One of the joys of running this blog is the freedom to establish its rules. If I want to create a whole series of baseball awards (and name all of them after Hall of Famers), nobody is around to cast a negative vote.
That’s how I came to unveil nine sets of 2020 postseason honors last November. I checked in on the 2021 races for five of the batting awards last Friday. Here again are the frontrunners as this season’s final month rolls out:
Ted Williams Award (batting): Bryce Harper, Phillies
Lou Gehrig Award (scoring): Bo Bichette, Blue Jays
Babe Ruth Award (power): Shohei Ohtani, Angels
Nellie Fox Award (contact): Kevin Newman, Pirates
Rickey Henderson Award (batting eye): Joey Gallo, Rangers-Yankees, and Juan Soto, Nationals
The sixth batting award, which is named after Willie Mays, goes to the Gold Glove winner who has the greatest success at the plate. We obviously can’t determine a winner until the Gold Gloves are handed out in November.
But we can shine a spotlight on the leaders for the three pitching awards that I created a year ago. You’ll find the summaries below.
All statistics are as of September 1, the beginning of the season’s sixth and final month (and the same date that I used for last Friday’s batting update). A pitcher must have completed 130 innings to qualify for consideration in these five-month standings.
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Juan Marichal Award (overall pitching)
Definition: Goes to the pitcher who allows the fewest bases per out. The first step in calculating a pitcher’s BPO is to add up the bases allowed through hits, walks, hit batsmen, stolen bases, and sacrifices. That total is then divided by the outs procured. The lower BPO, of course, the better.
2020 winner: Shane Bieber, Indians, .413 BPO
2021 leader: Corbin Burnes, Brewers, .453
2021 runners-up: Brandon Woodruff, Brewers, .462; Walker Buehler, Dodgers, .486
Notes: Outstanding pitching has fueled the Brewers’ startling rise to an insurmountable lead in the National League’s Central Division. The two frontrunners in this category, Burnes and Woodruff, anchor Milwaukee’s rotation. Burnes has been slightly more effective, piling up 419 outs while yielding only 190 bases. Buehler joins the Brewers’ duo as the only pitchers with BPOs below .500. A shoulder injury sidelined last year’s champion, Bieber, in June, preventing him from defending his title.
Randy Johnson Award (strikeouts)
Definition: Goes to the pitcher who averages the most strikeouts per six innings. Ratios for starters are usually expressed per nine innings, of course, but that seems to be an irrelevant measure in this day and age of workload restrictions, so I’ve cut the benchmark to six.
2020 winner: Shane Bieber, Indians, 9.47 strikeouts per six innings
2021 leader: Corbin Burnes, Brewers, 8.16
2021 runners-up: Gerrit Cole, Yankees, 8.11; Max Scherzer, Nationals-Dodgers, 8.06
Notes: Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler reigned as the strikeout king after five months of the 2021 season, amassing 208 whiffs. The runner-up was Toronto’s Robbie Ray with 202. But this category focuses on the pitcher with the best strikeout rate — not the biggest total — and that distinction belongs to Burnes. The Milwaukee righty stacked up 189 strikeouts in just 139 innings through the end of August. Cole and Scherzer are the only other starters averaging more than eight strikeouts per six innings.
Warren Spahn Award (durability)
Definition: Goes to the pitcher who averages the highest number of innings per appearance. You might think that complete games would be a better measure. Spahn, after all, worked the amazing number of CGs (382) in his 21-year career. But complete games have become a rarity, with only 47 in this big leagues so far this year. So it makes more sense to focus on the ratio of innings to games.
2020 winner: Kyle Hendricks, Cubs, 6.78 innings per appearance
2021 leader: Zack Wheeler, Phillies, 6.77
2021 runners-up: Adam Wainwright, Cardinals, 6.53; Walker Buehler, Dodgers, 6.52
Notes: It once was common for starters to work more than 200 innings in a season. That’s no longer the case, though the durable Wheeler is on track. He pitched 182 and two-thirds innings in his 27 starts through the end of August, essentially matching Hendricks’s category-leading ratio from a year ago. Forty-year-old Wainwright, the second-oldest pitcher in the big leagues, is second in this year’s standings. Hendricks is tied for 19th place at 5.79 innings per appearance.