egvrich wrote:Who really knows. I'm not sure there's a ton of logic behind it.
But, for Cy Young Award, I can tell you that K's is probably the most important stat from my experience. Assume two pitchers with the exact same number of wins, ERA and WHIP the award will always go to the guy with higher K total and it probably won't be close.
Strikeouts definitely matter a lot in the Cy Young vote. I'm in a 100M league at game 141 that offers an instructive list of Cy Young leaders. Here are the Cy Young leaders followed by their vote count: the slash lines including factors that seem to matter in regard to the vote: W-L / Ks / ERA /SVs. Their aren't any relievers in the group, but I includes SVs anyway, because RPs do often appear in the Cy Young listings.
R.Johnson(BLU) 133: 26-11 / 380 / 3.54 / 0
P.Martinez(BLU) 94: 22-13 / 366 / 4.32 / 0
H.Nomo(SAN) 40: 16-11 / 288 / 4.46 / 0
C.Kershaw(REN) 14: 16-8 / 196 / 3.19 /0
C.Short(NAT) 7: 20-11 / 238 /3.38 /0
Randy Johnson is pretty hard to challenge as the Cy Young leader. Great W/L record and 380 Ks (with five starts to go in the season!) plus a fine ERA. Pedro is interesting as a next choice, with a strong W/L and great Ks, but a so-so ERA. League average is 4.52. This suggests that the award vote leans more heavily on Ks & W/L than on ERA. Nomo is perhaps even more instructive. W/L percentage is good, but his total wins are well down in the rankings, and ERA is barely better than league average. But his Ks are 4th best in the league, and that seems to matter a lot. The importance of Ks is the only way to explain Nomo ranking ahead of Kershaw. I'm a little puzzled by why Kershaw outranks Short. Short has more wins and Ks and an ERA that is just a step behind Kershaw's. I can't really explain why he ranks lower.
A significant outlier is Koufax, who is not among the Cy Young candidates. Let's compare him to Nomo. Here are is slash lines: 14-20 / 308 / 3.57 /0. Sandy's ERA and K's (ranked 3) are significantly better than Nomo's, but the negative W/L clearly matters enough to keep him out of the running. Another interesting case is Mike Caldwell (both Nomo & Caldwell are on my team). Compare Caldwell's numbers to Nomo's: 22-11 / 128 / 4.32. Caldwell's W/L (by a lot) and ERA (by a little) are better than Nomo's. It would seem to be Nomo's big lead in Ks that keeps him near the top and keeps Caldwell out of the running. If I had a vote, I'd rank Caldwell ahead of Nomo, on the grounds that W/L matters more than Ks, but it's not up to me.
It seems to me that from a sabermetrical standpoint, the Ks aren't that big a deal. But real life Cy Young voters, and SOM's HAL version, seem to consider Ks as a mark of dominance, and so, as egvrich says, other thinks being equal, the guy with the most Ks is going to win.
BTW, Randy J's numbers are so dominant in this league that he also leads the MVP voting, which is pretty rare in my experience for a pitcher. And he could end up winning 30.