V Is For Value
Posted: November 17th, 2009 | Filed under: Baseball | 94 Comments »
Every so often in this crazy sports racket, you can’t help but feel like the conversation has changed ever so slightly … and changed for the better. Zack Greinke won the American League Cy Young Award on Tuesday. More than that, he breezed to the award. He was named first on 25 of 28 ballots. He was the runaway winner.
And he did it with only 16 victories.
This is kind of amazing, if you think about it. Before I begin, I should probably explain quickly to those who have missed it that I cannot stand the pitcher’s victory as a prominent baseball statistic. I quote victories more often than I should because they are inescapable. But crediting the pitcher for a victory has always been somewhat absurd and also — as Crash Davis said in Bull Durham about strikeouts — fascist. Why would you give one guy a “victory?” A pitcher has only so much control over how many hits/runs he allows, and he has almost no control over how many hits/runs his team scores. If a third baseman hits three home runs and makes two great plays, shouldn’t HE get the victory?
As ridiculous as the pitching victories thing was in the 1970s and before, when pitchers threw complete games with regularity, it’s even more ridiculous now because they don’t. Starting pitchers generally go five, six or seven innings … why in the hell should they get a VICTORY for that?
But I digress. Before Greinke, only one starting pitcher in the history of the American League Cy Young had won the award with as few as 16 victories. That, surprisingly enough, was also a Kansas City Royals pitcher — David Cone in 1994. Of course, the big difference is 1994 was a strike year. Cone went 16-5 in only 23 starts that year.
Four National League starters have won the Cy Young with 16 or less. Fernando won 13 in the 1981 strike season — a season which mostly exists to force sportswriters to use the words “Except for the 1981 strike season” in their stories. Greg Maddux won 16 in the 1994 strike year. Rick Sutcliffe went 16-1 after being traded to the Cubs in 1984 and won the National League Cy Young (he actually won 20 games with the Cubs and Indians). And then there was Brandon Webb in 2006 — he too won the Cy Young with 16 victories, but that was a weird year because Webb’s 16 victories actually LED THE LEAGUE (well, it was part of a six-way tie at the top).
So, this is a little bit different — this is the first season, I think, when a starter with 16 victories won the award over a viable Cy Young choice with more victories. And there was a very good choice — Felix Hernandez went 19-5, had a great 2.48 ERA, pitched incredible baseball in the second half and so on. There’s little question in my mind that King Felix would have won the award in years past, and I’m not even saying that’s wrong. I’m saying it’s fairly incredible that the way we watch and study baseball has changed so much that he did not win it this time around.
No, the winner was Zack, with 16 victories. He had a great, great year as we have written here many, many times — led the league in ERA, WHIP and homers per nine, was second in strikeouts, shutouts, complete games and hits per nine. On top of that, he won the Cy Young while pitching for a terrible hitting and fielding team. He won the Cy Young while pitching in a Kansas City market without much media exposure*. He won it while pitching for a team that lost 97 games.
*Even as I typed those words, I realized that the whole “not much media exposure” cry for Kansas City is probably as obsolete as judging a pitcher by his victories. I would guess that for a young fan raised on the Internet, the Royals probably feel preposterously OVEREXPOSED, what with Rob Neyer and Rany Jazayerli and Bill James and Jeff Passan and Sam Mellinger and, you know, others, having a Kansas City slant.
In fact, I wonder — and you can email me your answer if you like — who you think are the five most overexposed teams in baseball. You can include everything — TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, Internet, people in your office who will not shut up, etc. Rank the teams in order, Top 5. And if you are just about to send me an email with this …
1. Yankees
2. Yankees
3. Yankees
4. Yankees
5. Yankees
… you don’t have to. Really.
The Greinke award — especially him winning so easily — feels something like progress. Or at least it feels that way to me because (A) I have been in the tank for Greinke since before the season began and (B) I probably am a hard-liner when it comes to using victories as a way to measure pitchers. Of course, I have been saying for weeks that he WOULD win the Cy Young. But was I as confident as I wrote? Probably not. I kept looking at King Felix’s 19-5 record and thinking: That could definitely change things.
And in other years, yes, I think it would have changed things. There are a few examples of great pitchers getting little or no Cy Young support because they did not win games.
– Kevin Brown lost the Cy Young to John Smoltz in 1996 by a landslide despite his remarkable 1.89 ERA. That ERA was a full run better than Smoltz (2.95). Brown walked just 33 batters in 233 innings, he led the league in WHIP (.944), shutouts (3), fewest homers per nine innings (.309) and his 216 ERA+ that year is the 11th best since the deadball era. But Smoltz had 24 wins for a 96-win Braves team while Brown only had 17 victories for an 80-82 Marlins team. And Smoltz has mentioned, won the Cy Young running away.
*Brown hit 16 batters and walked 33. I had to believe this is a W/P (walk-to-plunk ratio) record (min. 200 innings pitched). Pedro Martinez in 2000 walked 32 and hit 14 (2.29 W/P). Bronson Arroyo in 2004 walked 47 and hit 20 (2.35). And David Bush in 2006 walked 38 and hit 18 (2.11). But Brown’s 2.06 walk-to-plunk is special.
A bonus mention should be given, however, to Orel Hershiser’s 2000 season. It doesn’t count because he only pitched 24 2/3 innings. But that year, his last year, Bulldog walked 14 and hit 11.
