Beyond the Box Score: FanPosts

How Many Cy Young Awards Would Cy Young Have Won?

2013-06-08T18:15:16Z

Denton True Young: One cool dude. Best pitcher ever. Most wins ever. Most LOSSES ever. Most...pretty much everything, ever.

Was he really THAT good at any given point, or was he merely very good for a very long time?

To find out, I decided to apply a simple metric to history and see how Cy would have fared in the Cy Young voting had the award existed in his time (it wasn't awarded until 1956).

Using James & Neyer's Cy Predictor formula, I took every single pitching season from 1871-1955, applied the formula, and recorded each league-season's leader in "Cy Young Points."

The formula is calculated thusly: CYP = ((5*IP/9)-ER) + (SO/12) + (SV*2.5) + Shutouts + ((W*6)-(L*2)) + VB, where a 12-point Victory Bonus is awarded for "leading your team to the division championship." I went back and gave all pennant winners the 12 victory points, since this predates divisions. Also please note that this is not a measure of who SHOULD have won, rather it measures who was most LIKELY to have won, based on the historical voting proclivities of the actual voters.

So, who won the most hypothetical Cy Young awards? Cy Young? Old Hoss Radbourn? Bobo Newsom? How many did Cy win? See if you can figure out for yourself with this Sporcle Quiz I created!

Young fared pretty well - he would have won five Cy Young awards, more than any real-life Cy Winners besides Roger Clemens, who won seven. But Cy wouldn't really have distinguished himself with just five - Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove each might have won six (including six in a row for Grove from 1928-33), and Bob Feller, Pete Alexander and Christy Mathewson would have tied Cy with five apiece. Warren Spahn could have added three hypothetical Cy's to the one he actually won. Even Babe Ruth might have had one on his mantle, thanks to a phenomenal 1916 season with the Red Sox.

OK, so Cy Young probably actually was pretty good, in both peak value and longevity. But maybe we should have named the award after Walter Johnson or Lefty Grove.

~ Deej Simons

Denton True Young: One cool dude. Best pitcher ever. Most wins ever. Most LOSSES ever. Most...pretty much everything, ever.

Was he really THAT good at any given point, or was he merely very good for a very long time?

To find out, I decided to apply a simple metric to history and see how Cy would have fared in the Cy Young voting had the award existed in his time (it wasn't awarded until 1956).

Using James & Neyer's Cy Predictor formula, I took every single pitching season from 1871-1955, applied the formula, and recorded each league-season's leader in "Cy Young Points."

So, who won the most hypothetical Cy Young awards? Cy Young? Old Hoss Radbourn? Bobo Newsom? How many did Cy win? See if you can figure out for yourself with this Sporcle Quiz I created!

OK, so Cy Young probably actually was pretty good, in both peak value and longevity. But maybe we should have named the award after Walter Johnson or Lefty Grove.

~ Deej Simons

Was Ryu a Gamble?

2013-06-03T02:51:04Z

Is Hyun Jin Ryu’s early-season success a surprise? Definitely not for many KBO observers who have thoroughly followed Ryu since 2006. Ryu’s stellar performance against the Angels on 5/28 has commanded attention and recognition throughout the realm of Dodger Blue, but Korea Baseball still remains as an unknown territory for many baseball fans in North America. Ryu’s repertoire consists mainly of four pitches: a fastball, a slider, a curve, and a change-up. Below is Ryu’s pitch type data in his last KBO season:

FB%	SL%	CB%	CH%
52.3% (143.7km/h)	13.2% (129.8km/h)	13.3% (111km/h)	21.0% (127.6km/h)

Ryu’s pitch type classification in MLB until 5/28

FB%	SL%	CB%	CH%
53.1% (90.0mph)	13.3% (82.1mph)	10.4% (70.9mph)	23.2% (79.2mph)

Here is a look at Ryu’s average fastball velocity from 2008 to 2012

2008	143.20 km/h
2009	142.37 km/h
2010	142.22 km/h
2011	142.34 km/h
2012	143.70 km/h

Ryu is throwing his fastball a little bit harder in MLB. His fastball is still an average pitch, usually sits around 88-92 mph and peaks at 95. Many pitchers in Asia are often asked to throw 120+ pitches per start. As a result, Ryu has tendency to build through the game, starting with slower fastballs early and throwing harder in later innings "if needed" in Korea. He has adopted the same approach in MLB and finding it working well early in the season. Personally, I like to call it as energy efficiency pitching model. Hyun Jin Ryu’s two-hit complete game shutout is a great example. Ryu frequently dropped his fastball to 87-91 mph range in first seven innings. Ryu realized he would have a shot at first MLB career shutout late in the game and hiked the fastball up to 95 mph, so he does have the extra gear. Ryu recorded a 92.6 mph fastball average velocity in last two innings against the Angels, 1.5 mph faster than game average and 2.6 mph faster than season average.

