When Relievers Deserve the Cy Young
It was known long ago and now assumed for generations. Starters are more important than relievers. Believed for good reason with a long-storied history of starters regularly pitching into the 7th, 8th and 9th in dominant fashion. But now the game has changed, it feels like every bullpen has someone throwing triple digits and starters are pitching less than ever. Are starters still more valuable than relievers?
Between the top starters and top relievers, who helps you win more?
A Rather Large Elephant
We first must address the elephant in the room, even in the modern game, starters pitch way more innings. Typically, about 3 to 4 times what a reliever does. How can a reliever possibly match the impact of a great starter? If we’re saying they’re not going to pitch more innings there’s only two things they can do. These are our mandatory conditions for a reliever to compete with a starter.
1) The reliever must have a lower ERA and be more efficient
2) The reliever must pitch in much more significant moments
If the reliever can’t do these things assume the starter is more valuable.
Win Probability Added
There are two good metrics in the sport to express the value of a player. Wins above replacement (WAR) and Win Probability Added (WPA). Unfortunately, WAR fails to account for the context the result was in. Giving no difference to a pitcher’s scoreless inning in a blowout compared to a tie game. I’m going to skip this stat for the simple reason that it immediately breaks one of the mandatory condition’s relievers need. More significant moments. But for the record no reliever in the last decade has placed top 10 in pitching WAR.
Win Probability Added (WPA) is a statistic in baseball that quantifies a player's impact on their team's likelihood of winning. It's calculated by measuring the change in win probability with each play during a game.
In 2023 eight of the top ten pitchers in WPA were relievers. More high-pressure moments allow relievers to magnify their impact immensely. In fact, relievers leading in WPA isn’t a one off. Over the last decade, 6 of the top 10 performances by pitchers in WPA have been by Relievers. The blue highlighted pitchers are relievers.
High WPA vs Cy Young Winners
None of the six relievers won the Cy Young Award. Here’s a comparison of each and who they lost to.
Possessing a third of the innings and a higher ERA, Melancon stands no shot in the Cy Young voting. Jake Arrietta’s season was just remarkably strong. I’m not sure any relief season in recent memory could match his value in 2015. For Melancon the notable part of this is that the quality of the moments he was in allowed him to almost match Arietta in WPA.
Cy Young voting for the 2016 A.L. Cy Young was honestly a mess even before you consider relievers. But we don’t have time for all that. Porcello sports a much higher ERA but has triple the innings. However, WAR sees all their contributions as relatively close. In WPA it heavily favored the moments the relievers pitched in and their incredible work in those moments.
While Porcello won the award, I believe Zach Britton has a much better case with his absurdly low ERA and sky high WPA. Britton placing 4th is a crime, he deserves the Cy. For Miller, it’s not as clear but I’d give him the slight edge over Porcello because he’s somewhat close in WAR but miles ahead in WPA. Of the three here my order would be Zach Britton, Andrew Miller and then Rick Porcello.
I don’t have issue with the winner here. While Jansen had an incredible season, he lost by a great deal in WAR and only wins moderately in WPA. I think Jansen deserves higher than 5th place but not the award.
This in my opinion the closest of the comparisons. Blake Snell’s innings are lower than typical Cy Young Winners, but his ERA is tiny for a starter. On the other hand, Blake Treinen has a lot of innings for a reliever and a tiny ERA for reliever. To me Blake Treinen’s ultra effective and well placed 80 innings make him more valuable in 2018. But I would only give him a slight edge over Snell. At worst I think Blake Treinen deserves second place, but he gets 6th.
In this comparison I see no valid case for Will Smith. Having less innings and a higher ERA is just too much. But once again this is an interesting example of how WPA interprets Will Smith’s season as more valuable because he had many more close late games in which he got to excel.
Last, but not least I want to show a comparison for the last time a reliever won the Cy Young Award.
These are 1st and 2nd places for 2003 N.L. Cy Young. This of course happened during the extreme popularity of Eric Gagne. With work in 2002 and 2003 Gagne reached an MLB record 84 consecutive saves converted. While his 2003 season was phenomenal, I think his record and the massive media coverage around it helped him secure the only Cy Young award this century for a reliever. I say that because looking back at Zach Britton and Blake Treinen they’re all near each other in peak single season performance. Yet, Britton placed 4th and Treinen placed 6th in their respective years. The most notable difference is just that Gagne broke a record.
Misuses of Great Pitching
We’ve covered how relievers get more big moments late in games. But in truth both starters and relievers suffer from considerable misuse. Let’s first look at the starters. The following are 2023’s two Cy Young Winners. The top line is the end-run difference of the games they pitched. Below we show how many games that they pitched ended in that differential and their performances within these outcomes.
The starters innings are often wasted and subject to how the offense and the bullpen plays later. Blake Snell and Gerrit Cole were both around 100 innings wasted in games that didn’t end up close (3 runs or more). An average pitcher could have handled the vast majority of these situations with the same basic result. What you’re really hoping for with your great starters is that they get lots of innings influencing close games but the amount you can get varies greatly and doesn’t always have to do with the quality of the pitcher.
Now let’s look at the two relievers of the year for 2023. To show greater context for relievers we’re giving their innings matrixes which give the inning they entered games and the run differential at the time.
Devin Williams’ Matrix
Felix Bautista’s Matrix
With both these pitchers their closer roles are consistently putting them in games that are not in danger. Devin Williams entered 15 games with a differential of 3 or more. Bautista had 17 of these games. The bigger the run differential the lesser chance these relievers have to make a big impact.
For a greater sample size here’s all the 2023 Reliever of the Year Nominees along with how many games they appeared in below average pressure situations according to the average leverage index.
There is one major difference between the misuse of starters and relievers innings. The starters misuses are a result of bad luck. We’re not trying to completely redefine what a starter is so we must accept they will have great performances wasted. On the other hand, the misuse of top relievers is about the manager’s decisions. They don’t have to pitch in a 3-run game in the 9th.
They could have pitched them in the 7th when the difference was 1. They don’t have to wait till the 9th, they could use them for a tie game in the 8th against the meat of the order.
Top reliever misuses are frequently built around the idea that they are closers, and they must pitch the 9th. If they bend idea of a closer, managers can more consistently find quality moments. In studying how relievers got their high WPA earlier I learned their most impactful moments allowed them to bend the closer role. The fact that many managers won’t do this is consistently limiting the possible value of relievers.
There are not many things a manager can do to flip close games in the final innings. A great reliever is the best option. No other position in the sport is afforded this flexibility to exclusively impact close games. Deploying them properly must be a top priority.
Final Thoughts
Baseball isn’t deeply considering the value relievers give. If you stop at saying relievers have much less innings, you’re not seeing the whole story. Relievers are often able to bridge the gap of less innings by pitching more effectively and in doing so in the game’s biggest moments. These are the pitchers who consistently influence close games in the final innings.
I believe there is real evidence relief pitchers are being undervalued in the Cy Young voting. Both types of pitchers are suffering from significant misuse. Additionally, top relievers in the modern game could become even more valuable if managers used them more effectively. In most cases I think top starters are still more valuable than top relievers. Although, contrary to common baseball discourse I think they often are the most valuable pitchers. Not just when they break a record.
In the high-stakes moments of baseball, relievers are true game-changers. It's time the Cy Young Award reflected this truth.
References
- Baseball-Reference.com. "Pitching Metrics, Matrices and Cy Young results"
- OpenAI's DALL-E. "Illustrative Image." Generated [January 13th, 2024].