Num3ers Duo: Mo To Win AL Cy Young
Via Baseball Think Factory, I saw a LiveScience article where Mathematicians Predict Cy Young Winners. From the feature:
The model shows that there is no standout starter in the American League this year. Bartolo Colon, the top starter according to their model, has a total score of less than 6, a far cry from many AL Cy Young award winners in years past, such as Barry Zito (6.75, 2002) and Pedro Martinez (7.54, 1999).
“Our model quantifies the fact that there is no AL pitcher who will knock the voters’ socks off,” says Abrahamson. Therefore, Sparks says the two are “very confident” that the AL Cy Young Award will go to Mariano Rivera, a relief pitcher who had a particularly outstanding year. A Cy Young for Rivera, they say, would also serve as a kind of “lifetime achievement award” as Rivera, who has never earned the award, is likely toward the end of a very distinctive career.
Just thinking about this, a case could be made that Rivera has been the best and most consistent pitcher in the AL from the period 1996 through 2005 – if you consider all pitchers who pitched every year in the AL during that time. (Pedro was in the NL during 1996, 1997 and 2005. And Clemens pitched in the NL the last two years – and also had off years in 1999 and 2002.)
If some writers/voters have picked up on this, there just might be a “lifetime achievement” factor in their voting – even though it’s not supposed to work that way.
As I expected, Colon won it.