Last week, I wrote about Cam Schlittler’s outside case to be AL MVP. Many outlets have since followed my lead, which tickles the old ego, but really the fallout from that story has been more personal. I always try to be someone that is open to changing his mind, open to new information leading to a new belief or value. Thinking about the season Cam’s had, and his potential to receive MVP, has me embracing a new value. I’m breaking up with fWAR.
FanGraphs WAR has been, to this point, the gold standard
of single statistics; if you could only have one, it was the one I’d want. Including Statcast’s defensive metrics for position players was critical for me — it’s the best measure we have for something as complex as defense, so including it in the equation is critical. Basing pitcher value on a FIP basis mattered; it’s the best counter of what a pitcher is actually responsible for, and unlike the conventional Internet narrative, FIP does measure what actually happened. It measures your performance based on strikeouts, walks and home runs. Those things happened!
But Cam Schlittler has a 1.95 ERA, and bWAR starts by taking runs allowed and working backwards from there. By that metric, Cam is the third-best player in all of baseball, second-best pitcher behind Cristopher Sánchez, more than a full win ahead of those immoral hurlers Jacob Misiorowski and Dylan Cease.
Take Cam’s last three starts, this madcap September where he’s worked 21.0 innings. Yes they’ve come against the Angels, Rockies and Mets but I don’t care about that right now, I care about the 0.86 ERA in that stretch. Those three outings have built some distance between himself and Cease for the Cy Young award, but here’s the thing with FIP. Cam’s so good down the stretch that the only thing that can really get in his way is Cam himself — the sometimes-questionable Yankee defense can’t let him down if he strikes out 32 percent of men he faces.
Still, the two home runs and two walks means Schlittler’s FIP over those three starts is 2.05. Now 2.05 is an excellent FIP, Bob Gibson himself had only one season with a FIP lower than that. Still, back-of-the-envelope math tells us that 0.86 is better than 2.05, and has contributed to more of Cam’s bWAR lead than his fWAR lead.
They say it’s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all, but I don’t even feel like I’m losing anything. bWAR captures perhaps the most important thing about a singular Yankee season, that Cam Schlittler is the best pitcher in the AL and just a hair off the best pitcher in the game itself. fWAR is dead, long live bWAR.
