Rivera Could Steal AL Cy Young Award
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Coming down the stretch, the American League Cy Young race is looking less like it will be won by some late blaze of glory and more like it will be won by default.
The league ERA leader, Cleveland’s Kevin Millwood, has an 8-11 record and has pitched only 173 innings, to boot. Defending Cy Young winner Johan Santana of the Twins trails him by only three-tenths of a run and has probably been the best pitcher in the league, but his 14-7 record isn’t going to put him in position to impress the voters. The Angels’ Bartolo Colon looks like the frontrunner; at 19-7, he could well be the only AL pitcher to reach 20 wins before the season is out. But his ERA is nearly half a run higher than Santana’s, and his 6.19 September ERA is a large part of the reason why his Angels find themselves in a pennant race despite the A’s poor play. White Sox pitchers Jon Garland and Mark Buehrle have been about as good as anyone this year, but neither has a great ERA or won loss record. And what to make of Mariano Rivera who’s having perhaps his best season, but will end up pitching less than a third as many innings as the other candidates?
At root, the cause of the confusion is that no AL starters have been exceptionally good this year. At least three NL pitchers – St. Louis’s Chris Carpenter, Houston’s Roger Clemens and Florida’s Dontrelle Willis – would have locked up the hardware by now were they pitching in the junior circuit, and several more – Houston’s Andy Pettite and Roy Oswalt, Atlanta’s John Smoltz and the Mets’ Pedro Martinez – have been arguably better than any of the AL candidates.
To show how weak the AL class is, Toronto’s Roy Halladay ranks second in the league in VORP, a Baseball Prospectus statistic that measures run contributions over a freely available Al Leiter-type. He hasn’t pitched since July.
All that said, the best starter has been Santana. With just three starts left, he won’t exceed 17 wins, but he’ll probably end up winning the ERA title and finishing among the top three in innings pitched. On top of that, he’s had a second half nearly reminiscent of his last year’s, with a 1.69 ERA since the All-Star break. His underwhelming won-loss record has much more to do with the Twins’ inept offense than it does with anything he’s done.
Both Garland and Buehrle are strong candidates on the raw numbers – particularly Garland, given Buehrle’s 4.66 September ERA – and get an extra boost when you take into account that they pitch in hitter-friendly US Cellular. Still, both rely on their defense to a much greater extent than Santana, and even after adjusting for park factors, Santana has been better, enjoying a 15-run edge in VORP over the two White Sox. It’s hard to make a case for either one.
Were I a betting man, my money would be on Colon, simply because the Cy Young will go to the man with the most wins whenever possible, but there’s just not an argument to be made for him. He’s given up 10 more runs than Santana in slightly fewer innings, and there’s just no way to attribute the difference in their win totals to anything under either man’s control.
That leaves one last candidate: Mariano Rivera. It’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between a starter and a reliever, but one way to get at the problem is through the concept of leverage. By assigning a value to each situation a reliever comes into – higher for, say, a none-out, bases loaded jam in the bottom of the ninth, lower for coming into a ten-run blowout – it’s possible to measure his innings against those of a starter. Rivera’s leverage this year has been 1.71, meaning his 72 innings have been as valuable as 123 innings for a starter. That leaves a difficult question: Is it better to have a 209-inning pitcher with a 3.05 ERA or a 123-inning pitcher with a 1.38?
Truth told, there’s essentially no difference. If a pitcher with a 5.50 ERA had pitched Santana’s innings for the Twins, he would have given up 56 more runs than Santana. If a pitcher with a 5.50 ERA had pitched 123 innings for the Yankees, he would have given up 56 more runs than Rivera. There’s a case to be made that it’s harder to find a 200-inning pitcher than a random guy to pitch an inning at a time, and that’s true; there’s also a case to be made that because the late innings have so much impact on a team’s fortunes, simply bumping up a closer’s innings total still doesn’t make for a fair comparison to a starter.
What it comes down to for me is this: Santana has been very, very good, and it would be no disgrace if he won the award. Rivera, though, has been extraordinary, and the reason he doesn’t stand out as clearly better than Santana by the numbers is that given the limitations of the role, it’s almost impossible for even a top closer to be much better than a very good starter.
Baseball isn’t all about the numbers, though, and Rivera’s statistics – which are incredible – only barely hint at his dominance. He has no weaknesses. He doesn’t walk anybody. His uncannily consistent refusal to back down from any hitters means they never get the extension necessary to drive the ball for extra-base hits. He doesn’t allow inherited runners to score. Of course, he’s never walked anyone, given up home runs, or been prone to inflate other pitchers’ ERAs; if there’s any difference in him this season, it’s simply that he’s become more confident and more aggressive in the strike zone. You wouldn’t have thought such a thing possible.
Everybody knows how great Rivera has been in October, but in the one season in memory when every Yankee victory has been a desperately needed one, he’s come through every time. From May through July he’s allowed three earned runs, and, with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi, was the only thing standing between the Yankees and utter collapse.
It’s easy to take Rivera for granted. This season might not be any better than the one he had last year, or the year before. That doesn’t make it any less worthy of recognition. Forget Colon and the rest; give the award to the best pitcher in the league.