Is Justin Verlander not one of five best pitchers in AL? Not that dumb a question

Tom Gatto

Is Justin Verlander not one of five best pitchers in AL? Not that dumb a question image

Justin Verlander, as we graphically learned Wednesday night, was left off two of 30 ballots in the voting for the American League Cy Young Award.

One of the voters who kept him off, Bill Chastain of MLB.com, told the New York Daily News he sent in his ballot before Verlander made his final two starts of the season; those starts significantly lowered Verlander's ERA and padded his league-leading strikeout total. Chastain also said he simply went with his top five at the time of his submission.

Why wasn't Verlander in his top five regardless?

First, look at Chastain's ballot: eventual winner Rick Porcello; Zach Britton; Corey Kluber; Chris Sale; and Masahiro Tanaka. Not a slouch in the group, at least in terms of 2016 performance. 

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Second, all of them pitched more often against the Rays than did Verlander, so they had more opportunities to show Chastain they were better choices.

Third, all of them pitched very well against the team Chastain covers every day:

Porcello: 5-0, 3.07 ERA, 46 strikeouts, five walks in 41 innings.

Britton: 1.13 ERA, 8 for 8 in save opportunities, nine strikeouts, one walk in eight innings.

Kluber: 1-1, 1.62 ERA, 13 strikeouts in 13 innings. One of the starts was a three-hit shutout in June.

Sale: 2-0, 1.69 ERA, 16 strikeouts in 16 innings. One of the starts was a two-hit shutout in April.

Tanaka: 4-0,  2.88 ERA, 34 strikeouts, three walks in 34 1/3 innings.

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Combine those results with the pitchers' overall bodies of work, and it's understandable that each passed a voter's "eye test." (This is starting to sound too much like what the College Football Playoff committee does.)

Verlander should have passed the eye test, too, though. He pitched just once against the Rays, but he allowed one earned run and struck out eight over seven innings in July. He was credited with one of his 16 wins.

Overall, he finished second in the AL with a 3.04 ERA (Porcello was fifth at 3.15) and led the league with a 1.00 WHIP (Porcello was second at 1.01), 254 strikeouts and a 6.6 bWAR (well ahead of Porcello in both categories).

Those two final-week starts greatly aided Verlander's numbers. With the Tigers fighting for a wild-card berth, Verlander allowed just one run and fanned 20 over 14 1/3 innings. He went 1-1, but the loss was 1-0 to the Braves in the Braves' final game ever at Turner Field.

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Was Verlander merely a victim of bad timing, then? No, there were statistical reasons not to vote for him at all, as dumb as that might sound.

His 3.48 FIP was fourth in the AL, but Kluber, Porcello and Sale all finished ahead of him and Tanaka (3.51) was just behind him. Kluber, Porcello and Tanaka all had better adjusted ERA+ figures (Verlander was sixth in the league). Porcello, Kluber and Sale all had more wins and Tanaka was two behind (sorry, "Kill the win" crowd). Porcello, Sale and Tanaka had better strikeout-to-walk ratios (Verlander was seventh). Verlander was not among the top 10 in fewest home runs allowed per nine innings; Kluber, Porcello and Tanaka were. Britton merely allowed four earned runs total in 67 innings and a .333 OPS in 131 high-leverage plate appearances.

None of that even takes into account what Blue Jays right-hander Aaron Sanchez did. He led the AL with a 3.00 ERA, was sixth in FIP and was fifth in Win Probability Added, behind Britton and Verlander but ahead of Tanaka, Kluber and Sale.

Bottom line: Choosing a top five was a tough call that, in one voter's case, was affected by when his ballot was cast and, perhaps, a subtle bias caused by seeing the other pitchers in person more often.

In fact, the numbers say Verlander may have received more first-place votes (a league-most 14) than he should have (Kluber has an argument for receiving more than three), and there were just enough pitchers, in the final analysis, to crowd him off more than two ballots.

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.