– Dave Stieb went 14-13 with a league leading 2.48 ERA in 1985 — and he finished seventh in the Cy Young voting. Admittedly, it’s hard to understand how he could have gone 14-13 with a league-leading ERA while pitching for a Blue Jays team that won the American League East … well, it was hard to understand then. Looking back now, you can see that six of his losses and eight of his nine no-decisions were what we now call quality starts. His team also allowed 16 unearned runs. So despite pitching 30 more innings than Cy winner Bret Saberhagen and allowing fewer earned runs, despite allowing the fewest hits per nine in the league, he got practically no Cy support.
– In 1993, Cincinnati’s Jose Rijo was second in ERA (2.48), first in strikeouts (227), second in innings pitched (257), third in strikeouts to walk ratio, and third in hits per nine innings (7.6) but finished a distant fifth in the Cy voting. He had only 14 wins.
– In the American League in 1993, Kevin Appier led the league in ERA (2.56) and home runs per nine innings, was second in WHIP … but he won 18 games and finished third in the voting. Jack McDowell won 22 and took the award.
– In 1978, Jon Matlack had a 2.27 ERA for Texas (second in the league) and he was Top 5 in WHIP, walks per nine, complete games (18, if you are counting at home) and strikeout to walk ratio. He did not get a single Cy Young vote. His record was 15-13.
And so on. This is not to say that these players got cheated — my feeling on it is that you either win the Cy Young or you don’t. Second or third place, while fun to talk about, are not especially memorable for most. And I would say the only one of these five who SHOULD have won the Cy Young was Kevin Brown. I’m just saying that wins have always played at least some role in the voting. But with the game changing — there were no 20-game winners again this season, just like 2006 — and with people (fans, writers, analysts, everyone it seems except a few former players) attempting to go deeper with pitching analysis, I think this year wins played very little role in people’s thinking. And that’s why Zack Greinke won.
Of course, because of my crazy mind, I do wish we could come up with something like wins and losses (but better) that would tell us at a glance just how effective a season a pitcher had. Bill James’ Game Scores and Season scores are fun. Win Probability Added — which, to wildly oversimplify, adds up an entire season’s worth of winning/losing plays to estimate how many wins a player adds to a team — is extremely helpful.
Pitchers with the Top WPA in 2009
1. Zack Greinke, +6.07
2. Chris Carpenter, +5.41
3. Tim Lincecum, +4.26
4. Justin Verlander, +4.19
5. Adam Wainwright, +3.60
6. Roy Halladay, +3.52
7. Jair Jurrjens, +3.35
8. Felix Hernandez, +3.26
9. Ubaldo Jiminez, +3.16
10. Matt Cain, +3.14
But, yes, I can see why people would be drawn to pitchers wins (and losses). It’s simple, it’s clear-cut and appeals to the certainty we want from baseball. Who is the best winner? If he was so good, why didn’t he win more? If he was so bad, how did he win so many? And so on. Wins have had a powerful pull on the American baseball fan and writer for a long time, and I do not doubt that it will again. But for now, the win is humbled. Zack Greinke wins the Cy Young — a rare victory without many victories.
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I too was surprised but pleased with the landslide nature of the victory. One almost gets the sense that Greinke’s exposure in the first half of the year, when his numbers were not just great but insanely ridiculous, helped him out. It’s almost impossible to fly totally under the radar in sports anymore, especially when you’re putting up numbers that are as superlative as his were.
1. New York Yankees
(a gigantic chasm)
2. Notre Dame Football
3. Boston Red Sox
4. New York Giants
5. The SEC as an entity for football.
I didn’t say “Circle me Zack” because I figured someone would sneak it in by the time I finished my post. But I guess I could have after all. Circle me, Zack!
Joe,
You are hereby credited with an assist in Greinke’s CYA. Without you, your blog, and your columns, there is no way Greinke wins this award. YOU have changed the conversation.
Thank you,
Your Loyal Readers
Oh, and:
1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Mets
4. Cubs
5. Dodgers
And I say that as a Cubs fan. Sometimes I wish the media would ignore us a little more, not least so I wouldn’t have to keep hearing how long it’s been since 1908, as though anyone was at risk of forgetting.
I was pleasantly surprised to see how easily Greinke won the Cy Young award this year. It’s almost as if the voters actually looked at all the stats this year and tried to make the best choice possible. Very odd.
I’d say “circle me, Dan Quisenberry,” except A- Quiz never won the Cy; B- by the time I hit “submit” I’ll probably be fifth; C- Zack, in his comments, allowed that the attention for winning the Cy wasn’t welcome and made him uncomfortable. That’s not surprising but I worry for his mental outlook and his happiness. Ultimately, the award is not worth as much as his having a healthy and happy life.
Still, congratulations to him.
I’d like to hope that we’ve made progress in squashing the victory as a meaningful way to measure a pitcher.
That said, I’d bet that, if you kept all their other stats equal, if Hernandez had 24 wins and Greinke had 17, Hernandez would have won the award hands down.
Sigh…
Oops, misread it. Baseball-only edition.
Yankees
(a gigantic chasm)
Red Sox
Cubs
Mets
Dodgers, distant fifth.
yankees
red sox
tim tebow
knicks
cowboys
You only have to go back to 2005 in the AL to get a great example of the wins focus. Johan Santana pitched 231 innings with a 155 ERA+, and Bartolo Colon pitched 222 innings with a 122 ERA+. But Colon won 21 games, and Santana only won 16, so Colon took the Cy Young.
