Analysis: Darvish or Bauer? Depends On Where You Look
While the race for this year’s AL Cy Young has been one of the most anticlimactic in recent history, the race in the Senior Circuit has been a completely different story. Over the course of the 2020 season, there have been plenty of great pitching performances and many candidates coming and going throughout the National League. But now, the race comes down to just two main contestants: Yu Darvish of the Cubs and Trevor Bauer of the Reds. Both have put together fantastic runs over the course of the 60-game season, but only one can ultimately win the award. So, the question is: who’s better? It’s a seemingly simple question, but the answer in this case turns out to be quite complicated.
See, while both have been fantastic, they have been fantastic in different ways. Whereas Bauer is a power pitcher who focuses on limiting hard contact and racking up as many strikeouts as possible, Darvish relies on his endless arsenal of pitches to fool hitters and keep the ball on the ground as much as possible. And because they have a different approach, they each excel at different aspects of pitching that come through in different areas of the stat sheet, which makes comparing the two rather difficult. So here, I will attempt to break down the debate between the two, starting with a simple analysis and gradually working into more granular analytics.
The Basics
Let’s start with the simple stats, which is where Bauer seems to thrive. Not only did he lead the National League in ERA (1.73 to Darvish’s 2.01), but he also led in strikeouts (100) and BABIP (.215). Additionally, he gave up way fewer hits than Darvish did this season, and it wasn’t particularly close (41 for Bauer, 59 for Darvish). Now, this isn’t to say that Darvish has been a slouch in these areas. In fact, he has racked up 93 strikeouts of his own this season, and he’s given up only 1 more run than Bauer has. But ultimately, Bauer owns the headline stats, which is why he has mostly dominated the Cy Young conversation. Some people may point out here that Darvish has 8 wins compared to Bauer’s 5, but considering that pitcher wins are irrelevant and almost completely useless for measuring anything, that’s really a moot point. Bauer has the better numbers here.
Advantage: Bauer
Rate Stats
Venturing beyond the baseball card statistics a bit, looking at a pitcher’s basic rate stats can tell you a lot about how he works and the areas in which he excels. This is particularly the case for both of these pitchers. For example, Darvish’s success in 2020 has mainly come from a major increase in his command. Before this season, he was averaging roughly 3 walks per 9 innings for his career. In 2020, he has nearly halved that, posting an elite 1.66 BB/9. Combined with his typically great strikeout rate (11.01 K/9) and ground ball rate (43.2%), the result of this command shift has been fewer free passes, fewer fly balls, and a lot fewer home run from those fly balls (his 0.59 HR/9 was third in the majors).
Bauer, on the other hand, is much more of a three-true-outcomes pitcher. As mentioned previously, he does not give up very many base hits. More often than not, he will either strike out the hitter, walk the hitter, or give up a home run. And that has been especially the case this season. While Darvish’s 11.01 K/9 was fantastic, Bauer’s 12.33 was downright phenomenal. And though it is quite a bit higher than Darvish’s, his 2.10 BB/9 is still quite good and his strikeout rate is still high enough for his K%-BB% to be better than Darvish (29.9% to 26.6%). For Bauer though, his main issue has been the home run ball. His HR/9 (1.11) was abnormally high compared to other elite pitchers, and it was his main source of runs allowed throughout the 2020 season. Part of this is due to his home ballpark (more on that later), but it also can be attributed to the fact that almost half of his batted balls were fly balls (47.8 FB%).
While both have their places to shine in this area of the stat sheet, I would give Darvish the upper hand here for his overall ability to command his pitches, maintain swing-and-miss stuff, and keep the ball in the ballpark.
Advantage: Darvish
WAR
Now, let’s start to get in the weeds a little bit. Since we are talking about who is more valuable to their team, let’s start with a look at both players’ WAR values. Looking at FanGraphs WAR, there seems to be a clear favorite. Darvish holds the lead here by half a win - 3.0 to 2.5. In fact, by fWAR, Darvish was the second most valuable pitcher in baseball, trailing Shane Bieber by just 0.2 wins. Meanwhile, Bauer actually finishes behind Jacob deGrom in this metric, making him third in the NL. That being said, Baseball Reference WAR tells a different story. Here, both pitchers are essentially tied, with Bauer at 2.7 and Darvish at 2.6.
