As I did last year and in 2010, I will list out my winners for 6 of the awards, along with the runners-up. I choose not to write about manager of the year, because we just don't have a great idea of exactly what value managers provide. Their impact is nearly impossible to isolate, so I generally just leave it alone. The BBWAA generally just picks the managers from the most surprising teams, which is honestly as good or better than I could do, so I'll just go with whatever they pick. One other things to note is that I don't usually follow the guidelines for ballot size (10 for MVP, 5 for Cy, 3 for Rookie) because this is my blog and I don't care. As usual, if you don't agree with something, I look forward to your dissent in the comments.
Note: For more info on any of the stats within, see the Fangraphs Library. I won't detail everything here, but I will say that FIP and xFIP try to strip out the effects of defenders and chance on a pitchers performance, wRC+ measures a hitters prowess relative to league averages, and WAR tries to measure a players complete value towards winning games. None of these stats are perfect (although, wRC+ is close), but they're a good deal better than the regular stuff you see.
NL Rookie
1.
2. Yasiel Puig - OF, LA Dodgers
3. Julio Teheran - SP, Atlanta
4. Shelby Miller - SP, St. Louis
5. Hyun-Jin Ryu - SP, LA Dodgers
These five players helped lead a very strong batch of new players in the NL this year. This doesn't even count a bunch of players who provided some strong defense (AJ Pollock, Nolan Arenado), but I generally expect young players to be pretty great on that side of the ball, so those guys can't quite keep up with the top five. I also left off a couple of great pitchers (Gerritt Cole, Tony Cingrani) that didn't throw as many innings as the others. I generally don't let a lack of innings hurt pitchers in the rookie award, since they can't control when they're called up, but this was such a strong class that I didn't have room on my (technically unlimited) ballot.
Of these five, the top two separated themselves from the pack a bit. It wasn't luck that Yasiel Puig's call-up coincided with the Dodgers ascendance to the top of their division. Puig isn't the greatest defender nor baserunner, but his ability to hit just about anything to any part of the park makes him one of the most exciting young batters in the league. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Jose Fernandez didn't help the Marlins avoid the 100 loss mark, but he did give their fans (and fans of awesome pitchers) something to watch on this otherwise awful team. The tiebreaker between these two goes to Fernandez as he is two years younger than Puig, and had never played above A ball before this season. Being able to do great things (2.19 ERA, 2.73 FIP) at that young of an age is rare, and should be rewarded.
NL Cy Young
1. Clayton Kershaw - LA Dodgers
2. Adam Wainwright - St. Louis
3. Matt Harvey - NY Mets
4. Cliff Lee - Philadelphia
5. Jose Fernandez - Miami
In spite of Clayton Kershaw's comical 1.83 ERA, this race is a lot closer than the mainstream media would have you believe. For all the hubbub surrounding Kershaw, Adam Wainwright just had an excellent season as well. In fact he was even better in some regards (Wainwright had a Cliff Lee-ian 3.7 BB%, which was just a millimeter behind Cliff Lee himself for the league lead). Wainwright and Kershaw were 1-2 in the league in innings pitched as well, which is doubly impressive considering just how good they were by rate stats (2.38 FIP for Kerhsaw, 2.55 for Wainwright). In the end, the main difference in their results was BABIP, where Kershaw ended up more than 50 points better than Wainwright. While it's likely that most of this variation is due to chance, Kershaw has posted well below average BABIPs every year since 2009, so it's likely that his insane command is to thank for at least some of this "luck." Since the race is so close, I'll let it come down to that and give my vote to Kershaw.
The next two guys on this list would have made for an awesome, interesting Cy Young race on their own, but are relegated to third and fourth because of the dynamic duo on top. On a rate stat basis, Matt Harvey was even better than the top two (league-leading 2.00 FIP and 2.63 xFIP), but his elbow injury cost him a bunch of innings, and number of innings pitched counts. I actually think that some of his peripherals understate his greatness, because some of those normalize HR/FB rate (namely, xFIP). His low HR/FB rate of 4.7% may seem unsustainable, but research shows that fastballs over 95 mph are harder to hit out of the park. Harvey led all qualified starters in baseball with an average fastball velocity of 95.8 mph, so it stands to reason that he owns some of his ridiculous homer prevention. In all, this makes him an extremely strong #3.
One spot below Harvey, Cliff Lee had just a regular old Cliff Lee season*, finishing third in innings pitched while leading the league in BB% and striking out just under a batter per inning. In the three years I have done this, Lee has now finished 1st, 2nd, and 4th. You could say I really like him (which I do), but I would just respond that he is crazy awesome and leave it at that.
*I missed catching his start in Milwaukee by one day. So close.
NL MVP
1. Andrew McCutchen - OF, Pittsburgh
2. Yadier Molina - C, St. Louis
3. Clayton Kershaw - SP, LA Dodgers
4. Adam Wainwright - SP, St. Louis
5. Matt Carpenter - 2B (and others), St. Louis
6. Joey Votto - 1B, Cincinnati
7. Paul Goldschmidt - 1B, Arizona
8. Carlos Gomez - OF, Milwaukee
9. Andrelton Simmons - SS, Atlanta
10. Jayson Werth - OF, Washington
The rookie and Cy decisions were pretty hard this season, but the MVP awards were quite easy. McCutchen has both the numbers (NL-leading 8.1 fWAR, an insane .317/.404/.508 line from a centerfielder) and the narrative (leading the Pirates to the playoffs) to both win the award and justify it. Enjoy your second straight Bogacz MVP, Andrew - you've earned it.
