Sportsfrog.com

Part of me believes there is no reason to even spell out why Francisco Rodriguez shouldn’t win the Cy Young award this year. There is actually a more valid argument that he shouldn’t even be in the top 10 of the voting. Still, these same voters get it very wrong year after year so my efforts here are probably not a complete waste of time.

For starters (mandatory baseball pun), the American League Cy Young Award winner is Cliff Lee. Not should be. He is. There is no other choice for first place on any ballot. Voters are permitted to consider Roy Halladay for a few seconds or maybe even Ervin Santana or Jon Lester to satisfy the part of their brains that yearn for award winners to be members of playoff teams, but they must vote Lee first. Granted, this could all be a foregone conclusion, I haven’t read too many articles slanted against Lee or touting Krod for Cy Young, but that could simply be because I don’t often read columnists who would write such articles. Still, let’s assume the Krod at the top of the ballot write-ups are coming and those writers need to be proven wrong. Again. To compare only the pitchers I mentioned above …

ERA:
Lee: 2.36 (210.0 IPs)
Rodriguez: 2.38 (64.3 IPs)
Halladay: 2.77 (231.0 IPs)
Lester: 3.15 (197.3 IPs)
Santana: 3.33 (205.3 IPs)

WHIP:
Halladay: 1.05
Lee: 1.06
Santana: 1.12
Rodriguez: 1.27
Lester: 1.29

This looks simple enough. Even if you only care about ERA and WHIP, the two big fantasy ratios, Lee is obviously more valuable. He has a slightly better ERA and a much better WHIP across three times as many innings. Even if voters do get it right and go with Lee, Rodriguez will probably still rank higher than some or all of the other starters I listed which is ridiculous. Let’s simply compare Krod to his teammate Santana who has the worst ERA of the five pitchers above. In order to fully grasp the importance of innings pitched, both in this example and in general when comparing starters and relievers, I’ll fill the starter/reliever gap with a league average AL starter (4.45 ERA).

Rodriguez: 64.3 IPs, 17 ERs
League Average: 141.0 IPs, 70 ERs
Rodriguez Combo: 205.3 IPs, 87 ERs, 3.81 ERA
Santana: 205.3 IPs, 3.33 ERA

So even using a league average adjustment instead of a replacement level adjustment (which skews towards the reliever given that 141 league average innings is far closer to valuable than neutral), Rodriguez’s contributions fall behind Santana’s by almost half a run per 9. If Anaheim were forced to go into next season with either the 2008 version of Santana or Rodriguez, they’d probably be smart enough to pick the former. I have no doubt voters will be foolish and pick the latter simply because most voters don’t get it (and reject those like Law and Neyer who do). Voters see the saves record fall and immediately assume Krod is the one pitcher Anaheim couldn’t succeed without. This takes us down a second road; determining where Rodriguez falls in comparison to other relievers. There are 10 pitchers with over 40 appearances and 0 starts who have better ERAs and 27 with better WHIPs. Even if you want to exclude setup men (using the logic they more often pitch in favorable matchups or don’t face the pressure of the 9th inning), there are still four other closers who merit as much or greater consideration. More numbers …

Rodriguez: 2.38 ERA, 1.27 WHIP, 27.4 K%, 2.2 K/FP in 64.3 IPs
Nathan: 1.03 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 28.4 K%, 3.7 K/FP in 61.0 IPs
Rivera: 1.54 ERA, 0.70 WHIP, 30.8 K%, 9.1 K/FP in 64.3 IPs
Soria: 1.73 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, 25.6 K%, 2.8 K/FP in 62.3 IPs
Papelbon: 2.11 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 28.8 K%, 10.3 K/FP in 64.0 IPs

There is no significant difference in innings and all four of the other relievers have lower ERAs and better K/FP rates than Rodriguez. Simply put, they allow less baserunners and less runs than Krod and therefore have pitched better than Krod. Basically, everything comes down to the one and only factor that heavily favors Rodriguez: Opportunity. At their current save rates with all five given the same number of save chances as Rodriguez, the hypothetical leaderboard would look like this:

Rivera, 62
Soria, 59
Rodriguez, 58
Papelbon, 57
Nathan, 55

I could probably go back and see how many saves were of the 1 run variety, how many were for multiple innings and so on but I really don’t think that’s necessary to prove my point. Perhaps if someone honestly objects (or decides to create a Bill Plaschke ID in an attempt to goad me) I’ll succumb and do the extra work. To me, it all seems fairly obvious.

So, in conclusion, dear Sports Frog readers and any BBWAA voters passing through our humble blog, Krod is not your 2008 Cy Young award winner. He’s not even the most qualified reliever. He shouldn’t finish in the top 10 of the voting. He’s a very good reliever who plays for the best team in the American League; one that combines great pitching and mediocre hitting to provide him with 21 more save opportunities than any other pitcher in the league. To his credit, he has saved most of the games he’s been asked to save. However, to decide that this makes him the one of the most valuable pitchers in the AL this season is to not only turn a blind eye to the value of innings pitched, but to absurdly overvalue saves relative to his other statistics. Naturally, this wouldn’t be without precedent; since 1980 six closers have won Cy Young awards and two have won MVPs. What probably would make Krod winning the award this year more inexcusable than any prior instance would be the fact that there is a starter who has bettered his per inning effectiveness in three times the innings. Vote Lee.