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Even though I am really not a big fan of Roger Clemens, I can’t help but admire what he has done “post-retirement” (and throughout his career). In particular, his performance this season has been nothing short of mind-boggling. What makes it so outrageous, though, is that his season is somehow flying under the radar (relatively speaking). Now don’t get me wrong, Clemens is getting and always has gotten plenty of media attention. However, because Chris Carpenter’s team is giving him more run support and therefore winning him more games, there are actually people who think that Carpenter is a viable candidate to win the Cy Young over Clemens (not to mention he already was awarded the All Star game start over Clemens). Clearly Carpenter is having a great season and one that should win the Cy Young in many other years. Unfortunately for him, though, he’s up against what should be considered one of the greatest single season pitching performances of all time (and I’m not talking about just 43 year olds).

Let’s break this down. First, you shouldn’t need to look farther than the raw stats to realize who has been better this year:

• Carpenter: 17-4, 180.1 IP, 169 K, 0.98 WHIP, 2.25 ERA
• Clemens: 11-4, 164.0 IP, 148 K, 0.93 WHIP, 1.32 ERA

It should be a clear-cut decision based on just those stats alone. Both pitchers are having absolutely phenomenal seasons, but Clemens ERA is almost a full run lower than Carpenter’s. Just the other day, Clemens pitched 8 innings of shutout ball and got a no decision! In fact, Clemens has given up zero runs in a start 9 times this season. He has gotten the win in only 4 of them and a no decision in 5! Even more remarkable is that Clemens has given up more than 3 runs in a start only once (ironically he got a win in that start giving up 4 runs over 5 innings). It is for this reason that I think assigning wins to pitchers is a painfully arbitrary process making them one of the most overrated statistics in all of baseball. So why are they so heavily weighted in voting for the Cy Young award? It is true that good pitchers tend to get wins, but that does not make them an accurate metric in comparing overall performance. This is especially true when dealing with such a relatively small sample size as one season worth of starts. Carpenter’s win totals are clearly the only reason why he would be notched ahead of Clemens and it’s ridiculous that voters think that way.

To put Clemens season into an even more focused perspective, consider ERA+. For those who are unaware, ERA+ is a statistic used to rate a pitcher’s performance in comparison to the rest of the league. In order to calculate it, you take the league-wide average ERA and divide it by the pitcher’s individual ERA. This will give you a ratio that you multiply by 100 to turn into a percentage. Therefore, an ERA+ of 100 would indicate a pitcher who has an exactly average ERA in comparison to the rest of the league, and an ERA+ of say 130 would mean that he has an ERA 30% better than the rest of the league. The true calculation also adjusts for park effects and for that reason can’t be exactly determined until the season is over. We can still make rough estimates, though, using the unadjusted data thus far. The greatest modern-day season in terms of ERA+ to date was Pedro Martinez’s 2000 campaign. That year he compiled a 1.74 ERA while the AL average ERA was 4.91! After adjusting for park effects his ERA+ amounted to 285.

Of course you can see where this is all leading. To date, Roger Clemens’s ERA is 1.32 and the NL average ERA is 4.27. Without adjusting for park effects, this would be an ERA+ of 323! This would put him first all time by a significant margin. By comparison, Carpenter’s estimated ERA+ of 190 would put him 55th all time. This is still a remarkable feat but unfortunately for him, 1st is better than 55th.

I’m sure there are many other statistical ways to show how truly remarkable Roger Clemens’s season has been so far. I’m also sure that all of them would rate his season better than Carpenter’s. Hopefully Clemens is not robbed of the 8th Cy Young that he deserves. (It’s interesting to note that it can be argued that his 2001 Cy Young was a gift, but on the other hand he was robbed of two others in 1990 and 1992)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.