At the outset, the difference between Darvish’s fWAR and bWAR may seem confusing, but given the differences between the two metrics, this discrepancy actually makes sense. While both metrics are quite similar, the main difference between the two is that fWAR bases its measurement on FIP, while bWAR uses a variation of Runs Allowed. As I will discuss later, Darvish has a noticeably better FIP than Bauer does, which helps him quite a bit with his fWAR. But on the bWAR side, both pitchers gave up almost the same number of runs (17 for Bauer, 18 for Darvish) in almost the same number of innings (73.0, 76.0), so it makes sense why they end up with very similar bWAR numbers as well.
But which of these measurements is better? Well, according to bWAR, Max Fried, Zach Wheeler, Antonio Senzatella, and Zac Gallen have all had better seasons than Bauer and Darvish in the NL. Now, these four have certainly had good performances this year, but I don’t think anyone in their right minds would rate their seasons as being better than the two frontrunners. Meanwhile, the Fangraphs leaderboard is much more in line with what we have been seeing on the mound (Bieber, Darvish, deGrom, Bauer, and Lamet round out the top five here). As such, I’m more inclined to agree with fWAR in this case, and I would give Darvish the slight edge here.
Advantage: Darvish
Ballpark
Here, we come to one of the big elephants in the room: that being that Bauer’s home field, Great American Ballpark, is one the most notorious hitter’s parks in baseball. And when it comes to a pitcher like Bauer who lives and dies by the fly ball, a park like this can be a huge impediment. In fact, Bauer has given up twice as many homers pitching at home (6) as he has on the road, despite pitching an equal number of innings. But even with this added run production, he has managed a 2.08 ERA at home this year. Not only that, but he has added on to this performance by posting an astounding 1.32 ERA away from home this season.
Speaking of ballparks, it would be negligent of me not to mention that Wrigley field has technically been the best pitcher’s park this season by ESPN’s park factor rankings. However, this is not as big of an impediment to Darvish’s case as one may think. In fact, Wrigley was actually a top-ten hitter’s park in 2017 and 2018 by the same metric - and it is generally regarded as such despite the numbers from this year. Additionally, Darvish was good at home, but he was even better away from Wrigley. Yes, most of his innings were at home, but in the 20 innings he pitched outside the Friendly Confines, he only gave up a single run. By the way, that includes six shutout innings at Great American.
But with all that being said, Bauer still gets the edge here, as he had to overcome the negative effects of his ballpark the most and he did so with flying colors.
Advantage: Bauer
Batted Balls
While both pitchers have been fantastic this year, they both have had major Achilles heels that have come back to bite them. For Darvish, it has been his hard hit rate, and for Bauer, it’s been his home runs. However, the two complement each other in that they excel where their opposition is weak. This is most clearly seen in the batted ball profiles for each pitcher.
For example, Darvish may not have given up many homers this season, but he has given up a lot of hard contact. While his ground ball and fly ball rates match up quite well against Bauer’s (43.2%/30.8% vs. 34.4%/47.8%), his line drive rate is much higher (25.9% & 17.8%, respectively), which has led to him giving up more base hits. It also doesn’t help that his hard hit rate has been much higher than Bauer’s (34.2% compared to 25.3%). That being said, it is important to note that both pitchers have nearly identical average exit velocities (88.7, 88.5 MPH).
Meanwhile, Bauer has had the opposite issues of Darvish. He has been fantastic at limiting hard contact in his starts this year, leading to a much better soft hit rate (20.3% compared to 15.0%) and a greater infield fly ball rate (14.7% compared to 8.8). However, his penchant for fly balls has led to giving up quite a few homers. In fact, not only has he allowed more fly balls than Darvish, but way more of his fly balls have become home runs (12.0% HR/FB rate, compared to Darvish’s 8.8%). But because he limits the line drive and hard contact, he does not give up many hits and subsequently doesn’t give up many runs when someone does put one out against him. For that reason, I have to give Bauer the slight edge here.
