Justin Verlander...lucky?

As we all know, the American League Cy Young race is particularly close this year with our own Justin Verlander and the Angels' Jered Weaver as front-runners. Today, I stumbled across a column by Cliff Corcoran on the Sports Illustrated website in which he gives his rankings for the Cy Young award at this point in the season. Although he ranks Verlander as slightly ahead of Weaver (which I agree with), he has this to say concerning Verlander's candidacy:

As great as Justin Verlander has been this season, if he and Jered Weaver had the same run support and luck on balls in play -- two things beyond the pitcher's control -- this race wouldn't be close, and it would be Weaver who would be way out in front.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/cliff_corcoran/08/08/cy.young/index.html#ixzz1UTx1ifE0

I could not believe he would make this claim. Especially when, in my opinion, Jered Weaver has been the luckier of the two pitchers this season. Corcoran cites that Verlander's has been lucky on balls in play and he has. His career BABIP is .287, while this season it is .232. So yes, he has gotten quite lucky in that regard. However, Weaver's rate on balls in play is also quite low (.248 this year, .277 career average). So perhaps Verlander has been slightly more lucky, but to say that Weaver hasn't been fortunate as well is a blatant lie.

Corcoran also mentions the issue of run support. Weaver (3.77 runs/game) receives on average one less run per game than Verlander (4.98 runs/game). But to me this is a non-issue because as we saw last year with Felix Hernandez, wins have been given much less value by Cy Young voters. Incidentally, CC Sabathia is in 3rd place in his rankings and he gets over 7 runs per game of support. If either Verlander or Weaver pitched for the Yankees, both may very well be sitting on 20 wins right now.

Obviously Corcoran did not put much research into this column because he would have seen that Jered Weaver has been luckier than Verlander this year. Weaver is an extreme fly ball pitcher (career 48.5% FB%), and yet his HR/FB% is only 3.5%. This is well below his career rate of 7.3%. He has been extremely fortunate in this regard as his FIP and xFIP show (2.58, 3.55). His xFIP is nearly two runs higher than his ERA!!! He has given up only 8 HR this year, while the three previous seasons saw this number up in the 20-30 range. Weaver's LOB% is also extremely high when compared to league norms and his own career average (84.1% this year, 76.7% career). Simply put, Weaver's ERA is so low because he has been extremely lucky in not giving up many home runs, stranding runners on base, and BABIP.

On the other hand, Verlander's season rates (other than BABIP) line up quite well with his career statistics. He has a strikeout rate higher than his career rate. He's walking fewer batters, producing a lower WHIP. His lower LD% shows that batters are not hitting the ball as hard off him this year as in the past, which can help explain the significant drop in opponent's batting average and BABIP.

Simply put, Jered Weaver has been luckier than Justin Verlander this year and it is ridiculous for Corcoran to insinuate otherwise. Oh...and in the article he also attributed luck as the reason for Verlander's no-hiiter versus Toronto earlier this year (citing that he only had 4 K's) despite it being the second of his career. Anyone who watched that game saw that very few balls were hit hard during that game off JV. There must be more than luck involved if a pitcher can throw multiple no-hitters in his career (and come close numerous other times).

In my mind, Justin Verlander is the clear favorite to win the 2011 AL Cy Young.