If you watched the MLB Network broadcast last night for Cy Young last night, before they announced the winner for Cy Young, you heard a lot of talk about how Scherzer had the best season of his career, how he led the league in innings pitched, strikeouts and WHIP. The show spent as much, if not more time, caught up on Scherzer hitting 300 K’s which is impressive compared to deGrom’s ERA.
When they finally did a side by side comparison of the two pitchers. They did a matrix of where they ranked in the league in three stats:
ERA: 1.70 / 2.53
Innings: 217 / 220
WHIP: 0.912 / 0.911
For the last two rows in huge red letters they had “2nd” by deGrom and “1st” by Scherzer. But this isn’t quite fair. The difference between 217 and 220 innings, 0.912 WHIP and 0.911 WHIP pales in comparison to 1.70 to 2.53 in ERA.
Ultimately, the baseball writers overwhelmingly agreed that deGrom was better, so here are some other stats that showed that.
Jacob led the league in ERA+ (216), FIP (1.98) and HR/9 (0.4). While the last one could be influenced by the ballpark (Nola can make this argument more than anyone else), its a drastic improvement from his previous year at 1.3.
Actually lets just list the things he led in:
- WAR – 10.0 (tied with Nola, when adjusted for pitchers he some how slips to 2nd)
- ERA- 1.70
- ERA+ – 216
- Adjusted Pitching Wins – 5.7 (Nola next at 4.7, Scherzer at 4.4)
- RE24 – 53.73 (Nola next at 45.70)
- WPA – 6.0 (Nola and Scherzer tied at 5.0)
- REW – 6.5 (Nola next at 5.0)
All while receiving some of the worst run support and pitching in more innings tied/or down than any other pitcher because the Mets bats just fell silent for him.
Congrats deGrom! This was an amazing year and we were all so lucky to witness it!
