FightinTexasAggie08 said:
Farmer1906 said:
I love me some JV and I was going to make a post about how Snell was deserving because last I checked it was fairly close. After looking at it again, JV was more deserving. No doubt in my mind. Snell was basically luckier. That is why his ERA is lower, but the quality of pitches and how the balls were hit, JV was superior. They pitch identically in 2019 and I would expect JV to have the better ERA. This isn't even looking at the workhorseness (yup, that's a new word) of JV over Snell.
JV
2.52 ERA
2.78 FIP
3.03 xFIP
34.8 % K%
30.4 % K-BB%
.237 xwOBA
29.1 % Hard Contact %
50.8 % Med %
20.1 % Soft %
Snell
1.89 ERA
2.95 FIP
3.16 xFIP
31.6 % K%
22.4 % K-BB%
.272 xwOBA
35.7 % Hard Contact %
46.1 % Med %
18.1 % Soft %
He was light years better than Snell, it's not even close; and that's not taking anything away from Snell, Verlander should have won running away. Unfortunately, many of the voters are still "achievement" based voters; and the sub-2 ERA and the 20 wins, are metrics that have been held up as THE stat for pitching excellence for all but the last 20 years or so.
I think this is the key.
First of all obviously I'm a JV guy, he had an incredible season, and I wouldn't trade him for Snell or any pitcher in the world. but I think saying he got robbed or was light years ahead is hyperbole. I think you can make a strong case that Verlander had a better season, but Snell was also incredible and if I had to play Snell's advocate, it wouldn't be hard to make a compelling case for him as well.
As much as I like advanced metrics, it IS an "achievement based" game. Trying to use the quality of the pitches as support for Verlander is taking it too far. You've successfully argued that Verlander was a higher quality pitcher, but not that he had higher quality results. What matters isn't what SHOULD have happened, but what DID happen. Sure, Snell got lucky but that's part of the game.
As far as JV pitching to the order a 3rd time around and Snell being shielded from that, it's a good point, but JV had the opportunity to distance himself from Snell, and if he kept up the pace he was on through late June he would have won the award, but he had some bad starts there, and as sublime as he was for parts of the season, the 5.29 August ERA does not help. Snell's smaller sample size the 3rd time through indicates that he would have also struggled at times if he had been given a longer leash, but he was not given a longer leash and he didn't struggle. You can't penalize him for what
might have happened and again, if JV had done a little more with the extra innings that he did pitch, I'm sure he would have won it.
Snell's WORST month for ERA was 2.60 in May and his August-October ERA was around 1. I know there are better metrics, but that's still damn impressive. I mean the guy only gave up more than one earned run TWICE from May 18 to the end of the season!!!
As far as wins go, I think DeGrom winning shows that voters get that pitching wins are an outdated measuring stick. I'm sure some are still influenced by them, but not nearly as much as in the past. I think that as voters understand advanced metrics better and as some of the end results-based metrics become more commonplace, seasons like Verlander's 2018 might win over Snell's 2018,
but here's my TL;DR point:You can use metrics like soft contact % about what
should have happened to predict what
will likely happen and so they are more useful for player evaluation and so on, but the only metrics that matter for awards are the things that actually DID happen.
