Craig forgive me for using in-season WAR as a measuring stick, but it was hard not to notice that Price merely ranked as the best pitcher in all of baseball, which… is good. That’s a good thing. Ricky Bobby would be proud: He’s first, and everybody else is last. (As of today, he’s actually in second place, so just trust me when I say he was in first on Monday.)

ESPN’s award predictor thinks Porcello is the favorite, but I think the historical voting patterns that “predict” these things are likely out of date. I don’t think Porcello will win, or I didn’t until last night, when it became a stronger possibility, both statistically and narrative-wise. Now I’m not so sure about being not so sure, which serves me right for daring to write this a day early… but I still think Price is a better candidate, good stories be damned.

I also do not think Price will win, because he has a high enough ERA to be disqualifying to most voters. It’s currently 3.91, which is not good. It is basically the only statistic of his that is not good, and while we have moved past win-loss records as singularly qualifying or disqualifying for the award, I don’t think we’re there for ERA — nor have we needed to be, as for the most part there have been better pitchers vying for the award with better lines than Price’s this year.

But this year is not most years, and this year Price may actually be the best option despite “earning” nearly four runs per nine innings for his opponents. You would likely not be reading this website if you didn’t believe in the vitality of advanced stats, so if you believe a 4 ERA is a nonstarter for a Cy Young candidate, you’re best off stopping now.

If you are still here, it turns out that by simply by replacing ERA with anything better turns Price’s season into something special. BP uses Deserved Run Average — which, semantically speaking, seems no worse or different than Earned Run Average, but it’s best I don’t get into the weeds on that one. By DRA, Price is, at the time of this writing, in a virtual tie with Chris Sale at the top of the AL leaderboard. That is a fancy way of saying he’s behind by a few hundredths of a point. Sue me.

Porcello’s start last night really threw me for a loop, but it’s still clear that if you look at any numbers beyond ERA (which I’ve covered) and wins (to which we ought to be immune), Price is a better choice than the Pork Chop. Why don’t we call Porcello “Pork Chop,” by the way? Seems like a missed opportunity. Anyhoo… adding in DRA, here’s Price versus P-Chop, which seems pretty relevant today.

Porcello: 201.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 3.48 DRA, 167:29 K:BB ratio, 21-4 record, 4.5 WAR

Price: 211.2 IP, 3.91 ERA, 2.72 DRA, 217:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.7 WAR

Right so… Price has been better. It’s close, but he’s been better. It’s not surprising that we’ve missed it, given Porcello’s wonderful season-long redemption story and the early hole from which Price had to extract himself, but we’ve certainly missed it. So again, the question is: How?

For a team perpetually short on starting pitchers, Price’s health has been a skill, just as it has been for his entire career.

The answer is that we take volume for granted, and one steadily accumulates WAR by going out there every so-and-so number of days and doing the damn thing. Price has done exactly this. For a team perpetually short on starting pitchers, his health has been a skill, just as it has been for his entire career. The same is true of Pork Chop, but he doesn’t lead the league in innings pitched — Price does, even after Porcello added nine innings to his total last night. This may not make Price a great Cy Young Award candidate, even if it makes him more like the actual, workhorse, Cy Young.

Let’s expand our look from Price versus Porcello to both of them versus the rest of the field. I’m excluding Zack Britton because, frankly, he’s not relevant and anyone telling you differently is trying to sell you something. I’m also excluding Jose Quintana, because his numbers don’t stack up, no matter how underrated everyone thinks he is. Finally, I’m excluding J.A. Happ because I want to and I don’t think anyone will really care. Here’s my list:

Porcello: 201.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 3.48 DRA, 167:29 K:BB ratio, 21-4 record, 4.5 WAR

Price: 211.2 IP, 3.91 ERA, 2.72 DRA, 217:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.7 WAR

Sale: 210.2 IP, 3.03 ERA, 2.65 DRA, 215:44 K:BB ratio, 16-8 record, 6.8 WAR

Hamels: 186 IP, 3.42 ERA, 2.74 DRA, 187:75 K:BB ratio, 14-5 record, 5.8 WAR

Kluber: 204.2 IP, 3.12 ERA, 2.97 DRA, 215:54 K:BB ratio, 17-9 record, 5.9 WAR

Quickly, let’s look at the three non-Sox candidates to see how Price stacks up.