Behind him are a bunch of other great players who fell just short. Yadier was great, and most modern metrics probably underrate his defensive and game-calling skills, which suggests that he might have been even more valuable than McCutchen. Unfortunately, he missed a few too many games due to injury, so he falls short. The pitchers at 3 and 4 both had amazing seasons (see the previous section), but they weren't quite the pantheon-level efforts that it takes to win an MVP. The Votto-Goldschmidt pairing is interesting because of how similar their seasons were overall (157 wRC+ for both), but the different ways they went about it (Votto had a league best .436 OBP, while Goldschmidt had a league best .250 ISO). Finally, Carlos Gomez had his breakout season that he's been teasing us with for a while now. I don't know if I fully buy the extremes measures from the fielding metrics (+25 UZR, +38 DRS), but he's still probably the best defensive outfielder in the game, and he can hit a bit, too.
AL Rookie
1. Wil Myers - OF, Tampa Bay
2. Danny Farquhar - RP, Seattle
3. Sonny Gray - SP, Oakland
4. Jose Iglesias - SS, Boston/Detroit
The AL crop of rookies wasn't great this year, but that is understandable considering the mother lode of prospects that graduated last year. Still, a couple players stood out enough to earn recognition. Wil Myers didn't play a full season, because the Rays are necessarily shrewd with their prospects' service time, but his performance (wRC+ of 129) was almost certainly crucial to their postseason hopes. Danny Farquhar started out with a high ERA, but luckily for him the Mariners saw through that, and he has pitched in high leverage situations ever since. Sonny Gray only pitched 60 innings, but they were really great innings, and they give my A's a legitimate chance at having an ace-level pitchers for the postseason (Parker and Colon are good, but they aren't that good. Brett Anderson is that good, but his body has become quite good at betraying him). Finally, Jose Iglesias still probably doesn't have a future as a major league regular, but he was good enough this year to help a couple playoff teams stay afloat during injuries (Stephen Drew) and suspensions (Jhonny Peralta).
AL Cy Young
1. Felix Hernandez - SP, Seattle
2. Chris Sale - SP, Chicago White Sox
3. Max Scherzer - SP, Detroit
4. Yu Darvish - SP, Texas
5. Anibal Sanchez - SP, Detroit
6. James Shields - SP, Kansas City
7. David Price - SP, Tampa Bay
This one was tough. There were a glut of really good pitchers this year, but none stood out enough to make this pick easy. David Price came back from a brief DL stint and just decided to stop walking people. James Shields was huge for the Royals, leading the league in innings while making the Wil Myers trade not look completely terrible. Anibal Sanchez might be the best pitcher in the AL (league leading 2.39 FIP), but he missed a month, which costs him dearly in a tight race like this. Yu Darvish struck out everybody (league best 32.8% strikeouts), but his relatively pedestrian walk and home run rates kept him from running away with the award.
Even though all of those pitchers were great, it came down to the top three for me. While Max Scherzer will win the award (and I'll be fine with that - he was awesome), a case can be made that the main difference between him and Chris Sale was related to schedule. Most notably, Scherzer got to avoid pitching against his teammates who scored the second-most runs in baseball, while Sale didn't get to feast on the Sox, who scored the second-fewest runs. Because of that, I'll move Sale above Scherzer, but he still doesn't get the top spot.
Instead, my fake Cy Young vote goes to Felix Hernandez, who had just as good of a season as he did when he won the award in 2010. Felix led the AL in xFIP (2.66, just behind Harvey for best in MLB) in spite of the diminished speed on his fastball (91.3 mph, down from 94.4 in his Cy season). The fact that Felix didn't show any decline in his results (his walk rate was actually a career best 5.6%) shows just how good King Felix is at the art of pitching. And for that, he gets my vote.
AL MVP
1. Mike Trout - OF, LA Angels
2. Miguel Cabrera - 3B, Detroit
3. Josh Donaldson - 3B, Oakland
4. Ben Zobrist* - All Positions, Tampa Bay
*OK, I don't think Ben Zobrist is really the fourth most-valuable player in the AL (it's probably Longoria or Chris Davis), but I'm just in constant awe of how his game has no discernible flaws. He isn't particularly amazing is any one area, but he's so good at all areas of that game that he can churn out 5 WAR seasons like they're easy.
You can read all about this race everywhere on the internet, so I won't go into depth here (after all, I did that last year). Yes, Cabrera was an even better hitter than he was last year, but so was Trout, and his defense and baserunning still stand miles above Cabrera's. Most of the arguments that put Cabrera over Trout involve odd mental gymnastics that make the concept of "valuable" something other than the definition of the word.* In reality, "valuable" and "best" are effectively the same thing in this context, and should be treated as such. For this individual award, who cares that the Angels were terrible? Mike Trout was the best player in baseball for the second straight year. For that, he should be the MVP.
*Many of these arguments also say that Cabrera was playing under more pressure since the Tigers were in a pennant race. Putting aside the fact that the Tigers have been in good shape for a while (and putting aside that the concept of pressure is pretty questionable in the first place), we can question this by laughing at the contrapositive: Since the Angels weren't in the race, Trout was under little pressure to perform. Are baseball writers seriously trying to say that being the only player pulling his weight on a colossal failure of a team is all fun and games? I haven't played major league baseball before, but I'm thinking that Mike Trout faced a whole different, less glorious type of pressure to perform.
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