AL MVP Award: My 10-Player Ballot
10th Place—The Dominant Reliever
RP Zach Britton, Baltimore Orioles
2.5—Fangraphs WAR (75th in AL)
4.3—Baseball-Reference WAR (31st in AL)
6.1—Fangraphs WPA (2nd in AL)
6.5—Baseball-Reference WPA (2nd in AL)
67 IP, 2-1, 47 SV, 0.54 ERA, 1.94 FIP, 0.84 WHIP, 9.9 K/9, 2.4 BB/9, 0.1 HR/9
It’s very difficult to know where to place a relief pitcher on an end-of-year ballot for the MVP or Cy Young Award. They just don’t pitch that many innings and it’s difficult to be as valuable over 67 innings as it is over 200 innings or 600 plate appearances.
Detroit Tigers’ reliever Willie Hernandez won the AL Cy Young and AL MVP Award in 1984 when he led the league in games (80) and pitched 140 1/3 innings in relief with a 1.92 ERA. Despite that impressive performance out of the pen, Hernandez was sixth among pitchers in Baseball-Reference WAR and 35th among pitchers in Fangraphs WAR. There were many players worth more Wins Above Replacement than Willie Hernandez that year, including a young shortstop named Cal Ripken, Jr., who had the seventh-best season ever for a shortstop (based on Fangraphs WAR). Hernandez did lead all American League players in one important category—Win Probability Added.
Win Probability Added is the stat that puts Zach Britton in my top 10. He’s second in WPA among all American League players. Britton had a tremendous year and is even getting some support for the AL Cy Young Award. He became the fourth pitcher ever to save 40 or more games without blowing any. He also has the lowest ERA ever for a pitcher with 30 or more saves. He gave up just one home run all year long (to Mookie Betts) in large part because he had a ground ball rate of 80 percent. That ground ball rate was by far the best in baseball for a pitcher with more than 60 innings pitched. Second was Blake Treinen, at 66 percent.
Britton has made a remarkable transformation. In the first three years of his career, mostly as a starting pitcher, Britton had a 4.77 ERA in 254 2/3 innings. He converted to the bullpen in 2014 and over the last three seasons he has a 1.38 ERA in 209 innings pitched.