Bieber’s dominance is still clear. After Bieber, though, things get murky. Nearly every pitcher on the list above is among the leaders in one or more important statistical categories. Dylan Bundy shows up high in WAR thanks to solid innings totals to go along with his good FIP. Zack Greinke and Marco Gonzales have great walk numbers. Lance Lynn has pitched a ton of innings without allowing many runs. Lucas Giolito and Gerrit Cole have a ton of strikeouts. Dallas Kuechel, Kenta Maeda, and Hyun Jin Ryu are a bit behind in innings, but other aspects of their games stick out.

Here at FanGraphs, we use a FIP-based WAR, but it is not the only version out there. When I looked at this award last season, I discussed why voters might choose different versions of WAR based on their own preferences:

In many ways, the versions of WAR are all trying to do the same thing, which is to credit a pitcher for certain outcomes based on the pitcher’s work. This isn’t new. It’s why earned run average tries to strip away the unearned runs. ERA, Baseball-Reference’s WAR and RA/9 WAR both look at the number of runs and then work backwards to try to arrive at a deserved result. FIP-based WAR looks at the outcomes most controlled by the pitcher (walks and strikeouts) and then adds or subtracts credit for some batted balls via the home run and infield flies, and gives credit for all outs made. Baseball Prospectus looks at the most likely outcomes given the circumstances and assigns a value.

To provide additional context to this year’s race, the table below shows how various sites have calculated WAR for the pitchers above, along with a weighted average (with Baseball-Reference and RA/9 WAR averaged along with WAR here and Baseball Prospectus‘s WARP):