AL Cy Young - who gets it?

imgv94 · 11-13-07, 06:46 AM

Beckett is a shoe in.

Willie Bee · 11-13-07, 06:57 AM

Agreed, Beckett gets it, probably by a unanimous vote. If you took away the win column from pitchers, I'm not sure if writers would know a thing about pitchers.

imgv94 · 11-13-07, 07:04 AM

Agree the Win column is so overrated.

Checkerboard · 11-13-07, 07:05 AM

Originally posted by imgv94

Beckett is a shoe in.

Yep. I agree with all of you in this thread so far; I think it will go to Beckett.

Rollins08 · 11-13-07, 09:24 AM

Who else would they give it to? Wang never won on the road, Beckett was better than Sabathia. It looks like a 1 horse race.

Willie Bee · 11-13-07, 10:23 AM

Sabathia is the lean among the "experts" -- their word, not mine ("Our experts believe Sabathia will win the AL Cy Young.) -- at ESPN by a 14-4 margin. Carmona and Lackey got one nod each.

Furt · 11-13-07, 11:07 AM

As much as I'd love to see C.C win it. I would bet it goes to Beckett.

Rollins08 · 11-13-07, 01:51 PM

Originally posted by Willie Bee

Sabathia is the lean among the "experts" -- their word, not mine ("Our experts believe Sabathia will win the AL Cy Young.) -- at ESPN by a 14-4 margin. Carmona and Lackey got one nod each.

They vote fo Cy young before the playoffs right? So maybe we're all influenced by that.

bigboydan · 11-13-07, 01:57 PM

Originally posted by imgv94

Beckett is a shoe in.

I would have to agree with that statement, and it's hard not really make a strong argument against him IMG.

Willie Bee · 11-13-07, 02:24 PM

Looks like ESPN's experts were right...

...Sabathia wins it.

Sabathia tops Beckett for Cy Young

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=3108321

Indians left-hander C.C. Sabathia won the AL Cy Young Award on Tuesday.

NEW YORK -- C.C. Sabathia won the AL Cy Young Award on Tuesday, beating out several worthy contenders by a comfortable margin and becoming the first Cleveland pitcher in 35 years to earn the honor.

C.C. Sabathia, who pitched a major league-high 241 innings and won 19 games for the Indians, comfortably beat Josh Beckett to win his first Cy Young award.

The Indians ace received 19 of 28 first-place votes and finished with 119 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America. Boston's Josh Beckett was second with eight first-place votes and 86 points, while John Lackey of the Los Angeles Angels got the other first-place vote and came in third.

jon13009 · 11-13-07, 03:40 PM

Beckett should have won it.

Although the Cy Young is an award for the best pitcher during the regular season, Beckett was outstanding during the post season, and that is the only real time I watch baseball, and the only thing that really mattered to me.

If the writers feel that the Cy Young is something for regular season merits only, then award it prior (or during) the post-season play because awarding it after the World Series (with Beckett's performance in hand) makes the award seem a bit diminished.

However, if they gave the awards during the playoffs or just prior to the World Series, that would increase the drama (and pressure) considerably for the winning players and make the writers look even more foolish when the Cy Young winners lose - that is the only reason why I can see why the writers will not allow this....

Willie Bee · 11-13-07, 04:09 PM

Jon, MLB drags out the announcement of the awards so they can keep people interested in baseball for a while after the last out of the World Series. The BBWAA really doesn't control when MLB makes the announcement.

jon13009 · 11-13-07, 04:14 PM

Ahhh..........

You are right Willie...because if it were not for this award, I could care less about baseball right now - except for where ARod is going next....

bigboydan · 11-13-07, 06:00 PM

Originally posted by jon13009

Beckett should have won it.

I agree with you 100% Jon. Josh Beckett should have won this award. If any Cleveland pitcher should have won this award at all it should have been Carmona IMO.

Willie Bee · 11-13-07, 06:36 PM

With all due respect to the Beckett votes here, I do believe it's impossible to separate what he did in the postseason from what he did in the regular season and form a really strong 'regular season opinion' at this point.

