Re: Re: 5w-7l 3.63 ERA wins the Cy Youn

Plus Willie's 40 CS's don't factor in hardly at all. In fact, according to the formula, a player could be successful on only 20% of his steal attempts and still break even. Anything over the very low bar of 20% is a plus, and Willie stole at a 70% rate.

Personally, I would modify the stealing part of the formula from "(SB * .40) - (CS * .10)" to "(SB * .40) - (CS * .80)," which would require a player to steal at the widely accepted standard of a minimum 67% success rate to break even. (My research indicates the "true" minimum success stealing rate to break even may be slightly higher, say 70% to 72.5%, but I need to conduct further simulation studies to confirm.)

Use of this suggested modified formula would have resulted in the following MVP points for these leading contenders:

Lowenstein 122.1
Evans 119.1
Boggs 118.1
Greenwell 117.2
Molitor 114.7
Clark 112.0
.
.
.
McGee 101.3

As for Eckersley, the formula awarded him 2.5 Cy Young points for every save, each of which is worth 50% of a win (5 points). Is that too much for successfully wrapping up a tight game? On that question, you be the judge.