The Chris Moeller Archives

Chris Carpenter for Cy Young

This is the most lily-livered defense of a potential baseball award recipient that I've ever read. (Does that make sense?) ESPN's Jayson Stark won't even go so far as to say Chris Carpenter "doesn't deserve (the Cy Young) award." He just wants to make the point, as his copy editor believes, that the win statistic for a pitcher is overrated. Which seems to me like arguing that oxygen is disproportionately credited with maintaining human existence.
Obviously, you can pitch well and lose, and you can pitch poorly and win. But at the same time, I think we've all seen that guy who uses his two pitches to work through the batting order once or twice-- and then starts looking into the dugout for help. We've all shed tears for the pitcher who "deals" for six innings, departs with a one or two run lead, and then asks a parade of pitching mates to record the last nine outs of the game.

Stark's argument for Houston's Roger Clemens is peppered with faulty logic (Surprise! A low road ERA only means a higher home ERA,) contradictions of his own criteria ("previous close calls" in the voting,) and statements of unflappable support by observers as impartial as Clemens' own manager. Stark even stoops so low as to use Clemens' age as a justification for the honor. (Though it's worth nothing that both candidates pale by comparison here to the Giants' Jeff Fassero.}

Chris Carpenter deserves the Cy Young Award, and here's the why. Carpenter rolled to his 21st victory tonight against the Mets. That's now ten more than Clemens. Wins are the most important statistic because team wins are the currency by which baseball standings are measured. The object of professional baseball, after 136 years, is still to win the most games.
The criteria by which a pitcher "wins" or loses" is fair-- predominately because the designations of victory or defeat cannot be awarded in absentia. One must be still in the game when it becomes decisive, to win, or alternately, lose it.
This is what I find particularly eye-popping about Clemens' numbers. It's not the 11 wins or the 6 losses. It's the 11 no-decisions. I'll be clearer. Before tonight's start by Carpenter, the two hurlers had each made 28 starts. Yet Carpenter had pitched almost 24 more innings. (213 to 189.1.) That's almost one more inning on average per start. Why is Clemens leaving these games? The Astros aren't scoring, but Clemens isn't giving up many runs. His team's fate still hangs in the balance. You don't need to earn a win to record a complete game. All you need is to have pitched nine innings. How many times has Clemens gone the distance? The answer is once. Chris Carpenter has seven complete games, including four shutouts.

Thursday night's game actually demonstrates some of the disadvantages Carpenter has in the Cy Young race. The Cardinals now lead Clemens' Astros by 13 games. They've held leads similar to that each day of the past three to four months. Baseball Prospectus calculated this morning that if the remainder of the season were played out a million times, the Cards would be NL Central Division champs 999,935.5 times.
Perhaps with that statistic in mind, Carpenter left tonight's game after just 7 innings and 96 pitches. Sound like a typical start for Clemens? It does to me. Not for Carpenter, though. If Stark's numbers are accurate, it was the first start in his last 16 that the Cards' ace failed to work into the eighth inning. The 5-0 cushion was generous, perhaps, but it was a scoreless game into the fifth. The 43-year-old Clemens left his last start after only five frames.

In the same way that Clemens' win total is damaged by a lack of offensive support, isn't it probable that Carpenter's ERA suffers in reverse? If Carp's not forced to bear down in just one start out of, let's say, six, the ERA may balloon. Earned Run Average, in this way, can be just as misleading as wins.

Another "quality start" tonight by Carpenter makes it 27 out of 29 for the year. It's strange that Stark and Phil Garner both think that Clemens' "lowest ERA since '85" is "historic," but neither believes Carpenter's "highest percentage of quality starts since '94" is worth comparing. (What would truly be "historic" is if a guy lost the Cy Young race to a guy with ten fewer wins.) The 21st victory (with four starts remaining) was Carpenter's 13th in succession. After starting the year, 8-4, his ERA has dropped as the pennant races have heated up. His monthly ERA's, in succession, have been 4.01 for April, 3.60, 0.90, 1.11, 2.17, and 1.11.

Cy Young ballots will be cast in the next three weeks. Clemens will have a remarkable advantage in terms of national publicity. He's headed to the Hall of Fame. He has a shelf at home already weighed down with Cy Young Awards. Having starred for both the Red Sox and Yankees, he'd have a huge leg up in publicity even if he never won a game. What he has accomplished this year is, no doubt, a great achievement and a great story. What's unusual about his season for me is that, while his numbers haven't swayed me into thinking he's the worthy recipient of the Cy Young, they've swayed me into thinking he's the greatest pitcher of all time.

I confess, also, that I, too, suffer from being a partial observer. I've had the chance to watch nearly every start Carpenter has made this year. I've seen his dominance, and I've seen what that contribution has meant to the rest of the Cardinals team, whether it be their pitching rotation that he anchors, their well-rested bullpen, or the team as a whole.

I've only seen Clemens pitch twice. And he lost to Carpenter both times.

posted by CM @ 11:53 PM