If Felix or Sabathia had won 20, things would have been different.
I’m really glad Zach won the Cy, but I feel like even his supporters towards the end almost lost track of just how good this season was. Also, reading the comments on the mlb.com story makes me want to puke. People are saying Felix was robbed because Zach was coming back from the disorder. Ugh….
1) Yankees (I’m a fan, but clearly some things are not equal)
2) Red Sox
3) Phillies (maybe it just feels this way because of the WS, but they were getting some serious coverage as a “team of destiny.”)
4) Angels
5) Dodgers (I think right now it’s mainly Yankee/Red Sox residue from Torre and Manny.)
If Felix had gotten one more, things might have gotten more interesting, but probably not. Sabathia won the award a couple of years ago over Josh Beckett and his 20 wins, though admittedly CC had 19 at the time. Also, no one led the league in more than one major category that year the way Greinke swept almost everything this time
Aaahh fooey. I stopped & e-mailed you a list & great reasoning on why the hype is so insane for the Yankees & Red Sox here since I live closer to 3 major league teams than I do the Yanks…. then came back to find you said we didn’t really have to. Ah well.
Great post. I’m so glad Greinke won this. He deserved it.
To be overexposed your exposure has to be way out of proportion to your actual production.
The Mets get my nod as the most overexposed team in baseball, followed this year by the Cubs.
Many readers here would disagree but I think the Red Sox and Yankees are properly exposed.
Most overexposed team in sports: Notre Dame football in a runaway.
Congrats to Zack and his fans. The most fun player to watch in either league this year.
1. Pittsburgh Pirates
(a gigantic chasm)
2. San Diego Padres
3. Oakland A’s (darn Moneyball)
4. Arizona Diamondbacks
5. Houston Astros
That’s right.
LEAST hyped baseball teams…
1) Padres
2) Pirates
3) Toronto
4) Cincinnati
5) Oakland
No. 8: “That said, I’d bet that, if you kept all their other stats equal, if Hernandez had 24 wins and Greinke had 17, Hernandez would have won the award hands down.”
Frankly, (as No. 12 suggests) I wonder what the result had been had Hernandez even been 20-4 instead of 19-5. I think a lot of voters would have had difficulty turning away a 20-game winner with so few losses.
Greinke had a historic season, but a Cy Young award, like an election, turns on many factors. In my mind, he benefitted greatly from the facts that:
1. Sports Illustrated featured him on its cover early in the season, and with the “Greatest Pitcher in Baseball” tag to boot.
2. Hernandez pitches in Seattle (and got off to a relatively slow start, compared to Greinke. He was under the radar for much of the season as far as Cy Young consideration goes).
2. Sabathia, Verlander, and Halladay never got to 20 wins. If any of these three, all of whom were more familiar names going into the season than Greinke, had reached 20, that pitcher may still have won, and if he had reached as many as 22 wins he would have won going away. All other stats be damned, voters would not have picked a 16-win Greinke on the Royals over a 22-win Sabathia on a division-winning Yankee team.
In other words, this result may be something other than a sea change in voting habits — just the right set of circumstances for Greinke.
Yankees
Red Sox
Cubs
Mets
Royals – between You and Rob Neyer enough is enough talking about this awful franchise. Seems to me you promised to stop talking about KC a little bit when you took the SI job but alas it continues at an alarming pace
Greinke won the Cy Young, but based on what little exposure I had to both, I wouldn’t be mad at him or King Felix winning. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Hernandez’s finish as strong as Greinke’s start to the season? I’m sure the punctuation on “Hernandez’s” isn’t right, I might need some help on that as well. I’m working nights so I’m not that sharp.
Hernandez’/Hernandezs’/Hernandezs?!?!
Circle me grammar police, I surrender.
1) East Coast
(huge gap)
2) West Coast
(even bigger gap)
3) Everyone else.
Nice to see that Rijo mention. It’s such a shame he got hurt because looking at the first half of the 90s, he had to be one of the , if not the best, pitchers not named Greg Maddux.
The most overexposed team in baseball is the National Football League. Television doesn’t shut up about it, regardless of what time of year it is. Even in the middle of baseball season football eats up probably half of PTI and a sizable chunk of SportsCenter. And now my antipathy toward the sport has forced me to answer this question incorrectly, thus making everything that much worse.
Thank Zeus for the Internet, where I can choose what to read, but still find the discussion dominated by -
1. The Yankees, but they were the best team this year, so that’s actually somewhat fair
2. The Mets
3. The Red Sox
4. The Royals, because, really, there ought to be a more just distribution of writing talent throughout the various fanbases
5. The Cubs
Ignoring TV cable biases
1. Yankees
2. Red Sox
3. Cardinals
4. Phillies
5. Cubs
Brown is actually #2 on the W/P leaderboard (if you make the cutoff qualifying for the league ERA title):
1. Barney Wolfe, 1904, 26 BB/13 HBP
2. Kevin Brown, 1996
3. David Bush, 2006
4. Jesse Tannehill, 1904, 33 BB/15 HBP
5. Danny Darwin, 1996, 27 BB/12 HBP
Most innings pitched with a W/P ratio under 2? Bill Reidy, 1902, 13 BB/8 HBP. Most innings pitched with a W/P ratio under 1? Red Shea, 1921, 2 BB/3 HBP.
