Thursday, November 15, 2018

Winning Optional


Let me get this straight.  The Mets Jacob deGrom wins the NL Cy Young Award with a 10-9 record and 1.70 ERA.  In that case, Steve Carlton should have been voted king of the world for what he did with the Phillies in 1972.

Pitching for a team that managed all of 59 wins, Carlton went 27-10 with a 1.97 ERA.  Put another way, Carlton won nearly 46 percent of his team’s games that year to 13 percent for deGrom.  Yet deGrom has a 10.0 WAR for his Cy Young season, versus a mere 12.5 for Carlton.

I have no particular love for Carlton, who off the diamond has flirted with anti-Semitism and other extremist beliefs.  But in strictly baseball terms, deGrom’s Cy Young performance is nowhere near Carlton’s.  If numbers don’t lie, then sabermetrics do.

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