Advantage: Bauer
Advanced ERA
Finally, since we are looking at two pitchers here, it only makes sense to conclude this analysis with a breakdown of the variants of ERA and ERA estimators that may give us some insight on this debate.
ERA-
Starting off simple, ERA- puts ERA into a greater context by adjusting it for park factors and normalizing it on a scale where 100 is league average and a lower score is better. As one might expect - considering the lead he enjoys in ERA and the ballpark he pitches in - Bauer holds the advantage here with an ERA- of 38 (62 percentage points better than league average) compared to Darvish’s 45. As such, this doesn’t tell us much more than ERA already does.
FIP and xFIP
Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, is a metric that’s exactly what it sounds like: it attempts to measure how good a pitcher’s performance is outside the contributions of their defense. In other words, it takes away the advantage of having a good defense behind you and takes away the penalty of having a bad one. It does so mainly by focusing on the events the pitcher controls: strikeouts, walks, HBPs, and home runs. The end result is a look at what a pitcher’s ERA should be based solely on their performance alone.
This is where Bauer’s home runs start to cost him. Whereas he had a 1.73 ERA, his FIP was way higher - up to 2.88. Compared to Darvish, it’s not even close - his FIP stands at 2.23. Given how FIP works, this makes a lot of sense, as Darvish has largely kept up with Bauer in strikeouts, been better at avoiding walks, and been way better at avoiding the long ball. In fact, even assuming a league average home run rate (which is what xFIP does), Darvish still holds the advantage - 2.82 to 3.25.
SIERA and DRA
SIERA (Skill Interactive ERA) and DRA (Deserved Runs Allowed) are both more advanced models of pitching performance that build upon the framework of metrics like FIP, but attempt to add in more real-world context. With SIERA, this takes the form of the batted ball statistics discussed earlier; with DRA, this takes the form of weighted on-field events (similar to wOBA for hitters). In both cases, these metrics showcase Darvish’s weaknesses. SIERA does not like Darvish due to his hard hit rate and DRA does not like him due to how many hits he gives up. Meanwhile, both metrics like Bauer more because he gets a lot more soft contact and gives up fewer hits in general. As such, Bauer’s DRA- (similar to ERA-) of 59 and SIERA of 2.94 are better than Darvish’s measurements of 67 and 3.14, respectively.
Ultimately, every advanced stat ends up being biased toward one set of metrics or another. The ones you prefer to use in your argument tend to reflect the metrics you prioritize when determining who you think is best. I think there’s plenty here for both sides to make a good case for and against each other.
Advantage: Draw
Conclusion
I knew that it was a pretty close race, but this turned out to be a harder choice than I initially imagined. In my 2020 Awards article, I gave the nod to Darvish. But this deep dive has actually made me think much harder about that initial assessment. Even beyond the flashy headline stats, Bauer’s underlying metrics - from his hard contact rate to his road stats to his K%-BB% - were fantastic this season, and definitely deserving of the award if he gets it. I can definitely understand why people would choose him over Darvish.
Personally though, I think I have to stick with my guns here and stay with Darvish. Yes, Bauer’s strikeout dominance, lack of hard contact, and better ERA make him a tempting choice (and he will likely win). But for me, I believe that Darvish kept up with Bauer’s strengths (strikeouts, runs allowed, average exit velo) while simultaneously excelling at the areas where Bauer wasn’t as good (command of his arsenal, keeping the ball in the ballpark, inducing ground balls), leading to a better overall performance that was ultimately reflected in the WAR totals. That being said, this was more of a photo finish in my mind than a runaway victory.
At the end of the day, both men had fantastic seasons that they should be proud of, and I’m thankful for them giving us such an interesting debate heading into awards season this year.