AL Cy Young Contenders Giving Up Lots of Hits and HRs

Question: Which AL pitcher has the most Hits Allowed this year?

Answer: CC Sabathia.

Surprising? The 27-year old Cy-Young candidate has 14 wins this year, a 3.52 ERA and is 5th in the AL in strikeouts but leads the league with 183 Hits Allowed. So what does it mean when you lead the league in hits, strike out a lot of batters, and have lots of wins? It means you throw strikes. Lots of them. In fact, his 1.4 BB/G rate is good for 2nd in the majors behind his soft-tossing teammate Paul Byrd. So, while he's #1 in Hits Allowed, his Walking rate is 2nd lowest in the league. Also, he has the best SO/BB ratio and has seen the most batters in the AL. His walk rates are looking excellent but throwing strikes tends to also result in more hittable pitches. Combined with the fact he has seen the most batters, it's not as shocking that he has given up the most hits. Nonetheless, seeing Sabathia's name at the top of the list was a surprise.

Q: Who's given up the most HRs?

A: TB starter Jamie Shields with 25. OK. But can you guess who's in 2nd with 24?

2-time Cy Young winner Johan Santana.

Arguably the best pitcher in the league for the past few years, Johan has had some trouble with the long-ball this year but that really hasn't slowed him down. Among AL starters, he's 3rd in ERA, 1st in WHIP, 2nd in K's, and 2nd in H/9. So, once again, he's very much in the thick of the Cy-Young race.

His 24 HR given up this year so far is uncharacteristically steep, as he's already tied his career high. With about a dozen more starts to go, Johan Santana will almost surely blow that number by.

So how does he keep his ERA so low and yet give up so many HR's? I dug a little deeper and looked at each HR he's given up and I found something pretty astounding. Of the 24 HR he has given up, 18 of them were solo shots. 18! So, 75% of the HR's he let up with the bases empty. The others? 5 HR with one man on, and only one HR with 2 men on, and zero grand slams.



On the surface, it looks like he has an uncanny ability to limit the runners on base when he gives up the bomb. Let's give it some perspective. At this point last year, Red Sox RHP Josh Beckett lead the league in HRs given up with 31. Of those 31, 16 were solo shots or 52% of the total. He gave up 9 HR with one on base, 4 with 2 on, and 2 grand slams. Beckett had a 5.01 ERA last year.


So, from this data, we can figure out that Beckett 31 HRs generated a total of 54 runs or a 1.74 R/HR rate. On the other side, Johan Santana's 24 HRs generated a total of 31 or 1.29 R/HR or 45% more than Beckett. To put it plainly, the homeruns that Santana gives up are much less costly than Beckett. This sheds light on how Santana maintains a 2.98 ERA and Beckett's ballooned to 5.01 .

Q: So, has anyone ever won the AL Cy Young award while leading the league in Hits Allowed? How about HR allowed?

A: Yes, once. And yes, once.

The Cy Young Award started in 1956 as a Major League award and split between NL and AL in 1967. Since 1967, only once did the AL Cy Young also lead the AL in Hits Allowed. Interestingly enough, this happened only four years ago when Roy Halladay accomplished the feat in 2003.

Baseball writers who vote for the award tend to value the wins in a pitcher's record more than the other statistics and in 2003 Halladay led the league with 21 wins. It's worth noting that Halladay received 26 of the 28 1st place votes and 97% of the points share. That's as close to a unanimous vote as you can get and yet more batters recorded hits off of him than any other pitcher in the majors! Keep in mind, he had a 1.07 WHIP (2nd in the AL), the best SO/BB ratio, the most innings pitched and most batters faced. Just like Sabathia this year, Roy was a workhorse who may have been hittable but kept his walks to a minimum.

Back to HRs Allowed. Since 1967, there was only one time when the AL Cy Young also lead the AL in HRs Allowed and it was in 1968. It hasn't happened in the 28 years since. Take a look at this...

In 1968, Detroit Tigers starter Denny McLain won the AL Cy Young and the AL MVP despite leading the league in HRs Allowed with 31. Denny McLain had a 1.96 ERA 0.905 WHIP and went 31-6 in a lead leading 330 innings pitched. 31 wins! He's the only pitcher to have over 30 wins in over 70 years. He had an absolutely outstanding ERA and yet gave up more HRs than anyone else in the league.


It seems as if he's giving up some costly HRs, much like Beckett last year with Santana posting a much safer HR line this year. The most amazing thing about McLain's year is that he gave up 48 Runs by HR and had a total of 86 Runs Allowed. That means he let up only 40 runs independent of HRs in 330 innings pitched. That is astounding. Another interesting fact from McLain's 1968 season was that he had 8 straight starts in which he let up a home run and yet, he went 6-2 over that span. What a year. I wonder if there is a stat that calculates the ERA independent of HR's allowed...

So, what does this all mean? CC Sabathia and Johan Santana's years are quite unique. I'm very interested to see how the AL Cy Young race plays out and if Sabathia and Santana continue to give up hits and gopherballs respectively. Oh, and Denny McLain was a pretty good pitcher.

Note: All the data was collected from Baseball-Reference.com.