Would a hypothetical expansion of the 2009 National League Cy Young Award vote to five places have changed the winner?
National League Cy Young Award voters Keith Law of ESPN.com and Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus are catching a lot of heat from major segments of the Cardinal Nation for leaving Chris Carpenter off their respective ballots.
The logic goes that these two internet rascals stole the award from Carpenter.
As a refresher, here are the vote totals. In a side point of interest, both San Francisco-area voters agreed with the winner Tim Lincecum that Carpenter was most deserving.
| Actual vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Points | |
| Tim Lincecum | San Francisco Giants | 11 | 12 | 9 | 100 |
| Chris Carpenter | St. Louis Cardinals | 9 | 14 | 7 | 94 |
| Adam Wainwright | St. Louis Cardinals | 12 | 5 | 15 | 90 |
| Javier Vazquez | Atlanta Braves | 1 | 3 | ||
| Dan Haren | Arizona Diamondbacks | 1 | 1 |
Law placed Atlanta’s Javier Vazquez in second and Carroll voted Arizona’s Dan Haren third. In the 5-3-1 scoring system in place, had Carpenter received those two votes instead, the four additional points would have enabled him to only close part of the gap to Lincecum to 100-98 (corrected from first post).
That isn’t where I am going, however. Both voters have offered the detailed logic behind their votes and they are what they are: Link to Law’s explantion, link to Carroll’s explanation.
There are others who believe the real rub is the restrictive nature of the voting process. Those who select the Most Valuable Players are allowed to name ten candidates, in a 10-9-etc scoring system, yet the Cy Young process allows just three votes.
Why? Because that is the way it has always been, I guess.
Let’s make a couple of assumptions about how a better process might have worked.
- Voters could name five players, in a 5-4-3-2-1 scoring system.
- We will not change Law’s and Carroll’s votes, instead assuming they would have named Carpenter fourth and the last remaining player fifth.
- All other votes remain the same, with Vazquez arbitrarily getting the other fourth-place votes and Haren at fifth.
Here is how the hypothetical voting would have come out.
| Hypothetical vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | Points |
| Lincecum | 11 | 12 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 130 |
| Carpenter | 9 | 14 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 126 |
| Wainwright | 12 | 5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 125 |
| Vazquez | 0 | 1 | 0 | 30 | 1 | 65 |
| Haren | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 31 | 34 |
The result would have been much closer, but Lincecum would still have been the winner and the order of finish would have remained the same.
Time to accept it and move on.
For background, the detailed votes follow. The first, second and third places are the actuals with my hypothetical fourth- and fifth-place votes added on the right.
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | ||
| Guy Curtright | At Large Atlanta | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Keith Law | ESPN.com: | Lincecum | Vazquez | Wainwright | Carpenter | Haren |
| Manny Navarro | Miami Herald: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Enrique Rojas | ESPNdeportes.com: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Ken Davidoff | Newsday: | Lincecum | Wainwright | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Steve Popper | Bergen Record: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Jerry Crasnick | ESPN.com: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Jim Salisbury | Philadelphia Inquirer: | Wainwright | Lincecum | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Ken Rosenthal | FOX Sports.com: | Wainwright | Lincecum | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Mark Zuckerman | Washington Times: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Paul Sullivan | Chicago Tribune: | Lincecum | Wainwright | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Toni Ginnetti | Chicago Sun Times: | Wainwright | Lincecum | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Will Carroll | Baseball Prospectus: | Wainwright | Lincecum | Haren | Carpenter | Vazquez |
| Tom Groeschen | Cincinnati Enquirer: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Bill Madden | New York Daily News: | Wainwright | Lincecum | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Zachary Levine | Houston Chronicle: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Susan Shemanske | Racine Journal Times: | Carpenter | Wainwright | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Dennis Semrau | Madison Capital Times: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| John Perrotto | Ogden Newspapers: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Chuck Finder | Pittsburgh Post Gazette: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Derrick Goold | St. Louis Post Dispatch: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Bernie Miklasz | St. Louis Post Dispatch: | Carpenter | Wainwright | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Nick Piecoro | Arizona Republic: | Lincecum | Wainwright | Carpenter | Vazquez | Haren |
| Sarah Trotto | Arizona Daily Star: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Jack Etkin | At Large Denver | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Patrick Saunders | Denver Post: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Doug Padilla | L.A. Newspaper Group: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Randy Youngman | Orange County Register: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Scott Miller | CBS Sports.com: | Lincecum | Carpenter | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Chris Jenkins | San Diego Union Tribune: | Wainwright | Carpenter | Lincecum | Vazquez | Haren |
| Paul Gutierrez | Sacramento Bee: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
| Henry Schulman | San Francisco Chronicle: | Carpenter | Lincecum | Wainwright | Vazquez | Haren |
[...] This post was Twitted by B_Walton [...]
Strong article.
Its interesting the P-D gets two voters. They of course split their votes.
Lincecum, Wainwright, and Carpenter all had fine years, yet only one gets selected.
Innings pitched is a statistic that tends to get a little underappreciated. Fans are drawn to per inning statistics, like ERA or WHIP. To some fans, “innings eater” is slang for bad, but for me, its slang for good. As Dave Duncan knows, the guy who can take on another 30 innings or so per year, he really helps the pitching staff out. Wainwright took the ball and ate a lot of innings. So I would have to vote for Wainwright over Carpenter, given a season-long award. Lincecum is a good pitcher and there is nothing wrong with coming in second to him.
Good to move on.
Chicago Trib guy voted for Tim, so did ESPN and CBS. Rather than expand the vote, it could be made by secret ballot. Some of the comments I’ve seen talk about pitching for a weaker team. (91wins v 88??, ok, whatever) I chalk it up to strikeouts, dispatching the foe in single combat has an appeal that getting the guy to hit a grounder to your teammate can’t really match. That, and he looks like somewhat of a twerp yet mows down the hulking studly mashers. Awesome pitcher.
http://www.bostonherald.com/blogs/sports/red_sox/index.php/2009/11/20/red-sox-inquire-about-holliday-a-beltre-m-gonzalez-r-ankiel/
The mention of Ankiel in this context is a back scratching move between Boras and the Reds Sox so I would guess something is up there concerning one of the other players.
The play is, if the Red Sox are interested, he must be sane.
WCBW, one of your sounder pschyological insights.
Err, check that. I re-read your words and you are off-the-mark, again. Sigh.
Brian,
The reason that your five-deep tally tightened the vote isn’t just that two more spots were added. Rather it’s because in going from a 5-3-1 to a 5-4-3-2-1, you devalued the first place votes viz. the second and thirds, and the second-place votes viz. the thirds.
When the BBWAA votes 10-deep for MVP, the votes are NOT tallied 10-9-8-7, etc. Rather the first-place votes are weighted as 14 points. It’s a 14-9-8-7, etc. calculation.
Thanks, s.f.. You are of course correct. My original intent was to mimic the MVP vote, so I am re-running now with a 7-4-3-2-1 spread and will post shortly.
New post with 7-4-3-2-1 scoring here.