By Louis Addeo-Weiss
Wednesday night saw New York Mets’ ace Jacob DeGrom take home his second consecutive National League Cy Young Award, nabbing 29 of 30 first-place votes, a feat not even accomplished by Mr. Met himself, Tom Seaver.
For DeGrom, the fact that the 31-year old right-hander has managed to win Cy Young’s in successive seasons illustrates voter maturation, as the growing influence of analytics has helped determine traditional statistics such as wins and losses to be illegitimate when voting on these awards.
DeGrom’s two Cy Young campaigns have seen him win a grand total of just 21 games, which has many baseball purists up-in-arms, but a look at his peripherals suggest that he’s been far better than his record suggests.
In his 2019 campaign, DeGrom’s 7.3 pitching bWAR (baseball-reference) led all NL pitchers, with his cumulative total of 7.9 leading all MLB pitchers.
And while it may be a divisive statistic, we need to remember that WAR accounts for factors such as ballparks and peer performance relative to a player’s position, which further outlines how DeGrom far out-performed his contemporaries.
What made DeGrom’s 2019 path to back-to-back Cy’s easier was the two candidates alongside him – the Dodgers’ Hyun-Jin Ryu (5.3 bWAR), and the Nationals’ Max Scherzer (5.8 bWAR).
One metric to look at, especially when grading a pitcher’s performance in modern baseball, is innings pitched. Of the three aforementioned candidates, DeGrom was the only one of the bunch to surpass 200 innings pitched, which he has done now in three consecutive seasons.
Scherzer missed nearly a month’s worth of action in July and most of August due to bursitis and ensuing back stiffness. Returning on August 22nd, the 3x CYA-winner pitched to a 4.74 ERA over his final seven starts, finishing the season with a stellar 2.92 ERA, 5.8 bWAR, and an MLB-best 2.45 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching).
In his 27 starts, the Nationals averaged 4.59 runs per game, playing to a 14-13 record.
Ryu missed time in early August due to neck soreness, costing him approximately two starts, though he did still manage to pitch enough innings to qualify for and win his first ERA-title, finishing the year with a 2.32 ERA.
The Dodgers, who won a franchise-record 106 games, went 20-9 in Ryu’s starts, averaging 5.22 runs over those 29 outings.
In DeGrom’s 32 starts, the Mets, who failed to score him many runs in 2018, as he won the Cy Young with a misleading 10-8 record, averaged just 4.13 runs per game, an improvement over last year’s dismal mark of 3.49, but still indicative of a feeble offense in Flushing. Over those 32 starts, the Mets managed to go just 14-18.
A further illustration of why wins eluded DeGrom is RA9 and oppRA9 (opponents’ RA9).
For starters, DeGrom’s 2.60 RA9 ranked first among NL pitchers, yet oppRA9 against was 4.69, the same number for Ryu, though Ryu’s 21.1 fewer innings pitched played in DeGrom’s favor.
Adjusted pitching runs, which assess pitcher contributions, shows us that DeGrom was again, the league’s best pitcher, as evidenced by his 40 PtchR. Using the metric RAA (Runs Above Average), we see DeGrom leading over the other two candidates, posting an RAA of 51, while Ryu managed a mark of just 33, and Scherzer 40.
DeGrom’s dominance also came on the heels of one of baseball’s worse defenses, as the Mets were worth -0.38 RA9def during his starts. As for Ryu and Scherzer, their team’s fared quite better, posting marks of 0.50 (Ryu) and -0.05 (Scherzer) RA9def.
Collectively, the Mets defense was worth -44 Total Fielding Runs Above Average.
So yes, Jacob DeGrom, once again, caught a bad break. The Mets’ ace found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Had he pitched somewhere such as Houston, where Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole fared much better despite slightly higher ERAs – Verlander, 2.58, Cole 2.50 – DeGrom would’ve most certainly won more than 11 games.
In fact, Verlander’s 21 wins in 2019 equaled all of what DeGrom had won over the past two seasons, but again, it is important we illustrate, as I have already done, that wins are not what determines whether or not a pitcher deserves to receive its highest individual honor.
