Who *Doesn't* Win the NL Cy Young?

If you were Dr. Frankenhurler and conspired to design the next Cy Young winner you would assemble a creature who could eat innings, keep the ball in the park, miss bats, carve up the strike zone, suppress plate crossings and stand tallest when the pressure mounted.

Your monster would be named Jake Arrieta.

I mean Zack Greinke.

Oh Lord. We only have room for one of them. And we haven't even mentioned Clayton Kershaw.

It looks this year like Dr. Frankenhurler used the same template twice. One of these guys is Cy Winner 1.0 and the other 1.1.

Arrieta (22-6, 1.77) and Greinke (19-3, 1.66) both posted cartoon numbers with laser command and a cornucopia of offerings. Each topped 220 innings. Each fanned at least 200 and walked fewer than 50. Both benefited from defense and luck about equally; both are freakish specimens even without serendipity's side effects.

Each spells his first name with four letters and his last with seven, including three vowels. Freaky similar.

Their "Deserved Run Average," a complicated computation that accounts for everything the geeks can think of and weighs most heavily the components of good pitching rather than the results, favors Greinke, 2.17 - 2.31.

That's the difference of one run every 63 innings.

The trajectory of the two pitchers' years provide the greatest contrast: Greinke the model of consistency, Arrieta the charging bull. By now you've heard that Arrieta allowed four runs after the All-Star break. (That includes one complete game play-in, which doesn't count in the voting.) Batters hit .136 and slugged .172 against him in August and September, because he allowed two doubles, a triple and a homer. In two months of work.

Greinke is defined by his worst month, August, during which he went 4-1, 2.45, allowed a .325 SLG and whiffed six times as many batters as he walked. That was the bad month.

Cy Young voters will be swayed by which shiny object most appeals to them, the big kick or the steady speed. The overall numbers tilt ever so slightly to the Dodger, as if the inventor made one small tweak in the form between creations. But one of these guys won't win the award, and we'll shake our heads and wonder what more the good tinkerer could have done.

The Dying Gasp of the Luddites

If you're wondering what kind of impact new analytics are having on the baseball landscape, I commend to your attention this dying gasp of Luddite literature from Paul Daugherty of the Cincinnati Enquirer. His half-hearted attempt to wish away knowledge is an ode to new analysis in its way. So tepid and conditional are his objections that we're left to conclude the argument may finally be over.

You can read his diatribe yourself, but I'll summarize it here:

• Baseball stats can't measure professionalism. No, they measure results.
• Some new stats, like Deserved Run Average, are complicated and I don't understand them, so they must be useless. When's the last time you measured ERA yourself?
• The number crunchers think digits can replace eyeballs. Show us the guy.
• A new measuring tool only measures what it measures, so it must be useless. There go all stats.
• If a new measuring tool tells you what you already believe, who needs it. If it contradicted what you believed you'd similarly scoff.

This is now the state of discourse from the hidebound. Notice that Daugherty admits new numbers have their place. Notice that he recognizes all front offices have had to adopt advanced metrics or preside over withering franchises.

But also notice that old false dichotomy between measuring performance and watching games. Would the seamhead who disputes the value of visiting the ballpark please identify himself, because I can't find him. This straw man argument forms the bedrock of most anti-progress rants, as if SABR rattlers are walking the countryside like Johnny Saberseed planting the notion that numbers can capture all the nuance of the game.

But numbers can tell you this: for all his professionalism, Marlon Byrd is batting .212 and playing a low-value defensive position (left field). We could watch Byrd and agree that he's a good guy, a hard worker and a positive influence on his teammates. But we'd also notice that Father Time has taken a chisel to his skills, and left the Reds with an out machine.

His objections amount to a surrender, really. It's like the last wail of an infant before they go back to sleep. The innumerate want to register their discomfort one last time before the next BABIP discussion.

Sorry, Paul, to burden you with added insight into the game, with better predictive tools, with interesting information about plays and players. You're free to ignore all that while you watch a .212 hitter hustle. Say hi to Fred and Wilma for us back in Bedrock.