Pitching Triple Crowns: Where Do Verlander and Kershaw Rank?

So, first off, congratulations to recently-named Cy Young winners Clayton Kershaw and Justin Verlander. Both were deserving winners, and this piece is not meant to disparage their seasons in any way (because I know that, if enough people read this, at least one person will think that it is). Rather, it more sprung from my curiosity about pitchers and the MVP.

After comparing Verlander’s Triple Crown season to the previous few, I decided that I might want to take a more in-depth look at how his season compared to other Triple Crown winners (and yes, this is partly related to why I’m not a big fan of Verlander winning the MVP). I figured the best way was to do a straight up comparison bewtween his season and the seven other Pitching Triple Crown seasons that have followed Dwight Gooden’s 1985 (and yes, it is now seven, with Kershaw’s PTC).



Really, my biggest problem with the Verlander-for-MVP talk is that I think it’s almost entirely due to his big, shiny “Wins” total. Everyone likes to say that the voters have completely gotten over Wins after the last few Cy Young awards. I don’t think that’s fully the case. I’m glad that pitchers can now win the Cy Young without lead the league in Wins and all, but I feel like if Verlander wins the MVP, it’s almost like taking a step backwards. It’s not like Verlander’s season was the most dominant pitching season in the last two decades, and it’s not like there’s a dearth of worthy AL MVP candidates this year. It just so happened that we finally have a Cy Young caliber pitcher with a great offense.

Look at Kershaw, for instance. He won a Triple Crown this year as well, and his season was more similar to Verlander’s than you might think, But the Dodger’s offense was nowhere near the Tigers’, even with should-be-MVP Matt Kemp, so Kershaw “only” got 21 wins. Consequently, he has absolutely no one campaigning for him to be NL MVP.

But again, I can keep saying that Verlander’s year doesn’t stand out among Pitching Triple Crown winners. But I decided to look at the numbers, similarly to how I did earlier. Only this time, I included Kershaw, as well as more stats. Also, I decided to assign points based on how they compared to their PTC peers; 1 point for the best, 2 points for second, and so on. The lowest score wins.

So, some quick explanations on stats. ERA+ is Baseball-Reference’s calculation of how much better a pitchers ERA is compared to the league, and taking into consideration the pitcher’s home park (105 means it’s better 5%, etc.). K/BB is strikeout-to-walk ratio. FIP is Fielding Independent Pitching, which is basically a calculation of ERA that removes things out of the pitcher’s control (like defense). ERA- and FIP- are Fangraph’s equivalent of ERA+, except they scale downward (so, a FIP- of 60 means they were 40% better than league average). Now, then, onward:

ERA
1997 Roger Clemens: 2.05
1998 Roger Clemens: 2.65
1999 Pedro Martinez: 2.07
2002 Randy Johnson: 2.32
2006 Johan Santana: 2.77
2007 Jake Peavy: 2.54
2011 Justin Verlander: 2.40
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 2.28

ERA+
1997 Roger Clemens: 222
1998 Roger Clemens: 174
1999 Pedro Martinez: 243
2002 Randy Johnson: 197
2006 Johan Santana: 162
2007 Jake Peavy: 158
2011 Justin Verlander: 170
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 163

Strikeouts
1997 Roger Clemens: 292
1998 Roger Clemens: 271
1999 Pedro Martinez: 313
2002 Randy Johnson: 334
2006 Johan Santana: 245
2007 Jake Peavy: 240
2011 Justin Verlander: 250
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 248

K/BB
1997 Roger Clemens: 4.29
1998 Roger Clemens: 3.08
1999 Pedro Martinez: 8.46
2002 Randy Johnson: 4.70
2006 Johan Santana: 5.21
2007 Jake Peavy: 3.53
2011 Justin Verlander: 4.39
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 4.59