In the case of Sale, outside of ERA, his numbers and Price’s are virtually identical. It’s actually kind of creepy how similar they are? Sale probably makes a better candidate by being a more exciting pitcher at this stage of his career, but he’s also on a crappy team (which, whatever) and placed himself at the center of two patently absurd scandals this year, which is not endearing to me, given how stupid they were. I’d say Sale is a marginally better candidate in a vacuum, but we don’t vote in a vacuum.

In the case of Hamels, his low IP and high walk totals — he leads the league in walks! — are quickly disqualifying in this context. He is a fine pitcher having a fine season, but he hasn’t been the best.

Kluber is still my favorite to win the award, as he has pretty much everything going for him, or did until last night’s Porcello start. There is a real argument that Price has been as good as Kluber or better — more innings, more strikeouts, fewer walks — but it’s hard enough to isolate even in this context, where I’ve taken pains to spell it out, and will likely be invisible to voters. This is fine: Kluber is great and is the clear-cut best pitcher on a first-place team, unlike both Porcello and Price, who must contend with one another, and unlike Hamels, who hasn’t put in the innings to qualify in this columnist’s opinion, has walked too many people, and won’t win anyway.

All of this is academic, of course. Price won’t really be considered because of biases both old and new, and logic both sound and flawed. He knew that his contract came with sky-high expectations, and it’s his “failure” to meet certain high standards seems to have disqualified him early on from anything better than a fifth-place finish or so. That’s too bad, because he’s had the strongest season of all Sox pitchers, and maybe the strongest in the American League. Believe it. 

Photo by Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports Images

If you look at the Red Sox rotation’s ERA it’s easy to see how bad they’ve been. They’re last in the AL in starters’ ERA and 28th in baseball ahead of only Colorado and Philadelphia. There! Case closed! But ERA isn’t perfect. So if you look at better indicators of pitcher quality than ERA, like DRA or FIP, you’ll see that Boston’s rotation wasn’t the worst at all. In fact, they were in the middle of the pack amongst their leaguemates. Red Sox starters collectively were 12th in baseball in DRA and 14th in baseball in FIP. That’s about what we were all hoping for at the beginning of the year! A decent pitching staff and a great offense and the Red Sox would be playoff bound, except DRA and FIP are measurements of pitcher quality, not measurements of what happened. What happened was the Red Sox gave up a ton of runs in part because of their pitching staff but in part because their defense is bad. I discussed this before in this space. Boston’s defense is measured in ERA, so a significant component part of “We need an ace!” is “Our defense is awful!”

The truth is Red Sox can win without an ace just as they can lose with one. Think about the teams that had aces this year. The Reds had Johnny Cueto and were forced to deal him because they were terrible. Cueto was very good but he couldn’t fix the rest of Cincinnati’s starting staff. The White Sox have Chris Sale who probably deserves the AL Cy Young Award. The White Sox are 16.5 games out of first place in their division. Sale couldn’t fix the team’s defense or their hitting or, for that matter, the back of their rotation. The White Sox are terrible whether they have Chris Sale or not.

The argument goes, the Red Sox need an ace to improve their starting staff, but if the whole staff is deficient, what will one ace do?

An ace isn’t a cure-all, and it’s being treated as such around these parts. You don’t even have to leave Boston to see this. Last year the Red Sox were awful, but Jon Lester was amazing! The Red Sox ended up dealing him for a variety of reasons but even his awesomeness wasn’t enough to save the team or the rest of the rotation. The team would undoubtedly be better this season with Jon Lester than they are now, but Lester has been worth 1.3 wins by WARP and 3.0 wins by fWAR. Add either to the Red Sox win total now and they’d still be utterly irrelevant in the context of making the post-season. The argument goes, the Red Sox need an ace to improve their starting staff, but if the whole staff is deficient, what will one ace do?

The Red Sox need for an ace is founded upon the idea that the entire starting staff pitched badly this season. It’s almost like we’ve never advanced past our April understanding of the rotation when everyone on the team was awful except Clay Buchholz who was painfully unlucky. Wade Miley has turned the boat around and is pitching fine. He’s been quite good if you don’t count his rough April and perfectly cromulent if you do. Clay Buchholz has been excellent and is now hurt. This is Clay Buchholz. Eduardo Rodriguez, Henry Owens, and Steven Wright have all shown promise. This isn’t the perfect group, and they need to pitch better, either with new blood or through simply doing it themselves, but if the other areas of the team are better, this is staff is more workable than you’d think. Had the staff’s results been more acceptable and had the team hung around the edges of the Wild Card race, there’s a good chance the focus would have shifted to other areas of need, and there are other areas of need. Pablo Sandoval needs to not be terrible. Hanley Ramirez also needs to not be terrible. Someone needs to play first base. Someone needs to play right field. The list is not short! We can ding Cherington all we want for failing to bring back Lester and/or failing to cede to every demand made by Ruben Amaro in the quest for Cole Hamels, but ask yourself how much better would the Red Sox be right now if instead of paying Pablo Sandoval, they’d traded for Josh Donaldson? There are other ways to make the Red Sox better besides paying exorbitant prices for starters.