Overexposed:
RedSox
A’s
Mets
Cubs
Twins
I feel like I hear more about these teams than they warrant. BoSox 1st b/c ESPN hammers us with them. The other four b/c we hear so much about them despite tham being nothing nothing special. I don’t put the Yanks on because they’re the best team in baseball by a wide margin, with the most stars. I expect to hear about them all the time.
Full disclosure – I’m an Indians fan.
My most overexposed teams of 2009:
1 — Mets. (This year’s “Yankees in ‘08″: even if they sucked we had to hear / read about the sucking.)
2 — Red Sox (I live in Boston, but still — they didn’t have it this year. Enough.)
3 — Cardinals (On a technicality — the were retroactively overexposed when they crapped the bed in the playoffs.)
4 — Dodgers (Manny. Manny. Torre. Manny. Torre.)
5 — Yankees (Deserved lots of exposure, obviously, but they’re like a stack of 42 pepperoni pizzas — at some point, you can have too much of *anything*.)
Joe, this is getting ridiculous… I’ve been waiting since Oct. 13th to hear what this is:
“You could probably tell from the sidebar poll that I have an incredibly cool prize that I’m going to be giving away. Believe me when I tell you: This is a BIG TIME prize. This prize is worth about nine times more than I paid for my first car. And that’s only money. In terms of coolness, this prize is worth, oh, probably a bajillion-shmillion times more than I paid for my first car. I’m just saying … ”
When are you going to fill us in?
And btw…
1. Red Sox
2. Yankees
3. Braves (haven’t forgotten about the ridiculous amount of coverage they get when they are decent)
4. Cubs
5. Mariners
Don’t forget Clemens with the Astros in 2005. 1.87 ERA, 226 ERA+, 13 wins. He finished a distant 3rd in Cy voting behind two 20+ game winners (Carpenter 21-10, 2.83 ERA and Willis 22-10, 2.63 ERA). Of course, Roger also benefited from 20-win prejudice in 2001, so no need to cry for him.
(Also, Edgar Allen Poe should be in the writer poll).
I find it amusing that people are saying that if so and so had won 20 Zack wouldn’t of won. If Zack had played for the Yankees he would of won 25 games.
To be fair, Hernandez would of won most years, but Zack was just better this year.
This RSS feed thing leaves a bit to be desired.
We loves Zack.
1. Yankees, far and away the winner. I hate the fans, fair-weather and die hards alike, I hate the announcer (Yankees win, ttthhhhhheeeeeee Yankeeeees WIN!), I hate “The Boss”,I hate it all.
2. Red Sox, probably for no other reason than the Yankees drag them up here being rivals and all so they get talked about too much.
3. Mets, I wonder if on the east coast they complain about a NYC bias the way everyone else complain about an east coast bias?
4. Cubs, lovable losers? I think not. Over exposed, over paid, and over hyped every year. And please shut up about Wrigley Field and ivy, I’ve heard it.
5. Braves, I base this on Ted Turner and TBS. Ted, how bout some more Family Guy and The Office reruns and less Atlanta based baseball, thanks.
I know this is off the reservation, but I can’t believe nobody has mentioned the Dallas Cowboys as overexposed. Too many of my formative years spent having “America’s Team” jammed down my throat by the networks has left me scarred.
Jeff at 31…not to pick on you, but it’s would’ve, not “would of.” It’s a contraction of would have. I only point it out because I don’t think it was a typo. I think a lot of people think “would of” is correct and it drives me nuts.
If the voting were close, I think it would be fair to suspect that the outcome would’ve been different if Felix had won one more game. But Greinke won by such a wide margin, that I think it’s pretty clear the voters really “got” that Ws are really a team stat. It’s more the margin that he won by that suggests progress then the mere fact of him winning.
there’s no great theory to why he won, he just blew everyone away.
Bruddah Mike @21…
It is indeed Hernandez’s, no matter how weird that looks. Or you could go with “de Hernandez” instead
.
1, Joba Chamberlain
2. Red Sox (about as much coverage as the Yanks, but not as good at baseball)
3. yankees
4. Mets
5. Mariners — The Japanese press has written more words about the M’s and Ichiro than all the KC writers have written about the Royals.
Regular John said blew
I have this crazy theory that because the Royals were so terrible it helped Grienke win the award. If the Royals were run of the mill bad (like within ten games of 500, kind of like Kevin Brown’s Marlins) and Grienke had the exact same stats he would have lost the award. But i really think the biggest factor for the wins people overlooking his low win totals was the fact he won like 1/4 of all the Royals games which is really high.
Re: Of course, because of my crazy mind, I do wish we could come up with something like wins and losses (but better) that would tell us at a glance just how effective a season a pitcher had.
Why not use quality starts? it’s easy to compute and just measures what the starting pitcher does.
I wonder if Zack’s victory could be a gamechanger, not just in terms of the perception of pitcher wins, but in how the game is played. People probably find it “quaint” when a Brian Bannister chats about how sabermetrics helped him as a pitcher, but I think they’ll listen carefully when the newly minted AL Cy Young Award winner says he used advanced stats to sharpen his game. I’m pretty sure Zack’s was the first Cy Young press conference ever in which the word(?)/abbreviation FIP was uttered.
I’m surprised a BBWAA thinks wins are what drives votes. Only 8 of the last 19 winners led (or tied for) the league lead in wins. What drives BBWAA votes is the story. This year, that story was easily Grienke. He had those mental health issues and came out pitching historically good. .84 era through 10 games. That’s why he won.