K/9
1997 Roger Clemens: 9.95
1998 Roger Clemens: 10.39
1999 Pedro Martinez: 13.20
2002 Randy Johnson: 11.56
2006 Johan Santana: 9.44
2007 Jake Peavy: 9.67
2011 Justin Verlander: 8.96
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 9.57

BB/9
1997 Roger Clemens: 2.32
1998 Roger Clemens: 3.38
1999 Pedro Martinez: 1.56
2002 Randy Johnson: 2.46
2006 Johan Santana: 1.81
2007 Jake Peavy: 2.74
2011 Justin Verlander: 2.04
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 2.08

IP
1997 Roger Clemens: 264
1998 Roger Clemens: 234.1
1999 Pedro Martinez: 213.1
2002 Randy Johnson: 260
2006 Johan Santana: 233.2
2007 Jake Peavy: 223.1
2011 Justin Verlander: 251
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 233.1

bWAR
1997 Roger Clemens: 10.3
1998 Roger Clemens: 7.5
1999 Pedro Martinez: 8.4
2002 Randy Johnson: 8.8
2006 Johan Santana: 7.0
2007 Jake Peavy: 6.2
2011 Justin Verlander: 8.6
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 6.9

fWAR
1997 Roger Clemens: 11.1
1998 Roger Clemens: 8.8
1999 Pedro Martinez: 12.1
2002 Randy Johnson: 8.7
2006 Johan Santana: 7.3
2007 Jake Peavy: 6.1
2011 Justin Verlander: 7.0
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 6.8

HR/9
1997 Roger Clemens: 0.31
1998 Roger Clemens: 0.42
1999 Pedro Martinez: 0.38
2002 Randy Johnson: 0.90
2006 Johan Santana: 0.92
2007 Jake Peavy: 0.52
2011 Justin Verlander: 0.86
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 0.58

WHIP
1997 Roger Clemens: 1.03
1998 Roger Clemens: 1.10
1999 Pedro Martinez: 0.92
2002 Randy Johnson: 1.03
2006 Johan Santana: 1.00
2007 Jake Peavy: 1.06
2011 Justin Verlander: 0.92
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 0.98

FIP
1997 Roger Clemens: 2.25
1998 Roger Clemens: 2.65
1999 Pedro Martinez: 1.39
2002 Randy Johnson: 2.66
2006 Johan Santana: 3.04
2007 Jake Peavy: 2.84
2011 Justin Verlander: 2.99
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 2.47

ERA-
1997 Roger Clemens: 45
1998 Roger Clemens: 57
1999 Pedro Martinez: 42
2002 Randy Johnson: 54
2006 Johan Santana: 62
2007 Jake Peavy: 63
2011 Justin Verlander: 58
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 62

FIP-
1997 Roger Clemens: 50
1998 Roger Clemens: 59
1999 Pedro Martinez: 30
2002 Randy Johnson: 60
2006 Johan Santana: 69
2007 Jake Peavy: 69
2011 Justin Verlander: 73
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 66

And the final rankings:
1997 Roger Clemens: 37
1998 Roger Clemens: 68
1999 Pedro Martinez: 27
2002 Randy Johnson: 51
2006 Johan Santana: 81
2007 Jake Peavy: 95
2011 Justin Verlander: 71
2011 Clayton Kershaw: 70

These were all fine seasons, to be sure. But I have a hard time saying that Verlander’s stands out in any way; not only is it in the middle of the pack, but it’s virtually tied with Kershaw’s year. And this list doesn’t even include stand-out years that didn’t win the PTC (for example, there is a good case that Santana’s 2006 was worse than his 2004 and 2005 campaigns; there's Zack Greinke in 2009, who had less than no shot to win the PTC because he played on a horribly inept Royals team that would never get him enough pitcher wins; in addition to all of that, you could even argue that Verlander's 2009 was better than this season). Factoring in all of these reasons, the 2011 American League doesn’t seem like a great year for a starter as MVP, particularly with so many other good candidates.