But it almost seems like it doesn’t matter at this point. The ace train is racing down the tracks without brakes and the only way to stop it is for Johnny Cueto, David Price, or someone else with a scarlet letter A pinned on their chest to hop aboard. Ace trains respond to magic scarlet letter As as everyone knows. So that’s probably where this is all headed. The Sox will, after all, pay big money to David Price or Cueto or someone who will ride in and make us all feel better, and sometime in November or December we’ll all take a sigh of relief and think, ‘Okay, now the team can go out and win.’ That will feel nice, but there will be a ring of falseness to it.

To be clear, this article isn’t intended to be an argument against acquiring an ace. That is a silly argument to make. Every team needs as much good pitching as they can get, including the Red Sox. That one guy can help, and depending on who he is he can help a whole lot. But he’s not going to solve every problem on the team and he’s not single-handedly going to turn a bad team into a World Series contender. Turning over every table and chair to fix one problem while others fester isn’t the way to create a World Series-caliber team.

The goal is to win the most games and it’s much easier to do that with a great pitching staff than with a bad one, or one that piled bad luck on top of their mediocrity. But Boston didn’t lose this season because they failed to acquire an ace. They lost because their whole team wasn’t good enough. That’s a problem too deep for one guy, no matter how good, to solve.

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7/27 UPDATE: Still no.

7/24 Post: No, but he might eventually be. Maybe not, though.

Want definitive proof?

We’ll keep you updated throughout the trade deadline.

Photo by Bill Streicher/USA Today Sports Images

In measuring Clay Buchholz versus Cole Hamels, the first thing to concede is that Hamels has clearly had the better career until this point. His greatest strength has been durability. He owns a career 3.48 FIP to Buchholz’s 3.92, which is a nice enough advantage before you consider that he’s thrown almost twice as many innings as Buchholz despite being only a year older. Hamels is nearing 2,000 career innings on the bump; Buchholz only passed 1,000 earlier this month. This is how Hamels’ career WAR sits above 38 and Buchholz is just above 13.

As the saying goes, health is a skill, and it’s one Buchholz clearly does not have. The contrarian in me says that this could be construed as a plus for Buchholz, given the potential for as-yet untapped electric innings in his arm and the fact that Hamels is, in the parlance of our times, “due” for an injury. But nah: the contrarian’s assistant in me says that argument’s mostly a load of bunk. Injuries are so often degenerative in both the short- and long-term, in ways we often don’t know until later, that the only sane conclusion to draw is that health begets health unless we can prove otherwise. Maybe if Hamels was nearing 40, this would be different, but he’s just 31 years old.

Still, it’s encouraging for the Red Sox that Buchholz and Hamels have thrown basically the same number of innings this season, and Buchholz has been better. Their ERA/FIP/xFIP lines are similar enough to potentially neutralize this fact, but I trust your interpretation to be as kind as mine to Clay:

Hamels: 3.26 ERA, 3.58 FIP, 3.28 xFIP, 1.7 WAR

Buchholz: 3.48 ERA, 2.67 FIP, 3.19 xFIP, 2.7 WAR

You don’t even need to play the “take out the bad start” game with Buchholz for these numbers to be stunning. With the obviously caveat that yes, it’s a half-season of baseball, here’s an incomplete list of players who have been better than Hamels and worse than Buchholz, as judged by WAR. Spoiler: they’re really good.

Zack Greinke
Dallas Keuchel
Madison Bumgarner
Gerrit Cole
Carlos Carrasco
Jordan Zimmermann
Michael Wacha
Matt Harvey
Johnny Cueto
Felix Hernandez

Combine that crazy list, which includes a King, a Dark Knight and a World Series MVP, with Buchholz’s performance last night against the Jays in Toronto — that most thumping of teams — and you can see Clay’s high-water mark. Is it higher than Hamels’? Probably… not. Hamels himself is a World Series MVP, and for the dizzying highs of Buch’s career, Hamels has been slowly raising the tide for damn near a decade.