Terry @ #2: The NY Giants are the 4th most overexposed team in all of sports??? WHAAAAAT? They’re not even the most overexposed football team in their own stadium (Jets), let alone their own division (Cowboys & even Eagles), and they’re way less overexposed than the Yankees, Mets, and especially the Knicks just to name a few other New York teams. The Patriots, Steelers & Colts also get waaaaay more national coverage than they do, and there’s probably a few other teams as well. And it’s not like they haven’t done anything noteworthy in recent years, like many of the teams named above.
Anyway, 5 most overexposed baseball teams, in the past few years:
1a/1b) Red Sox/Yankees – I know they’ve both won WS lately, but even when they’re not good they get an inordinate amount of coverage
3) Cubs
4) Royals – for a team that sucks as hard as they do, they sure inspire a lot of great writers. Wonder why the Pirates can’t do the same?
5) Mets – I’m a Mets fan, but I wish they’d get less coverage than they do, b/c most of it has been bad
“Tonight on ESPN Sportscenter: the Yankees and Red Sox both have a travel day, so we only have games scheduled for the other 28 teams in baseball.
Our lead story: does Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter have the sniffles? Jeter says no, but Yankee manager Joe Girardi left some doubt by saying, ‘not that I know of.’
Next up, how does Red Sox DH David Ortiz like his eggs? The past 11 times we asked him, he said ’sunny side up.’ Is this still the case?
Breaking news: did improper hand-washing by Alex Rodriguez lead to Derek Jeter’s possible cold?
The Yankees are talking trade with the Brewers, and may send class A catcher Kyle Anson to Milwaukee. Anson, a 25-year-old, hit .241 this year with four home runs and 25 RBI in 224 at-bats. He was born in El Paso and drives a blue 1989 Hyundai. The Brewers, meanwhile, presumably play some form of professional baseball.
After the break, the Baltimore Orioles team plane collided with the Cincinnati Reds team plane in midair today, with the two planes crashing into Chase Field in the middle of a game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Pittsburgh Pirates. When we return, we’ll go to Peter Gammons, who’s live in Boston to get Jonathan Papelbon’s reaction to the incident and also maybe talk to him about shopping or something.”
The simple fact is that there is only so much talk of wins by one player of a team sport to go around; if Zack won despite his lack of victories, he should be thanking NFL commentators.
Since it seems fun:
1. Yankees – I know they’re good/rich/from NY, etc. but I spent the last two years in baseball-crazy Korea, and all I ever heard about MLB was Korean players (Chan-ho Park, Shin-shoo Choo) and the Yankees.
2. Red Sox – Bill Simmons put them on equal footing with the Yanks, in my mind.
3. Cubs – Except when it’s about Milton Bradley. (Go Brewers!)
4. Mets – Fifth-worst record in baseball this year.
5. Rangers – Uh, Saltalamaccia is a really long name?
Here’s my suggestion for handling the pitcher wins stat: stop calling them “wins” and start calling them “left with leads.” It’s a little clunky, sure, but that’s what they are, yes? Or, if we want to be true to the statistic as it stands, “left with lead with no lead changes afterward.” Or something like that. Anyway, I feel like that name is 1) more accurate and 2) takes the air out of “the object of the game isn’t FIP it’s WINS!!” ridiculousness. I think it makes the contextualness of the stat intuitive. LWLs. Everyone start using it, and in a year, it’ll feel as natural as RBIs.
I wouldn’t list the Yankees as “a wide chasm” in between them and the next team. Overexposed, if your definition is based on how much they’re talked about, sure, I’d say they’re #1, but do you seriously here WAY more about the Yankees than the Red Sox (not counting the past month with the Yankees winning a world series)? I wouldn’t call it a huge chasm between the two, I think they’re close. You can also make the case that both teams should be exposed more and thus “overexposed” isn’t fair. Depends on your point of view I guess.
Oh yeah, and congrats to Greinke, who deserved it. I’d add 2005 (I believe) to the list as well. Bartolo Colon had a good season but Santana was clearly better in every way but wins. Mariano Rivera finishing ahead of Santana, whatever, relievers and starters are judged on different criteria, but Santana was definitely the best starter in the AL that year.
People hear “Yankees” and their toes involuntarily clench, and their eyes glow hot red like the Terminator’s.
But I think we need to weigh the ratio between the Yankees’ overexposure and the Yankees’ level of newsmaking/successes.
That formula more accurately views unwarranted attention as a subset of total attention. Isn’t that what the question is really asking? And by that standard, the Chicago Cubs dwarf the Yankees.
Mike in Hawaii
Hernandez’s is correct — and even if it wasn’t it wouldn’t matter. We’ve got one fella writing “should of”, a stack of people posting their lists when an email link was provided, and even one guy who thinks Joe rescinded his request for a list when clearly he merely asked that no one send an all-Yankees list.
People, comprehension levels are below par. Then again, 45 votes have been cast for Ayn Rand and maybe i’m expecting too much.
I have to say, though, that the LWL suggestion by Owen at 47 made wading through all the comments worthwhile.
What’s up with the lack of Baseball Prospectus love? WARP seems to be exactly the statistic you are looking for.
This morning on the radio, Mike Golic became the latest to make the ridiculous argument that context should never be considered in post-season awards. He claimed that he would have voted for Felix Hernandez because he doesn’t give Greinke any credit for the “ifs” or “what might have beens” related to the craptasticness of the Royals team he was stuck on. He said this as if Hernandez was actually the better pitcher on the field, in blissful ignorance of the fact that it was actually Greinke. In essence, he disproved his own argument by letting a single stat, wins, blind him to reality.
