Triumph of the Stat Geeks

One of the charms of baseball, and perhaps one of its detriments, is that is can be reduced to numbers. Almost anything that happens on the field can be represented by a statistic. When it comes time to handing out post-season awards, those stats can be wielded like weapons, with arguments for and against someone, citing stats both basic and esoteric.

The trend upward for the stat-minded, who are often called sabermetricians (named after the SABR, the Society of American Baseball Research), has been slow, starting with the work of Bill James in the 1970s. It is now complete, with Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Marines winning the Cy Young Award for the American League. He easily beat out David Price of the Tampa Bay Rays and C.C. Sabathia of the New York Yankees. Hernandez had a record of 13-12. Price had 19 wins. Sabathia had 21. That 13 is the lowest total for a Cy Young-winning starting pitcher in a nonstrike season.

I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm trying to keep an open mind, but as I read the responses of stat geeks on the Internet I'm troubled. Apparently, they are crowing because the baseball writers who have voted on this have come to agree with them that wins are not all that important in determining the winner of this award. Things like earned run average, strikeouts, quality starts, and innings pitched are more important. They also point out that Hernandez pitched for a woeful team, and had very little run support. If Sabathia and Hernandez would have switched teams, the argument goes, Hernandez would have won 20, and Sabathia 13.

Well, duh. Life is tough. Ifs have no place in these discussions--if my aunt had a dick, she'd be my uncle. This kind of reasoning seems emblematic of excuse-making. Hernandez may have had better stuff throughout the year, but Price, and especially Sabathia, who I think should have won the award, actually won more games. Sabathia won more than fifty percent more games, and winning over twenty has become a rarity in the game. As Herm Edwards said of another sport, but it applies here, "You play to win the game."

When I was a kid, there were three stats for pitchers--wins/losses, strikeouts, and E.R.A. Now there are a host of others, with cutesy acronyms: WHIP, WAR, and xFIP. I'm not knocking them--I don't want to come off like an angry old guy like Joe Morgan--but I fear the forest has been obscured by the trees. The signs have pointed toward this--last year Tim Lincecum and Zach Greinke won the Cy Youngs with win totals of 15 and 16, respectively, but there weren't guys with vastly superior win totals.

I guess this is just the way it is now, with younger guys who have been brought up on these new stats. Times change.

Incidentally, it appears that baseball will be adding another round of playoffs next year. Instead of four teams in each league, with one wild card, there will be now be five teams and two wild cards. It is supposed that the two wild cards will play a short round to move on, while the three division-winners get byes. If this is going to happen, which I wish it wouldn't, then I'm hoping for this scenario: the wild card teams play a one-game play-in (instead of a best two-out-of-three). This makes the game instantly exciting (there have been a dearth of maximum-extended series in the last few years), and makes sure that the winner has to spend their best pitcher.

This past year would have seen the Red Sox and Yankees play, which would have goosed the Yankees-Rays division race. No team would just coast into a wild card spot, as they won't want to risk their season on a roll-of-the-dice one game. It also only pushes the schedule one extra day. If it's going to happen, I could live with this set-up.