Voting in the American League Cy Young Award
The AL Cy Young Award had a recent stroke of controversy. This was largely led by well-known actress Kate Upton, fiancee of the runner up, who made several posts on social media. She expressed her disappointment over the results, and thus anger at the voting system. After further research into the award and how its awardee is determined, it seemed like a classic example of the Borda Count. The information about the award system was obtained from articles by The New York Times and ESPN, the former a well established newspaper and the latter well known and used as the main source of sports news.
The Baseball Writers’ Association of America awards the Cy Young Award annually. The awardee is chosen by assigning two writers from each league city to vote, each league being the National League and the American League. Each voter lists their ordered top five picks with the following point distribution:
- First Place = 7 points
- Second Place = 4 points
- Third Place = 3 points
- Fourth Place = 2 points
- Fifth Place = 1 point
Ultimately Rick Porcello won with 137 points although he only had 8 writers pick him as their first choice; his win is largely thanks to receiving most of the second place votes (18/30). The controversy was that Justin Verlander had lost by just 5 points when he had received 14 of the possible 30 first place votes. His loss was largely contributed to the fact that although Porcello was named on every ballot, two writers, both from Tampa Bay, did not place Verlander anywhere in their top five. Very rarely does an individual with the majority first place votes not receive this award. For this reason, his supporters were furious upon learning the votes and results with Kate Upton even suggesting that the two writers were “paid off” to leave the top pick of almost half the voters off their top five.
Whether or not such accusations are true, there is a lot to link between this incident and the voting systems. This voting system demonstrates that the award is determined by a Borda Count voting system, with points for votes and group ranking based on said votes. We learned with this system, as Upton suggests, there is the possibility of manipulation. There is a plausibility in her claim. We found in the Borda Count system, irrelevant alternatives have as much an affect in determining the winner. The outcome relies not just on the votes that Porcello and Verlander got, but also the other pitchers and which votes they were able to gain. Although Verlander may have been a favorite, it is very possible that a voter could sabotage his chances of winning by manipulate the vote, not voting sincerely and instead leaving Verlander off his ballot, as well as voting for the second, third, etc. favorites. These alternative votes were irrelevant to who is better between Verlander and Porcello but they can affect the outcome. Under another voting system, it is very possible for Verlander to have been the winner, as a “majority winner.” However, thinking of Arrow, no system would be good enough to satisfy all.
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