So, in what might have been the single most memorable moment of the debate (other than that time when I was genuinely shocked to hear that Sanders actually wants to let the states run his single-payer health care program, like, actually), Bernie Sanders impugned Hillary Clinton's integrity over her donations from Wall Street (despite his protestations that he did no such thing) and then Hillary responded by invoking 9/11. It was pretty cringe-worthy. In no way is this post meant to deny that. What this post is meant to do, however, is suggest that Hillary has at least a very plausible argument for why those campaign contributions shouldn't be held against her the way Sanders wants them to be.
Let's start with getting at what Hillary was actually trying to say, or at least the coherent argument behind her (again, admittedly) facepalm-level 9/11 framing. The donations from Wall Street are on the record, and they almost entirely date from her tenure as Senator from New York. Sanders' hypothesis is that the bankers gave her this money because they know that, no matter how tough she might talk on financial regulation, she won't actually do it. Hillary's suggestion to the contrary is that these were essentially donations of gratitude for her service to the state and city in the wake of 9/11. That's... that's very plausible, right? Especially bearing in mind that when we say "Wall Street donations," we don't just mean donations from the corporations themselves, or even from their executives. Donations from any of their employees count for this purpose. And it sounds pretty plausible to me to think that a lot of Wall Street bankers might have donated to any and every politician who played a meaningful role in the 9/11 rebuilding efforts. It might not be true that that's what motivated the donations, but it's a valid and on-point argument to make.
And really, she didn't even need to get that specific. She was a Senator from New York! I have a feeling that anyone in that position is going to get a lot of donations from Wall Street. I'm sure Chuck Schumer has a long trail of such donations to his name. You donate even to candidates who are relatively speaking not on your side, especially because New York is a solid blue state with little hope of electing Republicans to the Senate. And, sure, you're probably hoping for some measure of access and influence, but, contra what the moderator said, candidates aren't actually indebted to their donors. Again, it's genuinely possible that Hillary went around to various Wall Street potential contributors and said, give me some money and I'll keep an eye out for your interests going forward. That would be bad! But it's also genuinely possible that a bunch of Wall Street bankers gave her money just because she was the only game in town, and she didn't outright reject their donations.
This sort of ties in with another dimension of this whole thing. She was Senator from New York. All the financial types from Wall Street were among her constituents. There are many valid theories of representation on which it would have been proper for her to promote Wall Street's interests, insofar as they were New York's interests, as against the rest of the country. This would have to be within reason, of course; politicians shouldn't support the interests of every scumbag who happens to live in their jurisdiction. But we don't think there's anything weird about Senators from Iowa promoting corn interests or whatever. It's natural, if slightly unsavory.
The question is whether this works for or against Hillary. And that depends, I think, on whether we think that a person who has once favored a certain interest because they represented that region will always be beholden to that interest, even if they now represent a broader constituency. I tend to think the answer here is "no." Kirsten Gillibrand, Hillary's successor in the Senate, is an interesting example. She used to be a Representative from a reasonably conservative district in upstate New York, and her record in the House was reasonably moderate. That led people to be concerned that she wouldn't be as liberal as a Democratic Senator from New York ought to be. But in fact, she's been great! Because now she's not representing a constituency that requires her to be more moderate. By analogy, even if Hillary did take Wall Street contributions, and aye, even if she did take relatively pro-Wall Street stances when she was Senator from New York, that doesn't mean she would do so as President, representing the whole nation.
Now, Sanders and his supporters could try to argue it the other way. That, a candidate's once having been willing to pander to a local interest, we should always view them with suspicion on that issue. But I really don't think he wants to open up that can of worms. Because he's confessed, more or less candidly, that his relatively moderate record on guns was largely a pander to his rural Vermont constituents. Which would look an awful lot like Hillary's purported record on financial regulation--if we grant the assumption that Hillary has been soft on financial regulation historically. If we get into playing this game, it's just not at all clear that Sanders is categorically more pure than Clinton. And that's not even getting into all the companies whose employees he's received donations from over the years, a list which is less than wholly devoid of what we might think of as villains. The sum totals are a lot lower 'cause he represented Vermont, which has about as many people in it as like a city block in Manhattan, but the logic would seem to apply reasonably well.
