Remember what an easy call the two MVP races are? Kris Bryant and Mike Trout are far and away the most valuable players in their leagues this year.
But good golly Miss Molly are the Cy Young competitions a quagmire. Depending on how you slice it, one person's ripe fruit is another person's rind.
Taking a gander at the junior circuit first, there are a bevy of candidates.
Rick Porcello went 22-4, 3.15 for the Red Sox, with a league-leading 6-1 strikeout-walk rate.
J.A. Happ, in his season of redemption, earned a 20-4, 3.18 line, though the advanced stats give his Toronto defense a lot of the credit.
Justin Verlander bounced back to 16-9, 3.04, and the AL's lowest WHIP and highest pitching WAR.
The Yankees' Masahiro Tanaka owned a 14-4, 3.07 resume despite a relatively low strikeout rate.
And Chris Sale, for all the drama of his season in Chicago, pitched to a line of 17-10, 3.34 and completed a league-leading six games.
Verlander's year was stealthy-great. He paced the league in strikeouts and and hurled a healthy 227 frames. The advanced stats say his ERA was partially a figment of defense and ballparks. I award him the bronze medal.
Porcello really shined and would get my second place vote. The advanced stats like him but he's a little light on whiffs, which is the one thing a pitcher can claim nearly total credit for.
For my money, the best pitcher in the AL was Cleveland's Corey Kluber. At 18-9, 3.14, he didn't lead the league in anything but was among the best at everything. He anchored the Tribe's killer rotation, pitching a lot innings with an excellent K-BB ratio, a low WHIP and more strikeouts than frames. The advanced stats love him, giving him their highest grades. The playoffs aren't considered for this, but they certainly vindicate this choice.
What's that you say? One of the others is your guy? Go for it. There's no credible argument against any of the pitchers named here.
Just please, don't talk to me about Zach Britton. The guy was a horse out of the Oriole pen, with an 0.54 ERA and 47 saves. He deserves the Rolaids Relief Award, unless Andrew Miller steals it. But the dude pitched a grand total of 67 innings -- one at a time, and that's just a quantum leap easier than throwing six frames each time out. Meausring him against starters is an apples and zebras comparison.
That's not a knock on Britton. Over the last three years, he's thrown 209 innings -- about a full year for a starter. Batters have touched him up for a 1.38 ERA and 0.9 WHIP. In that one year's worth of pitching he earned nine wins against replacement -- roughly MVP level. He's a stud, but so is Mike Trout. And neither one deserves the Cy Young.
Either inflation in baseball is going to be an Abominable Snowman the next few years or Red Sox management is daft. It might be some of both.
Ben Cherington just inked Rick Porcello to a four-year, $84 million contract, preventing their #3 starter from hitting free agency after the season. Now entering his sixth season at the tender age of 27, Rick Porcello is, well, a guy. He pitches innings -- which is what you want your pitcher to pitch. If he pitches tunafish, don't sign him to an $84 million deal.
Porcello doesn't strike out a boatload of batters, but he doesn't walk many either. He keeps the ball on the ground, which is a good idea in Fenway. Good infield defense, which Boston thinks it has, will help him.
On the other hand, even after his best season last year, Porcello has been an average pitcher over his career. If "average" had his picture taken, it would look like Rick Porcello. His lifetime ERA+ is 98, where 100 is median. He's earned more than two-and-a-half wins above replacement for his team once -- last season.
According to the Red Sox, young, durable but thoroughly ordinary Major League pitchers are worth $21 million a year in 2015.
For just $4 million more, they could have coaxed back Jon Lester during the off-season. Or at least that's what the Cubs threw at Lester in an open and competitive market -- $25 million a year. Now, Lester is three years older and his deal is two years longer, so that's $50 million for a 35- and 36-year-old.
But Lester eats Porcello's lunch -- for breakfast. His ERA since becoming a starter in 2008 is 25% better than average and he's accounted for four-and-a-half wins or more in five of those seven seasons. And like Porcello, Lester pitches innings, except more of them than Porcello.
In other words, Jon Lester : Rick Porcello :: pizza : grilled cheese. Similar, but oh so much better.
And yet, Lester's deal is not very different than Porcello's. It's a little different -- longer to an older player, but way more similar than the players are. Jon Lester's contract : Rick Porcello's contract :: cheese pizza : mushroom pizza.
Which tells us that either Red Sox management has gone all Ted Cruz or the team expects MLB to be swimming in a sea of money over the next four years that will balloon the going rate for Joe Starter to $21 million/year, or maybe even more.
The thing is, there's not much evidence of the former (although Pablo Sandoval may need to change his name to Exhibit A) and lots of the latter. MLB has $8 billion coming in through TV deals and its Alternative Media is bearing fruit, all on top of the cash cow that is New England sports fandom. So it's possible that Boston wants to keep Rick Porcello and if that costs $15 M/year so be it. Oh, did you say $20 million? Ha, let's just call it 21!
