It should have been a unanimous decision but regardless, New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom bested defending Cy Young winner, Max Scherzer, and up-and-coming Philadelphia Phillies, ace Aaron Nola, earning 29 first place votes to secure the 2018 NL Cy Young award.
For anyone who paid any sort of attention to baseball this past year, you won’t even have to second guess why deGrom deserved this award over Scherzer and Nola. He sported a 1.70 ERA, 0.912 WHIP, 216 ERA+, 1.98 FIP and, one of the more impressive numbers of the year, only 10 home runs allowed. He was, without question, the best pitcher in Major League Baseball this past season and it looks as though that his domination will continue for years to come.
However, there are still some fans who felt that deGrom, although had an excellent year, was not worthy of winning the Cy Young. Why? His win-loss record. deGrom finished the season with just 10 wins, thanks in part to the poor excuse that was the Mets offense, as well as abysmal relief pitching that couldn’t hold a lead whenever Jake took the mound. This was the lowest win total among NL starting pitchers who’ve won the award since the award was split between the two leagues in 1967. The last starting pitcher in either league to win the award with such a low number of wins was 2010 when Seattle’s Felix Hernandez took home the gold after a 13-12 record. He also finished that year with a 2.27 ERA, tops among qualified starters, 249.2 innings pitched and 232 strikeouts. Despite that record, King Felix was the best pitcher in the AL and was well deserving of the award.
Scherzer finished 2018 with 18 wins, Nola with 17. Simply due to this stat, people still felt that they were more deserving of being crown the best pitcher in the National League. The fact that despite winning just 10 games, deGrom showed that his record did not indicate how unbelievable he was this year. And when I say unbelievable, I mean you actually had to see it with your own two eyes. He turned in one of the greatest seasons for a starting pitcher in recent memory.
If there was ever a time to discount a pitcher’s win-loss record, it is now, thanks to deGrom. The Mets were a terrible team this past season, especially at the plate and somehow managed to be worse when deGrom was on the bump, failing to give him the run support he so desperately deserved. You can’t knock deGrom on his 10 wins. He put his team in the best position possible to win; they failed him with their lack of production. The Mets averaged 4.17 runs per game in 2018 and it has been relayed by many experts in the media that if the Mets scored four or more runs in each of deGrom’s starts that he would not have lost one game. If the Mets just continued their typical offensive production for their ace, there would not have even been a conversation about the NL Cy Young award.
With all the new analytics and sabermetrics that teams have begun using to better evaluate a player, the pitcher’s win-loss record is no longer one of them. Sure, the stat itself can stick around for historical purposes, but the concept of using it to determine how good a player is obsolete. Here’s another example: Chicago White Sox starter Lucas Giolito was considered the worst starting pitcher in baseball in 2018. He finished the year with a 6.13 ERA in 173.1 innings; His W-L was 10-13, the same number of wins as deGrom. Now after seeing that, are you still going to try to convince yourself that the win-loss record is vital to determining how good a pitcher really is?