There's also an additional level as concerns Hillary: she's a lawyer. She went to Yale Law School. (Woohoo!) She knows a lot of people in the world of law, which has a lot of overlap with the world of finance. A lot of these people probably gave to her campaign because they know her, and (perhaps unlike their bosses or the corporate entities for which they work) they honestly don't care that much about the public policy dimensions of politics.
The bottom line is that there are an awful lot of genuinely good reasons to think that Clinton's past Wall Street donations do not mean that she will be in any way beholden to the financial industry if she becomes President. Again, it might in fact be the case that she would be beholden to them. But there are good reasons for thinking otherwise, and it's basically a matter of contestable fact. And while, again, I agree that her invocation of 9/11 was extremely poorly done, there was an argument at the heart of those remarks, one that fits into the basic pattern of the more general arguments for why we shouldn't be troubled by her donations. So yes, it's totally fair game to call her out for her heavy-handed, Giuliani-esque flag-wrapping, but it's wrong to pivot from that to simply assuming that she is in fact vaguely corrupt in the was Sanders was insinuating.
Monday, November 16, 2015
Monday, November 2, 2015
Meet the (2016) Mets
Well. That sucked. I mean, first it was awesome, and then it sucked. That's true of the whole year, and also of each individual game. Good lord, has a team ever lost a World Series where it led every single game before? And four of them after the seventh inning? Jeez those Royals are obnoxious to play against. For many of the same reasons that, for a neutral fan, they're a really cool team and a great story. But... jeez. Break up the Royals, man.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Anyway, National League Champions and all, and at least this time our losing didn't mean the Yankees won. (In fact, the Mets were playing baseball 26 days later than the Yankees were, woohoo! Which is presumably a record, actually, since the playoffs were shorter in 1986.) But now the Wheel of Time turns and seasons come and pass; 2015 is over and the 2016 season, in the form of the off-season leading up to it, is upon us. So let's take a look at the 2016 New York Mets as they stand now, and some thoughts of mine about what should be done to make sure we get more meaningful October baseball last year.
Monday, October 19, 2015
On Matt Harvey and Steroids
Steroids! They're bad, right? They're "performance-enhancing drugs," and the people who use PEDs are cheaters who should be suspended for lengthy periods of time, possibly given lifetime bans, and certainly not voted into the Hall of Fame even if they did flat-out goofy things at the plate like getting on base more than half the time over a four-year span while drawing more intentional walks than strikeouts. (Yeah.)
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
But... why?
Because, y'know, "performance-enhancing drug" doesn't really narrow it down. Here's a performance-enhancing drug: water. Athletes who consume H2O on a regular basis will perform considerably better than those who don't, on account of those other guys being, y'know, dead. Maybe you say water isn't a drug, but "drug" actually has a remarkably broad definition: it's basically any chemical substance that has a physiological effect on you. Water definitely has one of those! And if that seems a rather trivial example, consider something like the Gatorade found in clubhouses, which is pretty deliberately chemically engineered to enhance performance as much as possible. I'm pretty sure they advertise about that, electrolytes and such. We want our athletes consuming chemical substances that are designed to enhance their performance. They're supposed to want to be good, after all. So what demarcates a "PED" as such?
There is, of course, an answer: a PED of the sort we like to ban is bad for you. There aren't a lot of downsides to drinking water. As far as I know there aren't major downsides to the electrolytes in Gatorade. There are, however, serious downsides to anabolic steroids, and other PEDs. These sorts of drugs essentially give players the opportunity to trade their own health for a performance enhancement. Perhaps in the abstract if each individual player could make that decision in a vacuum we might, in a nice, non-paternalistic way, let them, but of course the world doesn't work like that. There's a ton of pressure on players to be the best that they can, both because they want their teams to succeed blah blah blah and because, y'know, it gets them paid. And so in a world with a whole bunch of drugs offering health/performance trade-offs, we worry, sensibly, that everyone is going to be pressured into making those trade-offs, and we don't like that. It's sort of like how each individual worker has an incentive to offer to work for less than the other guy: it's individually rational but collectively disastrous. So we have minimum wage laws and PED bans designed to prevent these pressures from forcing everyone to give away their own welfare in an effort to out-compete the other guy.
