2016 Cy Young Award race in American League was controversial, but according to sabermetrics, should there have been a different winner of award?
For those of you who follow award season across Major League Baseball, the 2016 American League Cy Young Award was controversial to say the least. Boston Red Sox ace Rick Porcello took home the crown, however longtime Detroit Tigers star Justin Verlander received more first place votes. Did Corey Kluber’s dominance impact affect the secondary balloting in the Midwest region? Let’s take a look at this through the lens of Magnum Start Value (MSV) to see if Verlander deserved the title.
Before we proceed, I want to refer to the introduction article that was posted on May 4. If you scroll to the second to last paragraph, there is a statistic that was suspended in the revisions article due to its lack of workability. The aforementioned stat was called Magnum to Quality Start Ratio, and I have discovered a feasible replacement for it. The new stat will be titled Yearly Magnum Percentage (YMP), and will be a under the scope of a new term called “combimetrics.”
The entire purpose of combimetrics is to combine sabermetrics with regular baseball statistics. To give you an example, a players’ batting average is studied in decimal, which can be turned into a percentage. Any time a player hurls a Magnum Start it could be under the realm of combimetrics, due to the fact that tossing one requires a pitcher to perform at a certain level. When I say this, it doesn’t include the value portion of MSV, just the part that he qualifies.
Now, you are probably wondering what aspect of Magnum Start Value that YMP analyzes. It actually has nothing to do with MSV, but only involves a Magnum Start in general. Each start a pitcher makes in a season is added up, then divided by the total of his Magnum Starts. Once the data is calculated, you can see quite easily what percentage of his outings resulted in a Magnum Start. Just for future reference, YMP will broken down into multiple categories however that won’t occur in what you are about to read.
With that said, it’s time to delve into the figures which will dictate the outcome of this study. Given MSV is ambiguous in certain ways, but keep in mind that several different aspects compose this statistic making it difficult to evaluate for some.
Here we go!