Change-up is Ryu’s out pitch. He uses it as a soft pitch so he can change speeds as well as locations. The table gives a good understanding of Ryu’s change-up effectiveness.

	Swing	Whiff/Swing	BABIP	GB/BABIP
RHH & LHH	53.05% (262)	30.94%	.122	60%
RHH	52.55% (255)	32.09%	.125	60.38%
LHH	71.43%(7)	N/A	0	50%

Ryu’s change-up Whiff/Swing rate is mediocre, and he uses the pitch almost exclusively to right-handed batters. His deceptive change-up induces a Santana-like BABIP at .122 with a 60% of groundball rate. Ryu also throws a tight slider with late bite. According to Baseball America, Dodgers believe more in Ryu’s slider, which he mainly uses it to put out lefties.

Ryu’s heat maps by type from FanGraphs ( 4/2/13 to 5/28/13 )

via www.fangraphs.com

It is reasonable to conclude that Ryu has success so far this season by painting outside part of the plate with his change-up. The charts also indicate that he likes to throw his slider inside to right-handed hitters and outside to left-handed hitters. Ryu isn’t overpowering. Ryu has a good understanding on how to work the strike zone to his favor. he utilizes both sides of the plate and keeps the batters off balance and uncomfortable by changing speeds. Can you call it pitchability?

The key factors why Ryu can sustain success in his first major league season:

1. Ryu pitches in National League, a safe heaven for pitchers.
2. Dodger stadium is one of the most favorable places for a pitcher to call home.
3. Some say LA hosts the largest Korean population outside of Seoul in a playful manner; nevertheless, Ryu is likely to find the transition to America a lot easier with a huge Korean community in town.

FB%	SL%	CB%	CH%
52.3% (143.7km/h)	13.2% (129.8km/h)	13.3% (111km/h)	21.0% (127.6km/h)

Ryu’s pitch type classification in MLB until 5/28

FB%	SL%	CB%	CH%
53.1% (90.0mph)	13.3% (82.1mph)	10.4% (70.9mph)	23.2% (79.2mph)

Here is a look at Ryu’s average fastball velocity from 2008 to 2012

2008	143.20 km/h
2009	142.37 km/h
2010	142.22 km/h
2011	142.34 km/h
2012	143.70 km/h

Change-up is Ryu’s out pitch. He uses it as a soft pitch so he can change speeds as well as locations. The table gives a good understanding of Ryu’s change-up effectiveness.

	Swing	Whiff/Swing	BABIP	GB/BABIP
RHH & LHH	53.05% (262)	30.94%	.122	60%
RHH	52.55% (255)	32.09%	.125	60.38%
LHH	71.43%(7)	N/A	0	50%

Ryu’s heat maps by type from FanGraphs ( 4/2/13 to 5/28/13 )

via www.fangraphs.com

The key factors why Ryu can sustain success in his first major league season:

Home Team All-Stars

2013-06-01T16:57:45Z

(The data which this post discusses can be found here. Feel free to open it now, or wait until you get further down!)

As anyone who knows me in real life knows, I am an enormous Chicago Cubs fan. As that criteria eliminates (probably) every single one of you, I will continue without referencing this fact again. Save once. Right now.

Today, I was pondering who my would be on my All-Time Cubs team. I wanted folks who'd contributed while wearing a Cubs uniform - while Andre Dawson may have won the '87 MVP with Chicago, there were outfielders who contributed more to the Cubs during their time in pinstripes (Hack Wilson, Sammy Sosa, and Billy Williams, as it turned out, though Dawson was on the Montreal/Washington list). Similarly, Greg Maddux is clearly one of the greatest pitchers who ever played for the Cubs, but his contributions in Chicago were actually somewhat less than a handful of other pitchers who called Wrigley home (Jenkins, Reuschel, Rush, Brown, and Vaughn).