So that's it, right? Competition is all very well and good and everyone should try to be the best, but you're not allowed to trade your own physical well-being for an edge on the field?
Rubbish. Of course you are. Hell, you're supposed to. We valorize people who do this, if they do it the right way.
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Intent and Utley
So. The Mets just lost the second game of the National League Championship Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The critical moment of the game came in the 7th inning. The Mets led 2-1, but the Dodgers had a runner at second when Chase Utley came in to pinch-hit against Noah Syndergaard. Syndergaard was clearly tiring, and Utley managed to get just enough bat on a low change-up to line it over Daniel Murphy's head into right field. Fortunately the runner from second had to hold up to make sure it wasn't caught, and so didn't score. Then Terry Collins brought in Bartolo Colon to relieve Syndergaard, and he induced a hard ground ball up the middle from Corey Seager. Murphy gloved it and flipped to Ruben Tejada, a little off-line. Tejada had to reach back for the ball as he was shuffling over to the second base bag, and then as he was spinning around to throw the ball to first Utley slammed into him, knocking him to the ground and, it transpired, breaking his fibula. Meanwhile, since the double play hadn't been completed, the runner from third scored, and the game was tied at 2.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
Ensued a truly bizarre sequence of events. While Tejada was lying on the ground in agony, Dodgers manager Don Mattingly came out and challenged the out call at second, on the grounds that Tejada hadn't touched the bag. Which, I think, he hadn't. But first of all it should've been ruled a neighborhood play, and hence not subject to review; MLB's claim that the throw pulled Tejada off the bag, and hence was reviewable, is nonsense 'cause Tejada caught the ball while he was still headed toward the bag. "Pulled off the bag" clearly implies that you are on the bag, and then an errant throw forces you to come off said bag. Second, I feel like you shouldn't be allowed to challenge on a play where your player seriously injured an opposing player. Of course, totally predictably, Adrian Gonzalez then hit a two-run double, and then Justin Turner drove him in for good measure, making it 5-2 Dodgers. That was all the scoring in the game.
My point in this post is not about what the correct disposition of the ruling on the play should have been. (Because that's obvious: it was interference, and should have been ruled an automatic double play, inning over, Mets still leading. That's not homerism; the announcers on MLB Network were saying the same thing.) Rather, I want to talk about intent. Because Chase Utley, after the game, said that he had no intent to injure Tejada, and his manager said the same thing. But you see, I'm a law student, so I know a little something about intent. The criminal law deals with different varieties of intent all the time. And if you use the criminal law framework to judge Utley, he doesn't come out looking good.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
On Yoenis Cespedes and the MVP
So. .312/.357/.675. 36 runs driven, and 33 scored, in over 36 games. 14 homers, three triples, and nine doubles over that time. Four stolen bases, never caught stealing (for what that's worth). Mostly while playing center field, and providing dynamic defense in center or in left. That's what Yoenis Cespedes has done since coming to the New York Mets. Oh, and since they acquired him (including one game after the trade but before Cespedes got to the team) the Mets are 26 and 11. They've surged from two game behind the Washington Nationals to seven games up on them, including going 6-0 against the Nationals themselves. Before they got Cespedes, Baseball Prospectus gave the Mets just a 26.8% chance of seeing the Division series; now (not even including tonight's win) that's up to 94.6%. And Cespedes has been everywhere. He had a home run and also a run-scoring double in Monday's game, hit a big two-out, bases-clearing double in last night's game to get the Mets all the way back from a 7-1 deficit to trailing by just a single run (and would later score the tying run), and tonight he absolutely crushed a hanging slider off Drew Storen for a two-run shot to give the Mets a lead they would not relinquish in the 8th.