The winner here is Hamels, but there are no losers, either. In any one game, there is plenty of reason to think down-and-dirty Buchholz might be better than Mr. Banana Republic himself. They’d make a great one-two punch in any order, that’s for sure, but I’m fairly sure we won’t see that, at least not this year. The gap between the team we have and the team that would trade for Hamels is just too large. A rising tide lifts all boats, but it’s of no use when you’re already lost at sea.

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The scene begins where Season 4 left off – Tyrion and Varys on a ship headed out of King’s Landing toward the Free Cities. Tyrion remains in the box in order to avoid detection.

Tyrion: This is humiliating.

Varys: Would you rather be headed for the edge of Sir Ilyn’s blade, my lord? It’s not like you need much space anyway.

T:  Very funny.

V: How do you imagine that all of this will play out?

T: I suppose at this point we have to hope Cole Hamels Daenerys and her dragons will have to save the day, especially if PECOTA Mormont is right and the Yankees White Walkers are really back.

V: You don’t think Blake Swihart Tommen can do it? Your sister told me he might be the first person in 50 years to wear the crown and actually deserve it.

T: He’s too green. And now with Jon Lester my lord father dead, Swihart Tommen doesn’t have the man backing him that everyone is afraid of.

V: Young Blake Tommen still has the Henry Owens Knight of Flowers and the host of Pawtucket Highgarden behind him.

T: Owens Sir Loras is talented, yes, but he’s young and without any real experience to match the hype.

V: What makes you think Hamels Daenerys is a better option? Yes, she has won some battles and sits atop Philadelphia Mereen, but Philadelphia Mereen is not the American League Westeros. And the seat at the top of that pyramid, while treacherous, is not the same as sitting on a throne of sharp swords and dealing with the nest of vipers that is Boston King’s Landing.

T: (pulls out sheet of paper with an ominous odor and pokes it through one of the holes in the box) This is why.

V: (looks at sheet of paper and realizes it is the PECOTA projections for Cole Hamels and other possibilities) My lord, you remembered all this from our Winter Small Council meetings?

T: When one is stuck in a dungeon, one must find some way to survive. But you can see from that list that none of the other options are nearly as good as Hamels Dany. Rick Porcello Stannis might have all the smarts and the backing of the Iron Bank, but he does not have the potential of Cole Dany. Justin Masterson, Wade Miley, and Clay Buchholz The Small Council can’t be counted on to lead kingdom as they have enough trouble with their own problems. Joe Kelly Prince Oberyn had a lot of promise, and he made a lot of promises when he came to Boston King’s Landing. But his 2014 season head just got smashed in by the Mountain.

V: But Hamels Dany has no experience leading in the AL East Westeros, either.

T: But she has his dragons – Cutter Rhaegal, Curve Viserion, and the biggest one Change Drogon – whose fire may well be the only thing that can stop the Yankees White Walkers as they threaten to wipe out the entire world. She has a good fastball Barristan Selmy, a loyal and battle-tested commander advising him. And she has conquered before, something none of the others can claim.

V: I may have another option … one you may not have known existed …

*Spoiler from Book 5 Ahead … but it doesn’t look like this will be relevant to the show!*

T: Go on …

V: Eduardo Rodriguez Prince Ageon Targaryen

T: (gasps)

V: I know, I know. TINSTAAPP He was thought dead. But he comes from the same family of pitchers as Dany, and he may well be someone the fans Seven Kingdoms can rally behind.

T: How is that possible? Where is he now?

V: I’ve stashed him away in the minor leauges Esteros to continue honing his skills

T: Do you think there is a way they could work together?

V: Possibly. But there’s only ever been one ace ruler in Boston King’s Landing. I don’t know if Boston King’s Landing would allow for two aces rulers.

T: So it will be Civil War then.

V: It appears so, my lord.

T: But no one knows about E-Rod Aegon, and it will be hard for the fans to rally around him and depend on him to rule.

V: All heroes begin somewhere, my lord. It is with small beginnings that men turn into Legends. E-Rod Aegon may simply need his turn.

T: I suppose all of this is idle talk until Hamels Dany is shipped to the American League Westeros and we see if his dragons can conquer real competition.

V: Indeed, my lord. Indeed.

T: Can I get out of this box now? Surely, it must be safe.

V: Oh yes, my lord. We have been clear of Boston King’s Landing for some time.

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