The Too Close To Call

As a young adult, I felt it was my civic duty to investigate every policy issue facing our country and have an informed opinion on each. As I've aged, this need has ebbed, and I'm now perfectly comfortable not having an opinion on some complex issues. I can continue to cast informed votes on representatives and referenda without possessing exhaustive knowledge of every issue upon which they must rule.

When it comes to baseball awards, however, that's exactly the demand we make of voters. They must have a definitive opinion on who is the MVP or the Rookie of the Year, etc. But this year, there is one race in which it's just impossible to distinguish between a couple of candidates.

The AL Cy Young contest pits David Price's Blue Jay brilliance, following a trade from Detroit, against Astro ace Dallas Keuchel, whose season-long excellence stumbled a bit in September.

For the season, Keuchel's 20-8, 2.48 is Cy-worthy. Price is right too -- 18-5, 2.45.

Accounting for ballparks, Keuchel leads in ERA+, 162-161. In other words, the two pitchers allowed the same number of runs.

Price's 4.70 K/BB ratio is slightly superior to Keuchel's 4.24. Pitchers can't control anything as much as they can control walks and strikeouts. So that's a relative feather in Price's ball cap.

Keuchel owns a small edge in WHIP, 1.017-1.076. He's allowing fewer base runners. Because they keep the ball in the park at the same rate, that's one for Keuchel.

Keuchel has pitched 12 more innings, 232-220, which partially accounts for his superior WAR of 7.2 versus Price's 5.9.

The various defensive metrics generally like Houston's defense behind Keuchel better than Detroit and Toronto's defense behind Price. That might partially explain why teams scored 10 unearned runs against Price and only four against Keuchel. Those runs don't show up in ERA. That would seem to tilt towards Keuchel.

But fielding independent pitching measures -- about which you should be a little leery -- suggest Price has "earned" a 2.78 ERA; Keuchel has earned a 2.91.

Now, you make sense of all that. About the only thing we can say about the best pitcher in the American League this year is that it's Dallas Keuchel and David Price. (Oakland's Sonny Gray, 14-7, 2.73, is next best, but he tailed off by summer's end and pretty clearly fell out of the race.) Writers who split their votes are disdained for their indecision, or lack of guts, but in this case I think it's not just defensible, its indicated.