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
It's got people, at least Mets people, talking about Yoenis Cespedes for National League Most Valuable Player. Which, y'know. He wasn't in the National League on July 30th. Gary Cohen was saying after tonight's game that he had been thinking over the Cespedes-for-MVP chatter prior to the game and was skeptical, but then Cespedes was the hero yet again, and at some point you just have to wonder. Especially since the guy who's having the absolutely bonkers season, hitting .336/.467/.657 including a heroic if futile 10-total-bases effort tonight against the Mets, is Bryce Harper, who plays for the Washington Nationals, who have just suffered a miserable collapse. Harper is unambigously the best player in baseball this year (his full-season line is better than Cespedes's line with just with the Mets), but sometimes best players in baseball don't win the MVP if their team disappoints. So that makes you start to wonder whether there's a window for a non-traditional candidacy from Yoenis. And for what it's worth, his whole-season stats are MVP-worthy, if divided between two leagues. Including his numbers with the Tigers Cespedes is hitting .298/.333/.554 with 32 homers, 37 doubles, 5 triples (for 74 total extra-base hits), 95 runs scored, and 97 runs driven in. FanGraphs credits Cespedes with 2.6 Wins Above Replacement with the Mets so far, and 6.6 WAR on the season. That's a very MVP pace; indeed, his Mets pace is at peak Ruth/Bonds levels.
Now, this is not necessarily the only kind of argument one could make, and there's certainly plenty of reason to think that past years' MVP voting practices were quite flawed, but it's interesting, I think, to look at other players who've done something like what Cespedes is up to. Here are three examples from the last decade-plus:
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Tiger 2000 >>> Jordan 2015
One of the announcers on the early coverage of the last round of the PGA Championship suggested that if Jordan Spieth were to win, for his third major championship of the year, he would have had the best year ever. Ahem. This is ridiculous. Here's what Spieth has done so far this year. He's won four tournaments, two of them majors, the others both relatively minor tournaments (the Valspar Championship and the John Deere Classic). He's finished second three times, third once, and in the top 10 thirteen times overall out of 20 tournaments. He's missed two cuts, one of them at the Players Championship, and has finished outside the top 25 four times in all. Now, that's a really, really great season.
But in 2000, Tiger Woods won, including three consecutive majors, nine total tournaments. He won his three majors by a combined 23 shots, compared to the 5 by which Spieth won his first two (and he doesn't look to add more than another couple today, if he does win). Overall Tiger won those nine tournaments by a combined margin of 46 shots, including three wins by at least 8 shots; both of Spieth's non-major wins were in playoffs, so he's got a combined margin of victory of just 5. Also, Tiger missed zero cuts; in fact, he didn't once finish outside the top 25! Only three times did he miss the top 10, compared to Spieth's seven (and counting). He led the Tour in GIR%, holes per eagle, birdies per round, scoring average (adjusted or otherwise), total driving, ball-striking, all-around ranking, par-3 scoring average, par-4 scoring average, par-5 scoring average, birdie percentage on par 4s and on par 5s, bounce-back, birdie conversion percentage, par breaker percentage, scoring average in rounds 1, 2, and 3, front and back nine scoring average, total eagles, lowest round, and, of course, the official money list. He was also World #1, by an enormous margin. Like, practically a 3-1 margin. Also he finished second in driving distance, putts per GIR, and final round scoring average, and was third in scrambling. His all-around ranking (the sum of his ranks in eight key statistics) was 40% lower than the second-place finisher, David Duval.