With these thoughts in mind, I went to Fangraph's handy-dandy leaderboard and started the process of creating my team.

I enjoyed the results I got, so I went ahead did the same thing for every franchise currently in the majors. You can find the results here. (Spoiler: It's good news for Yankees, Tigers, Giants and Braves fans.)

A few notes on process, before we get to the more interesting stuff:

(1) Leaders are Fangraphs WAR leaders, at their positions, during their time with any given franchise. Players were allowed to be on more than one franchise (Alex Rodriguez for the Yankees and Mariners, for example, or Nolan Ryan for the Angels, Rangers, and Astros), but not twice for one franchise. As for that ...

(2) If a player played more than one position for a franchise, as was the case with a number of folks, they were placed at the position where they had the greatest WAR differential with the second-best player at that position. For example, Stan Musial played both 1B and LF for the Cardinals, producing 126.8 WAR in the process. The second-best Cardinals LF, Lou Brock, produced 41.5 WAR. The second-best Cardinals 1B, Albert Pujols, produced 83.0 WAR. So for the purposes of this exercise, Musial was considered a Left-Fielder, allowing Pujols (who was less-worse than Brock) to play first;

(3) Outfielders were separated by position (LF/CF/RF), and had the principles described above applied;

(4) Pitchers were not separated by role, so Trevor Hoffman shows up in the Padres list (Mariano Rivera missed the cut by one on the Yankees list);

(5) In order to avoid penalizing franchises who had multiple superb players at the same position, I added (in addition to five pitchers and a position player at each position) a "bench" player, who was simply the player with the highest WAR for that franchise who would not have otherwise been included. For example, Carl Yastrzemski was "crowded out" by Ted Williams in Boston's LF. He was included here;

(6) Only data from 1901 - 2013 was considered. Sorry, early National League players You take the hit on this one.

The teams themselves were quite interesting, and I encourage you to play around with the chart to find teams you like. But wait, there's more! Once I'd found the results (which again, can be found here) I played around with it a bit, adding STDEVs and Z-SCOREs for each "category" of WAR (pitching, infield, outfield, and bench). This allowed me to get a sense of which teams have historically been heavily reliant on their pitching (Diamondbacks, Mets, Blue Jays, and Twins), their infields (Brewers, Orioles, Rangers, and Marlins), their outfields (Giants, Rays, Tigers, and Padres), and that made up category, "bench" (Red Sox, Reds, Braves, and Padres). Play around with the numbers a bit; you'll see what I'm talking about. It was a lot of fun.

There are of course many things I could also have done, and I'm looking forward to hearing from all of you about what some of those things are. I'm planning on running some R-squareds between various categories, to see if there's any correlation between having a relatively "balanced" attack (evenly distributed between offense and pitching) and overall WAR success. I'd also like to find a way to normalize the results so teams which haven't been around for very long (Marlins, Rays, etc.) aren't penalized for not having had many franchise players.

All in all, though, it was an interesting exercise. Take a look, and let me know what you think, and interesting things you notice!

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KEY:

tWAR: Total WAR produced by all players considered for each franchise.

pWAR: Total WAR produced by the five pitchers considered for each franchise.

iWAR: Total WAR produced by the starters at the infield positions for each franchise.

oWAR: Total WAR produced by the starters at the outfield positions for each franchise.

bWAR: Total WAR produced by the player that produced the most WAR for each franchise, who wasn't included as the representative for any of the other positions.

(z)-tWAR: The z-score for each franchises' value in tWAR.

pWAR%: The percentage of each franchises' tWAR that came from pWAR (pWAR% = pWAR / tWAR).

(z)-pWAR%: The z-score for each franchises' value in pWAR%.

iWAR%: The percentage of each franchises' tWAR that came from iWAR (iWAR% = iWAR / tWAR).

(z)-iWAR%: The z-score for each franchises' value in iWAR%.

oWAR%: The percentage of each franchises' tWAR that came from oWAR (oWAR% = oWAR / tWAR).

(z)-oWAR%: The z-score for each franchises' value in oWAR%.

bWAR%: The percentage of each franchises' tWAR that came from bWAR (bWAR% = bWAR / tWAR).

(z)-bWAR%: The z-score for each franchises' value in bWAR%.