undeserved Cy Young
Views790Comments5More Sharing ServicesShare on email10:42 PM ET 11.15 | David Price did not deserve this award based on stats. Price did lead AL starters in wins with 20 and ERA at 2.56, so he comes out on top in what we think of as the "old-fashioned" categories used to determine who had the better season. He did it with a good BABIP allowed and a very high strand rate, which explains part of why he lagged guys like Verlander and Felix Hernandez in varieties of WAR. I don't hold that against him and I would never advocate giving the Cy Young to a guy who lost games, let runners score and saw ball after ball drilled up the gaps. It may be hard for any great pitcher to repeat that low BABIP and great clutch pitching combo but he did do it, luck or not luck. That isn't all, though, the bigger reason that Price's WAR trailed Verlander and Hernandez by such a margin is that he did not make as many starts or pitch as deep into games -- finishing with 21 fewer innings under his belt than Hernandez and 27 1/3 fewer than Verlander. If somebody else is 99 percent as good as Price 110 percent of the time, doesn't he provide more value than Price?
Motor City Bengals
Views790Comments5More Sharing ServicesShare on email10:42 PM ET 11.15 | David Price did not deserve this award based on stats. Price did lead AL starters in wins with 20 and ERA at 2.56, so he comes out on top in what we think of as the "old-fashioned" categories used to determine who had the better season. He did it with a good BABIP allowed and a very high strand rate, which explains part of why he lagged guys like Verlander and Felix Hernandez in varieties of WAR. I don't hold that against him and I would never advocate giving the Cy Young to a guy who lost games, let runners score and saw ball after ball drilled up the gaps. It may be hard for any great pitcher to repeat that low BABIP and great clutch pitching combo but he did do it, luck or not luck. That isn't all, though, the bigger reason that Price's WAR trailed Verlander and Hernandez by such a margin is that he did not make as many starts or pitch as deep into games -- finishing with 21 fewer innings under his belt than Hernandez and 27 1/3 fewer than Verlander. If somebody else is 99 percent as good as Price 110 percent of the time, doesn't he provide more value than Price?
Motor City Bengals
