BBWAA member explains bold decision to leave Yu Darvish off Cy Young ballot

Yu Darvish finished second in the NL Cy Young voting, but one writer left him off the ballot altogether

Darvish is among the best pitchers in all of baseball, and finally pitched up to his high pricetag this season in Chicago. The Cubs won the NL Central before losing to the Miami Marlins in the Wild Card round. Darvish was at little fault for this, of course, as Miami’s voodoo magic always seems to sting North Siders worse than most.

In all, Darvish finished the shortened season near the top of most statistical categories in the National League. He was .3 of an ERA point behind eventual Cy Young winner Trevor Bauer, but still allowed just 2.01 runs per nine innings. For most, Darvish and Jacob deGrom were a toss-up for second and third on the ballot behind the former Cincinnati Reds ace turned free agent hurler Bauer.

One ball, filled out by the Orange County Register’s JP Hoornstra, left Darvish off entirely.

How could someone leave Darvish off the ballot?

Per usual, this conundrum involves advanced metrics. Hoornstra relied heavily on a metric called DRA, which takes matters into account that ERA cannot possibly measure. Per Hoornstra, DRA “attempts to account for all the things a pitcher can’t control: how well his catcher frames each pitch, how well his defense performs when he pitches, the ballpark he plays in, the quality of the batters he faced, etc.”

Darvish’s DRA placed him behind the likes of Bauer, deGrom and Aaron Nola, among others. The Cubs hurler also pitched against the weaker Central divisions, which boosted his numbers considerably.

Fair or not, there was a science behind Hoornstra’s madness. Not putting Darvish on the ballot, though, feels like a stretch given how dominant he was in limited action in 2020.