Spieth, meanwhile, leads the Tour in the following statistics, of those that existed in 2000: birdie average, scoring average (actual and adjusted), putts per GIR, one-putt percentage, putts per round, putts per round in round 2, lowest round, par breaker percentage, round 2 scoring average, back 9 scoring average, scoring average and birdie percentage on par 4s, lowest average, and, of course, the money list. That's a lot! But it's not as much as Tiger; in fact, Tiger led every single one of those stats except for the putting stats (and he was second in putts per GIR, the best putting stat that existed back in 2000). Meanwhile, Spieth is 55th in GIR%, 42nd in total driving (including 76th in distance and 85th in accuracy), 25th in par-3 scoring, 20th in par-5 scoring. Oh, and he's third in all-around ranking, with a figure about 30% above Will Wilcox's leading figure. (What?!)
The point is that, obviously, Jordan Spieth is a great player, and is having a great year, but he isn't coming close to dominating the Tour, either in terms of performance or in terms of statistics, the way Tiger did. If we're talking best years ever, and we're excluding Bobby Jones's 1930 for some reason and don't consider Hogan's 1953, or any of the years when he or Byron Nelson or whoever won double digits of tournaments, then there just isn't any question. Tiger's 2000 was the best year anyone has ever had, and I daresay it will continue to be for a long, long time.
But in 2000, Tiger Woods won, including three consecutive majors, nine total tournaments. He won his three majors by a combined 23 shots, compared to the 5 by which Spieth won his first two (and he doesn't look to add more than another couple today, if he does win). Overall Tiger won those nine tournaments by a combined margin of 46 shots, including three wins by at least 8 shots; both of Spieth's non-major wins were in playoffs, so he's got a combined margin of victory of just 5. Also, Tiger missed zero cuts; in fact, he didn't once finish outside the top 25! Only three times did he miss the top 10, compared to Spieth's seven (and counting). He led the Tour in GIR%, holes per eagle, birdies per round, scoring average (adjusted or otherwise), total driving, ball-striking, all-around ranking, par-3 scoring average, par-4 scoring average, par-5 scoring average, birdie percentage on par 4s and on par 5s, bounce-back, birdie conversion percentage, par breaker percentage, scoring average in rounds 1, 2, and 3, front and back nine scoring average, total eagles, lowest round, and, of course, the official money list. He was also World #1, by an enormous margin. Like, practically a 3-1 margin. Also he finished second in driving distance, putts per GIR, and final round scoring average, and was third in scrambling. His all-around ranking (the sum of his ranks in eight key statistics) was 40% lower than the second-place finisher, David Duval.
Spieth, meanwhile, leads the Tour in the following statistics, of those that existed in 2000: birdie average, scoring average (actual and adjusted), putts per GIR, one-putt percentage, putts per round, putts per round in round 2, lowest round, par breaker percentage, round 2 scoring average, back 9 scoring average, scoring average and birdie percentage on par 4s, lowest average, and, of course, the money list. That's a lot! But it's not as much as Tiger; in fact, Tiger led every single one of those stats except for the putting stats (and he was second in putts per GIR, the best putting stat that existed back in 2000). Meanwhile, Spieth is 55th in GIR%, 42nd in total driving (including 76th in distance and 85th in accuracy), 25th in par-3 scoring, 20th in par-5 scoring. Oh, and he's third in all-around ranking, with a figure about 30% above Will Wilcox's leading figure. (What?!)
The point is that, obviously, Jordan Spieth is a great player, and is having a great year, but he isn't coming close to dominating the Tour, either in terms of performance or in terms of statistics, the way Tiger did. If we're talking best years ever, and we're excluding Bobby Jones's 1930 for some reason and don't consider Hogan's 1953, or any of the years when he or Byron Nelson or whoever won double digits of tournaments, then there just isn't any question. Tiger's 2000 was the best year anyone has ever had, and I daresay it will continue to be for a long, long time.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Update on the Bartolo Colon Saberhagenometer
It's, uh, not going well. In our last update, which was also the first update, Bartolo Colon had five wins on the season against just one walk. Since then, though, he's got a 5-10 record and has walked 13 batters, dropping him to 10 wins and 14 walks on the season. His Saberhagen score is, thus, -4. Now, he's closed that gap a little bit recently, with no walks in his last four starts, one of which he won. And if he were to pitch really really well the rest of the way it wouldn't be crazy to see him climb back toward positive territory here. But it's really not very likely. If you want a Saberhagen, you really can't afford three-walk games, or back-to-back multi-walk games, or five starts in a row with a walk. Bartolo's had all three (and none of them overlapped). So, it's not looking good.
