AL Cy Young

I'll measure the AL Cy Young candidates by VORP and WARP (both from BP) and Win Shares. The latter two take into account hitting ability, which is less relevant in the AL awards.

But first, some traditional stats used in the Cy Young evaluation:

Pitcher       Wins   ERA    SO
Beckett        20    3.27   194
Carmona        19    3.06   137
Lackey         19    3.01   179
Sabathia       19    3.21   209
Wang           19    3.70   104
Escobar        18    3.40   160
Verlander      18    3.66   183
Haren          15    3.07   192
Bedard         13    3.16   221
Santana        15    3.33   235

Only Beckett and Sabathia appear among the top 10 in all three of these categories, which means they will likely garner the majority of the Cy Young votes. Both are in the playoffs. I expect the vote to be close, but Beckett to win it for the big market Red Sox.

Pitcher       VORP   WARP   WS
Sabathia      65.2    9.3   24
Carmona       64.0    9.5   22
Lackey        60.7    9.3   22
Beckett       58.6    8.3   19
Santana       57.7    9.3   18
Haren         56.4    7.7   19
Bedard        54.9    7.8   19
Escobar       49.9    7.8   18
Wang          48.5    7.2   16
Verlander     45.9    6.6   16

Lackey, Sabathia and Carmona are neck and neck in both systems. Sabathia is slightly ahead of Carmona, and they play on the same team. I'm going to do the same thing I did with the NL ROY analysis in deciding between Ryan Braun and Troy Tulowitzki. I'm going to look at their numbers in August and September, and how they fared against their chief rivals the Tigers and Twins.

In August/September, Carmona went 6-3, with a 2.68 ERA, striking out 6.4 hitters per nine innings and allowing 10.1 baserunners per nine innings. Sabathia was 6-1, with a 2.87 ERA, striking out 8.3 hitters per nine and allowing 11.1 baserunners per nine. Hard to distinguish between them. Carmona had the better September, though, so I'm giving him the edge.

Against the Tigers and Twins, Carmona was 5-2, with a 2.40 ERA, striking out 5.7 hitters per nine and allowing 9.6 baserunners per nine. Sabathia was 7-2, with a 3.30 ERA, striking out 7.0 hitters per nine and allowing 10.7 baserunners per nine. Despite the record, Carmona has the edge here, particularly since Carmona fared much better against the Tigers, who were the real competition.

I'm frankly, shocked by this, but Carmona is ahead. I'm going to look at two other things: BP's "Luck" stat, and quality of batters faced.

Carmona's Luck was 3.84. Sabathia's Luck was 7.50. Higher means more lucky. Edge: Carmona.

Carmona faced opponents with an average OPS of .747. Sabathia faced opponents with an average OPS of .738. Interestingly, among AL pitchers with at least 150 IP, Sabathia faced the easiest opponents, and Carmona the third easiest. (Halladay faced the toughest competition, at .775). Edge: Carmona.

All signs point to Fausto Carmona, so he's my Cy Young winner, with Sabathia a very close second. I'm surprised.

Lackey gets the third spot. Beckett and Santana battle for the next spot, but Beckett comes in 4th because he carried the staff to the postseason. Santana edges Haren for the fifth spot.

NL Cy Young

I'll measure the NL Cy Young candidates by VORP and WARP (both from BP) and Win Shares. The latter two take into account hitting ability, so that could be important for a pitcher like Zambrano.

But first, some traditional stats used in the Cy Young evaluation:

Pitcher       Wins   ERA    SO
Peavy          19    2.54  240
Webb           18    3.01  194
Penny          16    3.03  135
Oswalt         14    3.18  154
Hudson         16    3.33  132
Smoltz         14    3.11  197
Harang         16    3.73  218
Hamels         15    3.39  177
Cain            7    3.65  163
Lilly          15    3.83  174 
Zambrano       18    3.95  177
Francis        17    4.22  165
Maine          15    3.91  180
O.Perez        15    3.56  174

What's clear from this list is that Peavy will be hard to beat. If you lead the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts, you are going to win the award. Of course, raw stats don't take into account park factors, and wins don't take into account run support. Based on the above, though, I'm going to eliminate the very unlucky Matt Cain. By BP's numbers, Cain was the most unlucky pitcher in baseball. His 7 wins should have been 14.

Harang, Hamels, Francis and Perez were among the 10 luckiest pitchers in the league, but I'll let them stay because they are high on a couple of leaderboards, and two of them will be a factor in the playoffs.

Pitcher       VORP   WARP   WS
Peavy         77.0   10.6   23
Webb          66.1    8.7   22
Penny         61.7    7.9   21
Oswalt        59.8    8.1   18
Hudson        59.7    8.2   19
Smoltz        56.7    6.9   16
Harang        53.8    7.0   17
Hamels        48.8    6.1   15
Lilly         46.7    5.7   14 
Zambrano      43.5    7.2   16
Francis       42.7    5.5   14
Maine         33.3    5.2   11
O.Perez       24.0    3.9   11

Guess there's no surprise that Peavy wins all these categories too. He's my Cy Young.

That doesn't make for very interesting analysis, though, so I need to choose positions two through five to make this interesting.

Webb seems to be the clear #2. Not a bad follow-up performance for a Cy Young year last year.

Penny is probably #3. He's a little behind Oswalt and Hudson in WARP, but significantly ahead of them in VORP and WS.

#4 goes to Tim Hudson, who easily had his best year as a Brave and has regained "ace" status.

Oswalt gets the fifth spot, buried in Houston. You could make the argument he had a better year than Hudson, but when we are talking about finishing 4th and 5th, it doesn't really matter. The edge goes to Hudson for keeping his team in contention.

Final thought: I should not have included Oliver Perez on this list. When I typed the list before looking at the leaderboards, he wasn't on it. However, it was impossible to ignore a guy who is 9th in ERA, 10th in wins, 10th in strikeouts and 2d in strikeouts per 9 innings. The raw stats were deceiving, as VORP, WARP and WS show him to be clearly inferior. He probably should have been something like 11-10 with a 4.50 ERA, but got lucky.