How Sabathia, Beckett and Lackey ranked against one another in the regular season:

ERA
Lackey - 3.01 (#1 in AL)
Sabathia - 3.17
Beckett - 3.21

WHIP
Sabathia & Beckett - 1.14 (5th in AL
Lackey - 1.21

STRIKEOUTS
Sabathia - 209 (5th in AL)
Beckett - 194
Lackey - 179

BB/9 INN
Sabathia - 1.38 (2nd in AL)
Beckett - 1.79
Lackey - 2.08

COMPLETE GAMES
Sabathia - 4 (2nd in AL)
Lackey - 2
Beckett - 1

HR ALLOWED/9 INN
Lackey - 0.72
Sabathia - 0.74
Beckett - 0.76

I don't go by wins to determine a pitcher's success, but if you want to throw that in and pump Beckett up a little that will be fine with me. Sabathia would still present a solid statistical advantage to Beckett.

tacomax · 11-14-07, 01:37 AM

Good stats, but even they are flawed to a certain extent. ERA and WHIP are good indicators (but have some correlation). But strikeouts? However you get your outs is pretty much irrelevant. BB/9 IN? That's highly correlated to the WHIP stats. Complete games? That's in many cases largely dependent on the quality of the bullpen. HR allowed/9 Innings? Highly correlated to ERA.

Having said that, a worthy winner.

Willie Bee · 11-14-07, 07:13 AM

Originally posted by tacomax

Good stats, but even they are flawed to a certain extent. ERA and WHIP are good indicators (but have some correlation). But strikeouts? However you get your outs is pretty much irrelevant. BB/9 IN? That's highly correlated to the WHIP stats. Complete games? That's in many cases largely dependent on the quality of the bullpen. HR allowed/9 Innings? Highly correlated to ERA.

Having said that, a worthy winner.

I disagree with some of your assessments of the stats, taco. But I do agree Sabathia is a worthy winner based on regular season accomplishments.

How outs are recorded is a very relevant piece of the puzzle. If you have a ground ball pitcher, then you better have a solid infield. If you're a flyball pitcher, then try not to work in Philly, Cincy or Arlington, Texas. Strikeouts are a result of a lot of factors, including the work of the advance scout and the game that the catcher and/or manager calls. But they also point to a pitcher overpowering a batter, the single most fascinating and crucial mano a mano matchup within a game.

Complete games are a vanishing stat but still very important. True, a bullpen will play into a manager's decision to pull a pitcher or leave him in. But it often doesn't have a thing to do with how strong or weak a relief corps is, but how overworked they are. Being able to get through nine innings on about 110 pitches these days still ranks as a strong feat in my book.

tacomax · 11-15-07, 03:21 AM

Originally posted by Willie Bee

How outs are recorded is a very relevant piece of the puzzle. If you have a ground ball pitcher, then you better have a solid infield. If you're a flyball pitcher, then try not to work in Philly, Cincy or Arlington, Texas. Strikeouts are a result of a lot of factors, including the work of the advance scout and the game that the catcher and/or manager calls. But they also point to a pitcher overpowering a batter, the single most fascinating and crucial mano a mano matchup within a game.

I'll agree and disagree there. Although the strikeout is always impressive, so is continually being able to induce that critical groundball to the shortstop if you're not a strikeout pitcher, or that flyball to the outfield. I just don't see the ability to get strikeouts to be such a significant statistic.

Originally posted by Willie Bee

Complete games are a vanishing stat but still very important. True, a bullpen will play into a manager's decision to pull a pitcher or leave him in. But it often doesn't have a thing to do with how strong or weak a relief corps is, but how overworked they are. Being able to get through nine innings on about 110 pitches these days still ranks as a strong feat in my book.

Although the bullpen issue is relevant to Beckett/CC which can make the complete game (pretty much) irrelevant what was impressive was the number of innings that CC pitched. CC pitched 20% more innings than Beckett yet they were just about dead on in terms of WHIP and ERA. Now that's impressive.

And back to jon13009's point. They should release the figures before the playoffs or as soon as humanly possible when the season has ended. The only thing the playoffs did is to tarnish what CC did in the regular season which then tarnished the award in the eyes of a lot of people. That's not cool.

imgv94 · 11-15-07, 04:08 AM

You guys really know your baseball.

Willie Bee · 11-15-07, 07:12 AM

You're right, taco, inducing that double play grounder at a specific time is crucial. Just like getting a strikeout when the bases are loaded in the top of the eighth and you're up by one. A strikeout remains significant to me, just like walk rates remain a significant stat to me in determining a pitcher's effetiveness.

I didn't include the innings pitched category that Sabathia ran away with. Tossing over 220 in a season has become a rarity which sounds funny since I grew up watching starters routinely throw 300+ innings in a season.

And we all seem to agree that baseball would be better served to make these announcements sooner rather than later. But marketing the sport now means to try and find ways to have you checking websites year round. Trouble with that theory is obsessive fans like me will, but the casual fans don't give a rat's rump. Baseball has the casual fans' interest in October, and they don't take advantage of it.

imgv94 · 11-15-07, 07:34 AM

You're right willie.

Almost everyone I know are casual fans of baseball, not really paying attention to it until the playoffs begin.