However! Five of his walks have been of the intentional variety, and in a sense it's not really fair to penalize him for them. In a sense it is, as it was his pitching that created the need to issue the walk, but they also don't represent his inability to throw strikes or anything like that. So if we define the Modified Saberhagen, defined as Wins minus (Walks minus Intentional Walks), then Colon is still at +1, and has a much more reasonable shot at it. Interestingly, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994, so his Modified Saberhagen score was identical to his normal Saberhagen score at +1. Of course, the Modified Saberhagen isn't really as impressive as the proper Saberhagen, but it's still got some validity.
It's a bit trickier to get a sense of who else has pulled off the Modified Saberhagen, since the "unintentional walks" stat often isn't kept as its own thing. I was able to make a rough stab at it using some custom FanGraphs leaderboards, though, which reveal two other completed seasons that just barely pulled it off: 2005 Carlos Silva (9 W, 9 BB, 2 IBB) and 2014 Phil Hughes (16 W, 16 BB, 1 IBB). Then there's 1997 Greg Maddux, who won 19 games and walked 20 batters, but six of those were intentional, giving him a Modified Saberhagen of +5! As much as all the other Saberhageners put together, counting 2015 Bartolo Colon. Maddux finished second in the Cy Young Award voting that year, to Pedro Martinez's last season with the Expos, and deservedly so, but only because peak Pedro was insane.
Now, this list only includes players who qualified for the ERA title and who played at a time when they keep track of intentional walks. So there may be others who have pulled off the Modified Saberhagen who don't show up here. (I could check for those with fewer innings, but that would just be more work so I'm not going to.) I think it's pretty clear that the Modified Saberhagen is orders of magnitude less impressive than the proper one, even if Saberhagen himself didn't care about the difference. Still, at least Colon's season isn't entirely lost.
However! Five of his walks have been of the intentional variety, and in a sense it's not really fair to penalize him for them. In a sense it is, as it was his pitching that created the need to issue the walk, but they also don't represent his inability to throw strikes or anything like that. So if we define the Modified Saberhagen, defined as Wins minus (Walks minus Intentional Walks), then Colon is still at +1, and has a much more reasonable shot at it. Interestingly, Saberhagen had no intentional walks in 1994, so his Modified Saberhagen score was identical to his normal Saberhagen score at +1. Of course, the Modified Saberhagen isn't really as impressive as the proper Saberhagen, but it's still got some validity.
It's a bit trickier to get a sense of who else has pulled off the Modified Saberhagen, since the "unintentional walks" stat often isn't kept as its own thing. I was able to make a rough stab at it using some custom FanGraphs leaderboards, though, which reveal two other completed seasons that just barely pulled it off: 2005 Carlos Silva (9 W, 9 BB, 2 IBB) and 2014 Phil Hughes (16 W, 16 BB, 1 IBB). Then there's 1997 Greg Maddux, who won 19 games and walked 20 batters, but six of those were intentional, giving him a Modified Saberhagen of +5! As much as all the other Saberhageners put together, counting 2015 Bartolo Colon. Maddux finished second in the Cy Young Award voting that year, to Pedro Martinez's last season with the Expos, and deservedly so, but only because peak Pedro was insane.
Now, this list only includes players who qualified for the ERA title and who played at a time when they keep track of intentional walks. So there may be others who have pulled off the Modified Saberhagen who don't show up here. (I could check for those with fewer innings, but that would just be more work so I'm not going to.) I think it's pretty clear that the Modified Saberhagen is orders of magnitude less impressive than the proper one, even if Saberhagen himself didn't care about the difference. Still, at least Colon's season isn't entirely lost.
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