Trevor Bauer Deserves NL Cy Young Award, With Yu Darvish….In 3rd Place?

Conventional wisdom states that Shane Bieber is a shoo-in for the AL Cy Young Award (we looked at his case yesterday), and Trevor Bauer and Yu Darvish are in a dead-heat for the NL hardware. I beg to differ. It says here that the two best pitchers in the majors this season were both in the NL – better than Bieber – and one of them was not named Darvish.

In case you’re new here, I used my batted ball-based metrics, like Adjusted Contact Score, “Tru” ERA- and “Tru” Pitching Runs Above Average to rank the NL hurlers.

I take the exit speed and launch angle of every batted ball allowed by ERA title-qualifying pitchers and determine how much damage they “should have” allowed.

Adjusted Contact Score, on a scale where 100 equals league average and the lower the number the better, measures the level of production they should have allowed on balls in play. I then add back the Ks and BBs into the mix, resulting in a pitcher’s “Tru” ERA-, where again 100 equals league average, and the lower the number the better.

This number, in my humble opinion, is a better measure of pitcher performance and true talent level than either traditional ERA- or FIP-. For individual pitchers, “Tru” ERA- is much more stable from season to season than its counterparts.

As a final step, I then weight each pitcher’s “Tru” ERA- by innings pitched, resulting in Pitching Runs Above Average. At the end of each season, I crown a Contact Manager of the Year (lowest Adjusted Contact Score), “Tru” ERA- Leader, and Cy Young Award winner (highest PRAA) in both leagues.

In my mind, there are six pitchers worthy of NL Cy Young votes. (FYI, I limited my consideration to the 20 pitchers who logged enough innings to qualify for the ERA title – sorry Corbin Burnes, who missed by 1/3 inning). Here’s a brief synopsis of their 2020 performances:

#6 – RHP Dinelson Lamet (Padres) – Lamet is living proof of the value of using batted ball-based metrics to evaluate pitching performance. His UNadjusted Contact Score relative to the league, i.e., his actual results allowed, was an NL-best 59. He was lucky on all BIP types, on flies (59 Unadjusted vs. 111 Adjusted Contact Score), liners (57 vs. 101) and grounders (86 vs. 101). Lamet’s overall Adjusted Contact Score was a shade below league average at 101. His strength is in his exceptional K/BB profile. His “Tru” ERA- of 68 lagged both his ERA- (48) and FIP- (56). He finished 6th in the NL with 10.9 PRAA.

#5 – RHP Kyle Hendricks (Cubs) – A couple weeks back, Hendricks was 5th on this list; he holds in that spot, with 12.0 PRAA. His strengths were command, durability (2nd to German Marquez for the NL innings lead with 81 1/3) and contact management excellence. This is nothing new – the former NL Contact Manager of the Year finished 4th in that race this year with a 77 Adjusted Contact Score. 2020 was his 5th straight year with an Adjusted Contact Score below 90. He squelches authority of all types, and walks no one.

#4 – RHP Jacob deGrom (Mets) – deGrom was 4th in our interim review, and finishes in that spot with 13.8 PRAA. He earned both my batted ball-based NL Cy and Contact Manager of the Year awards in both 2018 and 2019 – this time around, he went backward in the contact management department. deGrom was a league average contact manager in 2020, with a 99 Adjusted Contact Score. He’s still great, but isn’t towering over the competition in all facets of pitching as he had been in the recent past.

#3 – RHP Yu Darvish (Cubs) – Lookie here, Darvish finishes in the #3 hole with 14.6 PRAA. His “Tru” ERA- of 61 was actually 4th in the NL, behind deGrom’s 59, but superior innings bulk nudged the Cubbie ahead. His 59 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score was 2nd best among NL qualifiers, keying an overall 86 Adjusted Contact Score that was the best of his career. He slipped a bit down the stretch, allowing another NL Central stalwart to creep past him.

#2 – RHP Brandon Woodruff (Brewers) – Woodruff’s exceptional campaign has flown below the radar of the mainstream baseball media. He finished 2nd in the NL in PRAA with 16.0 – a higher mark than Shane Bieber’s. He did it all. Tons of innings, an exceptional K/BB profile, and a narrow 2nd place finish in the NL Contact Manager of the Year race. It went to a decimal place, with Woodruff’s 73.4 finishing just behind Zack Wheeler’s 73.2 Adjusted Contact Score. He utterly throttled line drive authority (NL-best 82 Adjusted Liner Contact Score) and developed a significant pop up tendency. His 56 “Tru” ERA- easily outpaced his 67 ERA- and 71 FIP-.

#1 – RHP Trevor Bauer (Reds) – The best pitcher in baseball, quite easily, with 17.6 PRAA. Want to talk about a pop up tendency? MLB hurlers induced 0.31 pop ups (> 50 degree launch angle) for every fly ball (launch angles between 20 and 50 degrees) in 2020. Bauer’s ratio was 0.84. That’s off the scale. This was the main driver behind his 77 Adjusted Contact Score, 3rd best in the NL. He actually posted fly ball, liner and grounder Adjusted Contact Scores of 100 or higher – that’s how extreme his pop up rate was. Oh, and he posted a K/BB ratio of 100/17 in 73 innings. This noted tinkerer brewed up a perfect mix and posted a (short) season for the ages.

Attached is a spreadsheet with detailed batted ball-based and traditional metrics referenced in this article.

Next week, we’ll drill down on the 2020 Contact Manager of the Year races in both leagues, and see how those pitchers got it done.