Here’s a the point of providing the context, Golic; The awfulness of the Royals did not prevent Greinke from being the best pitcher in the league. It prevented people like YOU from recognizing that he was the best pitcher in the league. Get it?
And on the overexposed front, there’s really the Yankees and then everyone else. No amount of winning would justify the coverage that they get. I suppose the next four would look something like:
2. Mets – Because they really shouldn’t get so much coverage for being this bad.
3. Red Sox
4. Cubs
5. Dodgers
It really isn’t that hard to come up with “pragmatic” or “effective” W-L records, which would be expressed in a format the vast majority already understands and accepts. I use Pascal/negative binomial distribution and ERA+, but you could use Pythagoras or Patriot/Smyth or whatever you like. So we get:
Zack-Attack 20-4
King Felix 19-5
Wainwright 20-7
Halladay 20-7
Carpenter 17-4
Then it’s obvious who the best pitcher is.
Oh, and in furthering the cause of over-exposing the Royals, Luke Hochevar was the worst pitcher in the majors in 2009 with and ERA+ of 67 in 143 innings and a “pragmatic” record of 5-15. Yeesh!
And I would say the only one of these five who SHOULD have won the Cy Young was Kevin Brown.
I disagree. Appier not only should have won in 1993 but it should have been unanimous.
Appier: 18-8, 2.56 ERA, 179 ERA+, 238.2 IP, 1.10 WHIP, 0.3 HR/9, 186 K’s
McDowell: 22-10, 3.37 ERA, 125 ERA+, 256.2 IP, 1.28 WHIP, 4 SHO, 158 K’s
Most overexposed teams in baseball
1) Yankees
2) Red Sox
3) Cubs
4) Zack Greinke
5) Pirates
One question about the Yankees/Red Sox. On average, how many times is this rivalry aired on ESPN? I am so sick of it. Last August
there was a key game between the Giants and Rockies. The Rockies were 1 game out of the division lead and the Giants were in first. The
Yankees currently held something like a 8 game lead over the Sox. Low and behold, we were subjected to the Yankees/Sox for the
ubteenth time. Does anyone else get sick of this rivalry? Certainly not Peter Gammons!
As for the Pirates, they are overexposed simply because they should never be exposed to begin with.
I realize Greinke isn’t a team, and I adore him as a player, but the Royals wouldn’t even qualify as a team without him, so he
is being called the team. Besides, one man getting more exposure than the rest of the team’s existence is pretty overexposed!
Come on peoples, now that Zack Greinke has won the Cy Young, it’s time to stop typing “Zach” or “Grienke”. Zack. Greinke.
How could you leave out Nolan Ryan’s 1987 season when he finished 5th in the Cy Young voting when he had a league leading 2.76 ERA and 270 K’s, yet somehow stumbled to an 8-16 won-loss record.
I was watching MLB Network last night and they had an interview with Greinke. I had never seen a Greinke interview before. What’s with this guy? He’s an interesting dude. He never made eye contact with the camera, kept playing with his lower lip, mumbled…just seemed very shy in general. Not the kind of personality I’d expect from a dominant athlete. Is this typical Greinke?
1. Yankees…no explanation needed.
2. Red Sox…no explanation needed.
3. Cardinals…Honestly, I’m surprised at how little mention the Cardinals have gotten here. Between Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, and the rest of the media’s certainty that Tony LaRussa is Earl Weaver times Casey Stengel to the Whitey Herzog power, the Cardinals would be number 1 if you factored in “expected hype” somehow.
4. Cubs…because of Wrigley Field and how every Cubs/Cardinals game gets national scrutiny, even with they both suck.
5. Mets…Actually get very little hype except for contrasting them with the Yankees. Would finish very low if the “expected hype” was factored in. Dodgers might get a vote here, but being on the west coast, I think actually hurts them a bit here.
@33 – “I wonder if on the east coast they complain about a NYC bias the way everyone else complain about an east coast bias?”
The entire world complains of American bias.
The whole country complains of east coast bias.
The east coast complains of NYC bias.
The outer boroughs of NYC complain of Manhattan bias.
Upper Manhattan complains that there’s a bias below 96th street.
Midtown complains that there’s a Wall Street bias.
Wall Street complains that there’s a Goldman Sachs bias.
Within Goldman they complain that there’s a trader bias.
So unless you’re a trader at Goldman Sachs the deck is stacked against you. Get used to it.
And if you are a trader at Goldman Sachs know that the rest of us are praying for your slow, painful death.
Yankees
Red Sox (does ESPN know baseball exists west of I-95?)
Cubs
Dodgers
Cardinals
Here’s another ‘revolutionary’ event – in ESPN’s story this morning about the Cy Young, they cited…wait for it…VORP, pegging Zach’s at +88 runs.
Last I checked, a plague of locusts did not descend on the earth.
I was at the Brewer game where Yovani Gallardo pitched 8 shutout innings and hit a home run, which turned out to be the only run scored all game. There’s a good case of a pitcher deserving the win.
