Cleveland Indians: Danny Salazar for the First-Half Cy Young Award

The Cleveland Indians might just have another Cy Young Award winner on their hands in Danny Salazar

When Danny Salazar first reached the major leagues with the Cleveland Indians back in 2013, he gave fans a glimpse of good things to come. With an elite strikeout rate and incredible run prevention statistics, he looked primed to become a dominant force in the American League. 2014, however, was a completely different story, as he suffered from some unfortunate defense issues and regressed quite a bit. 

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Now, he looks to be back better than ever before. The right-hander leads the American League in earned run average, strikeout percentage, and runs allowed-based Wins Above Replacement. Even looking at opponent average, Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), and Skill-Independent ERA (SIERA) places him as one of the best pitchers in the American-League.

Given this success, is it possible that he could win the American League Cy Young Award? This would be very exciting for both the pitcher and the Cleveland Indians, as it would be the second time in three years that the team has won the award. Let’s take a look.

One way to predict the Cy Young Award winner is by using Bill James’ Cy Young Points system. James outlined this equation in The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers, and it weighted innings pitched, earned runs allowed, strikeouts, saves, shutouts, wins, losses, and a “victory bonus” to estimate who will win the award. The victory bonus simply adds points for if the pitcher’s team won its division or not. For the record, this equation does not determine who is the most deserving of the award. Rather, it estimates who will win the award based upon the voting population’s history of electing winners.

Using this system places Danny Salazar in close third place behind the Chicago White Sox’ Chris Sale and the Baltimore Orioles’ Zach Britton. Britton has just a half-point lead over Salazar’s 104.4 points, and Sale is a bit further off at 118.5 points. While this equation casts a bit of doubt on Salazar’s ability to win, it is an older equation that has become less relevant in recent years. Relievers are much less likely to win the award now than when Bill James published his work, and some of the criteria no longer apply to predicting the vote counts. 

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To adjust for this fact, Tom Tango created a new equation in 2013 that is much more applicable to today. His equation forgoes shutouts, complete games, and losses, and it lowers the importance of wins in the voting. Using his work, we have Danny Salazar now in second place, but still behind Chris Sale. This time, the difference is rather small: 46.8 to 44.8 points.

Now that we have established that the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA), which votes for the yearly awards, is likely to have a favorable opinion of Danny Salazar, let’s try to see if Salazar deserves such an award. As noted above, he is very clearly one of the best pitchers in the league.

An additional way to measure worth is in Wins Above Replacement (WAR). There are two main varieties of WAR, with one model being based on runs allowed and the other on Fielder Independent Pitching. Some of the readers may be more familiar with one over the other depending on which sites you use for baseball statistics. Baseball Reference uses the former; FanGraphs, the later. Both versions have their merit, although the version FanGraphs uses is better for evaluating a player’s true talent level.

Nevertheless, let’s take a simple average of the two values and see what happens. This may upset some readers, but it is easy enough to mix what happened with what should have happened this way to get a nice blend of talent measurement. Doing such puts Salazar in essentially a tie for first place with Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Masahiro Tanaka. While a tie is unfortunate, the difference between a WAR of 3.1 and 3.35 is so small that it would be misguided to prefer one over the other.

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In an attempt to break the tie, let’s try to consider the context of this a bit more. Salazar has made one less start than the other three pitchers, and he has pitched anywhere between 12 and 20 fewer innings than his opponents. While this may be a sign that he has worse endurance, it also means that he has been marginally better per inning than the others. Combining this with his many other accolades makes him a good pick for to be the American League’s first-half Cy Young Award winner. Of course, this is a non-existent award, but it is still fun to put his excellence into perspective.