The finalists for the 2024 MLB major awards have been announced,, and as usual, some guys got shafted in the process.
Not that they necessarily deserved to be winners, mind you. However, they did deserve the recognition that accrues to finalists following brilliant seasons. In most cases, they were beaten out by better-known players from larger cities and more prominent teams.
The shame is that for some of these guys, it may be their best chance at award fame.
Hunter Greene, Cincinnati Reds, National League Cy Young
The award finalists for the NL Cy Young are Zack Wheeler, Chris Sale and Paul Skenes, all well-known pitchers with high 2024 visibility and solid credentials.
In some respects Hunter Greene, however, was better than any of them.
In WAR, Greene was the league leader at +6.3. Granted, Sale (+6.2), Wheeler (+6.1) and Skenes (+5.9) were all close, but the Cincinnati Reds hurler led the pack.
Greene’s 2.75 ERA trailed the three nominees, and perhaps he was downgraded by voters for a relatively light workload (150 innings). However, Skenes was nominated ahead of him despite only pitching 133 innings.
Greene’s 9-5 record looks a bit puny when put alongside Sale (18-3) or Wheeler (16-7). But let’s be fair here; they had a lot more help from their teammates than Greene got. The table below shows 2024 average run support for Greene and the three finalists:
Pitcher | Run Support (average per game) |
|---|---|
Chris Sale | 5.4 |
Paul Skenes | 5.3 |
Zach Wheeler | 4.6 |
Hunter Greene | 3.7 |
The sexy category for Cy Young candidates is strikeouts. Skenes had 11.5 per nine innings, explaining his finalists status. Sale had 11.4. But Greene, at 10.1, was right there with Wheeler (10.1). By all accounts, Greene deserved a higher finish in Cy Young voting.
Matt Chapman, San Francisco Giants, National League MVP
This complaint is academic in nature. Shohei Ohtani is going to win the award, probably unanimously, and Francisco Lindor may be a unanimous runner-up. So, what we’re really talking about here is who deserves to be the third finalist.
The voters settled on Arizona’s versatile Ketel Marte. He set personal bests in home runs (36), RBIs (95) and OPS+ (155).
That's all well and good. However, injuries limited Marte to 136 games, and an injured player has no value. Chapman, in comparison, played 154 games. So, although Marte beat Chapman in most of the familiar statistical categories, Chapman beat Marte in the most telling one: contribution to victory.
Thanks largely to his greater playing time but also to his superior defensive play, Chapman posted a 7.1 WAR, nearly a full point better than Marte’s 6.3. It's understandable why the voters leaned the way they did, but Chapman's great season deserved more recognition than it got.
Cole Ragans, American League Cy Young Award
As with the question of who should be the third NL MVP nominee, the question of the third AL Cy Young finalist is simply for fun. Detroit’s Tarik Skubal will justly win. Ragans’ teammate, Seth Lugo, and Cleveland reliever Emmanuel Clase were also nominated.
The case for nominating a reliever ahead of a good starter almost always boils down to one number: Win Probability Added. Because they tend to pitch in what are perceived to be high leverage situations, that number can greatly favor closers.
In this instance, Clase’s 6.4 Win Probability Added dwarfs Ragans’ 2.3 WPA.
The rest of the story, however, all favors Ragans. He had a 4.9 WAR, a half point better than Clase’s 4.4.
Likewise, Ragans pitched 186 innings and faced 762 opposing batters. Clase isn’t even close in those categories, at 74 innings pitched and 270 opposing batters faced.
Clase’s 47 saves and 0.61 ERA are certainly impressive, and probably the reasons why he got his nomination. Well, that and the fact that the Royals already have a nominee in Lugo.
But Ragans had an ERA in the low 3s over a lot more innings. And although closers often have an edge in the very sexy strikeout category, Ragans wins that one, too, at a league-leading 10.8 K/9 compared with Clase’s 8.0.
Jarren Duran, Boston Red Sox, AND Gunnar Henderson, Baltimore Orioles, AL MVP
Aaron Judge will win and Bobby Witt will finish second in this race, and there should be no argument with that placing. So the issue, yet again, comes down to who’s in third.
The voters went with the safe pick, nominating Yankees outfielder Juan Soto. That’s understandable, as Soto led the league in runs scored, produced a .989 OPS and played a key role on the AL pennant winner.
But either Henderson or Duran was arguably a better choice.
Player | Average | OPS | WAR | WPA | DRS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Duran | .285 | .834 | 8.7 | 2.4 | 23.0 |
Henderson | .281 | .893 | 9.1 | 3.0 | 5.0 |
Soto | .288 | .989 | 7.9 | 5.9 | 1.0 |
Largely due to his power and patience at the plate, Soto comes out on top in OPS and Win Probability Added. Yet Duran is far and away the superior outfielder, and since defense is a component of WAR, he and Henderson both lead Soto in that category.
The obvious problem with Duran’s candidacy is that while Soto was making a splash in Gotham, he was playing for a .500 Boston team. As always, it simply appears that voters continue to dig the long ball. Soto hit 41 homers, four more than Henderson and nearly twice as many as Duran’s 21.