Baseball
1. Yankees
2. Mets
3. Red Sox
4. Cubs
5. Dodgers
All of Sports
1-101. Brett Favre
102-202. Yankees
203. Cowboys
204. Michael Phelps (How many golds would Usain Bolt have won if there was a 100M, 50M, 50M relay, 150M barefoot race, etc)
205. Lance Armstrong – But he is the best of the roughly 200 people on Earth who ride bicycles competitvely
In all of sports-
1. Notre Dame football- they have been a threat to win the national championship what, twice in the last 20 years, with the last being 17 years ago and they STILL have a network that broadcasts their games exclusively? REALLY? There must be something wrong at GE for this to be happening.
2. Red Sox- yeah the Yankees this year, but this last decade the Red Sox have been shoved down our collective throats
3, Braves- see Notre Dame above.
4. Yankees
5. Ohio State being covered negatively. If you believed Mark May of ESPN’s picks Ohio State would have the program of Alcorn State, they would lose every game they play. Ohio State clinches a Rose Bowl berth and they get major hate from two different online columnists. Just stop it. Two embarrassing losses in national championship games doesn’t make their program suck. Live in reality not your own fantasy world.
“I disagree. Appier not only should have won in 1993 but it should have been unanimous.
Appier: 18-8, 2.56 ERA, 179 ERA+, 238.2 IP, 1.10 WHIP, 0.3 HR/9, 186 K’s
McDowell: 22-10, 3.37 ERA, 125 ERA+, 256.2 IP, 1.28 WHIP, 4 SHO, 158 K’s”
Ah, one of my “favorite” awards races. You could even go a step further and say that McDowell didn’t even belong on a single ballot. Appier led a trio of SP who had great seasons that year:
Randy Johnson: 19-8, 3.24 ERA, 136+, 255.1 IP, 1.11 WHIP, 10 CG, 3 SHO, 308 K
Jimmy Key: 18-6, 3.00 ERA, 139+, 236.2 IP, 1.11 WHIP, 4 CG, 2 SHO, 173 K
If one was intent on casting a vote for a member of the White Sox, how about Alex Fernandez?
Fernandez: 18-9, 3.13 ERA, 134+, 247.1 IP, 1.16 WHIP, 3 CG, 1 SHO, 169 K
I offer the 1990 AL Cy Young voting to the list of not so good. The odd part of this is that while Bob Welch won the Cy Young (with 27 wins), he finished 9th in the MVP voting, while Clemens finished 3rd in the MVP voting.
Clemens led the league in ERA (1.93, Welch 2.95), HR/9 (0.3, he allowed 7 HR that year, Welch allowed a few more*), Shutouts (4 to 2) and SO/W (3.87 to 1.65). In addition Roger had 82 more strikeouts and a much better WHIP (1.082 to 1.223). Roger also won 21 games. Dave Stewart was 3rd. (He had a better ERA than Welch, more strikeouts, more innings, a better WHIP and won 22 games.) That Cy Young was all about 27 wins.
* Bob Welch allowed 19 more HR, from Oakland. 26 HR to 7.
@63 Mikey
that’s funny!
Paul @ 54, the last thing I heard before getting out of the car today was Golic’s comment about Felix/Grienke. I have developed a twitch since then. It is very annoying when people talk about a sport they know nothing about, just to create an argument. That is basically how I explain the entire Mike/Mike show, including football.
@45 – Excellent post. Kudos to your parents.
1. Notre Dame (They’ve been mediocre or blandly good for years, and they’re so overexposed they get the most press for just that reason.)
2a. Mets
2b. Jets (Arguably the 2nd class citizens in NY baseball and football, yet, to me, they are middling franchises that get enormous national press and don’t do anything special except get enormous national press.)
4. Cleveland Browns (They’re terrible and have rarely not been since 1994 AND they play in Cleveland. I’d almost rather hear about Brett Favre. At least he’s contributing something meaningful.)
5. Manny (Whether he’s mentally retarded or not, the fact is he’s off the juice and suddenly he has the stats of a #6 hitter in the NL. No one cares anymore.)
Leaving the top 5 this year: TO (It took a place like Buffalo to finally get the media doofuses to turn off the spotlight.)
I dispute the contention that the Royals are overexposed. The amazing group of writers with Royals connections do get much attention from stat-savvy readers, but less than they deserve among the broader baseball audience.
My Cubs are overexposed in all media, but the Chicago baseball writers are much more overexposed because most of them are morons. Example: any exposure is too much for recent Phil Rogers articles saying the Cubs “must” trade any prospects necessary to obtain Curtis Granderson because he’s such a great character-guy, etc.
Polls are like awards, good for arguing about. But little else. Does anyone think that in 100 years any of Kurt V’s books will be in print? He’s not even the best author to die recently. Joe knows who that is. Best ever??? Come on.
So, people act foolishly, don’t read carefully, can’t understand what they do read carefully, and still get to vote. So what. And this is my favorite site on the whole web…cuz it is a pure meritocracy where the best blogger and the best posters give me great pleasure. Thanks guys!
@64 – ESPN doesn’t know there’s baseball west of I-95. They’re too busy texting pictures of their boners, fondling co-workers, and screwing producers to notice.
ESPN Executive #1 – “Alright, we’ll lead off SportsCenter with the Yankees parade and close it out with an iphoto slide show of Red Sox glamour shots. Great. Now that that’s done who LOOK AT MY BONER!”
ESPN Executive #2 – “Cool. Let’s go sodomize an intern.”
1- People griping about the Yankees
2- Yankees
3- Red Sox
4- Scott Boras
5- Billy Beane
Just to clarify, TBS started reducing its Braves coverage about ten years ago and has not shown any Braves games at all in the last couple years (though I suppose they may periodically appear on TBS’ national Sunday afternoon broadcast). So though they may have been overexposed at one time, that argument doesn’t hold much water anymore.
