Ivan Nova Got Jobbed in R.O.Y. Vote

Give me a guy who wins over one that puts up fancy stats.

The American League just gave its Rookie of the Year (ROY) award to Tampa Bay pitcher Jeremy Hellickson. He’s a promising talent and put up impressive numbers everywhere except where it really matters: wins. He was just 13-10.

I mean no disrespect to Hellickson, but this is a travesty on par with giving Felix Hernandez a Cy Young Award for a 13-12 record. In fact, it may be worse because Tampa Bay is a decent team and the Mariners simply stink. I know these prizes are individual awards, but baseball is still a team game and the ultimate measure of any single player’s worth is whether he helps the collective to victory, not whether he is the lone rose in a field of thorns. (Look at some of the gaudy numbers put up by the 2011 Red Sox and you’ll appreciate the importance of team efforts!)

This brings me to the guy who got jobbed: Yankees pitcher Ivan Nova. Hellickson had more strikeouts (117 to 98) as one might expect from a power pitcher versus a finesse ground ball pitcher; he also had more walks (72 to 57), but a lower earned run average (2.95 to 3.70). I suppose one could make the case for Hellickson, except that Nova went 16-4. That is, Nova was +12 and Hellickson was just +3. To put a point on it, anyone who knows anything about baseball knows this: without Ivan Nova the Yankees wouldn’t have made the postseason. He rescued a pitching staff that was as thin as hobo soup.

The Stat Heads would retort that most of Hellickson’s other numbers were better, and so they were. But explain to me how Nova finishes fourth in the balloting. Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer finished second by hitting .293 with 19 homers and 78 RBIs–a nice season, but hardly Mickey Mantle numbers. And the Royals needed him to lose 91 games? And then there’s the third-place finisher, Mark Trumbo of the (Wherever the Hell in California) Angels who hit just .254 and whiffed 128 times to go with his 29 homers and 87 RBIs. This guy was more valuable to the Angels–who finished ten games out of the money–than Nova to the Yankees?

Excuse me if I’m seeing anti-Yankees bias going on here. Let’s see, Hideki Matsui finishes second in the 2003 ROY race to the immortal Angel Berroa and C.C. Sabathia wins 21 games in 2010 but loses the Cy Young to a guy one game over .500. Hmmm…. Are we playing Fantasy Baseball or the Real McCoy? In the latter, what matters is who wins. I’ll take a guy who wins 21 games with a higher ERA every season over a guy with great stuff who wins 13. And I’ll take one who is +12 over one who is +3. And spare me the spiel on who surrounds you on the roster; a pitcher (as opposed to a thrower) adjusts his stuff to what is needed; you don’t need to throw like it’s 2-1 if the score is 7-2.

I look forward to the day when real baseball fans invite the numbers wonks to catch batting practice without gear–maybe a few foul tips would knock some sense into them. As for now, I could stomach Nova as the ROY runner-up, but fourth? Do the people who vote these awards actually watch the games?