Nola - good, nay, historic, season

[jimbomill]

Here's a decent write-up on the Cy Young voting. Too bad the voters didn't look at all the advanced metrics.

Cy Young trophies for deGrom, Snell reflect analytics' impact

[phillychuck]

DeGrom's analytics were exceptionally good, too. I can't really argue with the choice even given my bias for Nola.

[andyb]

The analytics for WAR clearly look at bad team defense as a factor. I do recall the Phillies using their better defensive lineups with Nola so maybe the WAR numbers don't reflect that.

I also think awards like this should incorporate more traditional metrics like ERA. Advanced metrics might tell us Nola had a FIP better than ERA, but frankly luck is a factor that can influence awards. We should evaluate Nola on advanced metrics, but traditional metrics (including luck) really mean more for awards.

[zambonir]

Honestly that just makes me question how precise BRef's WAR metrics can really be, especially given how hard it is to quantify defense. The Fangraphs WAR is probably slightly more compelling for an individual award. And I can't say I expect voters to look at park effect very closely. At the end of the day they were three strong candidates and we should probably just be glad that the Nats didn't win the division or Scherzer's 18 wins and 300 strikeouts surely would have taken it.

Baseball-Reference loves Nola, to a large degree, because it's giving him a huge adjustment for the Phillies' bad defense -- 0.64 runs per nine innings. B-R estimates that the Phillies' defense cost Nola about 15 runs, which would drop his runs allowed from 57 to 42. Nola pitched in a neutral park while deGrom pitched in a pitchers' park, so that also increases the gap between the two. Maybe the Phillies' defense did hurt Nola; on the other hand, his .254 BABIP tied for the fourth-lowest among starters, so balls in play were turned into outs a large percentage of the time.

FanGraphs, meanwhile, sees that deGrom had a higher strikeout rate and lower walk and home run rates and deemed that he had the much superior season. Their calculations do not factor in Nola's hit rate or left-on-base rate or the fact that allowed fewer runs than you would expect because he held batters to a .129 average with runners in scoring position.

[andyb]

That makes sense. deGrom probably deserved it when you sort through all the bad metrics?

Of course my eye goes to the BR statement that our defense is costing us 0.64 runs per game. Assume that is below average for the league. That is just an eye popping number and really suggests that amidst all the talk of Harper and Machado, we can improve this team by 5+ games simply by improving the defense.

I think they really need to give Crawford a real chance next year. Or if they don't believe in him they need to trade for a better defensive infielder to put in their mix of playing time (on top of Kingery maybe supplanting Cesar at 2B and being plus defensively there).

[flyers19rw]

Just a moment on the competition for the second base job. It may be hard for Kingery to outplay Cesar at 2B. Granted Hernandez tied for the most errors for second basemen in the NL but he was fourth in putouts for the position; second in assists; third in double plays turned while being second in games played at second base. I'm not indicating that he's a competitor for the Gold Glove but he's a pretty competent player.

[allentown]

The 'defense doesn't matter, just put good hitters on the field playing out of position', and convincing themselves that they were masters of player positioning played hurt the Phillies last year and are a big black mark against the new management. Hopefully they are capable of learning and changing. It's ironic, because over the years, the Phillies have valued defense seemingly more than the average team.

[zambonir]

I think they are bound to learn from their mistakes. But remember, they also weren't trying to win anything. The team basically hit its wins target, and if they also learned that Hoskins can't play LF and Kingery is or isn't ready to play 2B and Franco isn't good enough and the existing RF options don't cut it (either at the plate or in the field), that is useful information. Obviously they didn't get much info on Crawford.

Or course, for now, at least, they seem to believe that Crawford can play 3B and Kingery can play SS (or multiple positions).

I do think Kingery can probably out-produce Cesar defensively, but will he start to hit along the way?

[EastFallowfield]

Nola got some MVP votes, first Phil to do so since 2012.