After discussing the Greinke Cy win on MLB Network yesterday, the panel went on to discuss what the Royals should do to improve. I can’t say I was paying particularly close attention but I swear I heard Harold Reynolds (who I usually find relatively lucid) say that the one thing the Royals needed to do was bring back the artificial turf because they used to win when they hit balls on the carpet and used their speed. I think he also said that they were a bad defensive team that would benefit from the truer bounces that turf would provide.
Did anyone else hear that or am I just delusional?
Maybe I’m dim — and I’m new to this site — but aren’t all your baseball team’s games on local/regional cable TV? I just watch ESPN when my team is on ESPN instead of regional cable. I never watch ESPN baseball otherwise. So I don’t know what other teams are “overexposed” and I don’t care.
Agree that if anybody had actually won 20 we might have seen a different outcome.
Two other thoughts:
(1) Smoltz in 1996 also got off to a terrific start (I think at one point he was 12-0, or 12-1), like Greinke did this year, and I wonder if at that point it didn’t matter what Kevin Brown did the rest of the season. Sometimes the writers seem to make up their mind in May or June and the rest of the season be damned.
(2) Um, TBS doesn’t show Atlanta-based baseball anymore. Haven’t for a few years now.
I would submit that the Greinke win is an extension of something that started last year when Lincecum won with 18 wins over Webb and his 22. Lincecum clearly had a better year but you can’t find a lot of examples of 18 wins beating 22 in the CY vote.
Only other one I can think of is 1999 when Randy Johnson won with 17 wins over Mike Hampton and his 22 but that one was so obvious (and also, as good as Lincecum was last year, he wasn’t in the same stratosphere as RJ in 99).
currently on the author poll it is reading
“Louisa May Alcott (-1%, 6 Votes)”
How do you get negative one percentage point?
Also, why is Herman Melville not in first place? Vonnegut, Hemingway and Fitzgerald are way overexposed.
Because Melville is a sloggish read.
If anything, Fitzgerald is underrated; people judge him strictly on “The Great Gatsby,” which is not his best work, only his most famous.
Actually, both Hemingway and Fitzgerald suffer from the fact that we tend to judge writer’s by their novels, when both of these men were at their best when writing short stories.
The fact that Tom Robbins is not on the list at all makes the entire enterprise seem silly; kind of like having a list of “Best NBA players of the ’90’s” and not including Michael Jordan.
1. Red Sox
2. Yankees
3. 2004 Red Sox
4. Cubs
5. Pawtucket Red Sox
6. Manny Ramirez
Congrats to Zack Greinke for a well-deserved award, and to Joe Posnanski for (I believe) playing no small role in make sure justice was done. I only hope that now stpat and other assorted idiots who have spent the last five months whining about NY bias in awards voting will finally just shut the F up.
They have had better ways of evaluating players for years, it’s about time the writers look deeper than the basic stats and give credit where credit is due.
As for the overexposure I’d have to go with:
1) Royals
2) Nationals
3) Pirates
4) Orioles
5) Padres
Just kidding, how about:
1) Yankees
2) Red Sox
3) Mets
4) Cubs
5) Dodgers
Most overexposed teams in baseball
1) Tampa Bay Rays
2) Philadelphia Phillies
3) Texas Rangers
4) NY Yankees
5) NY Mets
This ranking is based on the number of Google ‘hits’ one gets when you google by team names…I have no idea why the Rays and Rangers do so well, which surprised the ‘heck’ outta me…so I looked at the Google search results closer and realized I should probably just focus on the number of ‘most relevant results’…that yields the following ranking w/ # of most relevant results in ( )s
1) Chicago Cubs (673)
2) Philadelphia Phillies (651)
3) NY Mets (622)
4) Washington Nationals (581)
5) Tie NY Yankees (560)
Tie Kansas City Royals (560)
Congrats to Zack! Was a sheer pleasure watching him play this year, and sometimes only went to watch him play…speaking of which…
I’m thankful that we open at HOME this year, so we aren’t stuck with our 3rd or 4th pitcher on our home opener like (shuddddder) 2008. What a debacle. The roar that will come Greinke’s way will be 100 times louder than the ‘roar’ that greeted Ponson, and Farnsworth; to be honest, Ponson’s ‘welcome’ was for the management’s decision to start him in our new K. GRRRR!
And forget all of you who think the Royals are overexposed because a few EXCELLENT writers like Joe have hometown ties to KC. GO JOE!! Hope you get to write the Cy Young article in the SI!!
Overexposed:
1. Yankees
2. BoSox
3. Cowboys (and I’m a Cowboys fan!)
4. ESPN
5. Notre Dame…WHY are they on TV every Saturday?? UGH!!
[...] today. The best choice is Lincecum but the smart money is probably on Wainwright. Joe Posnanski wrote recently that Zack Greinke’s dominating victory in the vote for AL Cy Young may represent [...]
The all sports list:
1. Yankees
(the distance from the Earth to the Moon)
2. Notre Dame football
3. Red Sox
4. Dallas Cowboys
5. Tim Tebow
Please please please include Brett Favre as a voting option!
Thx,
Poorpiss
[...] By thesportshole Joe Posnanski has his thoughts about the AL Cy Young winner. To those who argue against Zach Greinke remember this: The Cy [...]
Damn Justin- that was funny