Earlier last week the Cy Young votes were tallied and the
winners announced—in the AL, it was David Price beating out defending winner
Justin Verlander by the slimmest of margins, and in the NL it was R.A. Dickey
completing his year of destiny over once again the defender, Clayton Kershaw,
and breakout star Gio Gonzalez. Do I agree with the sportswriters and other
higher-ups in baseball on these two choices? Well, yes and no. David Price—he would
have been my decision too. I liked the combo of the lower ERA and the wins on
an arguably worse team than Verlander over Verlanders’ K’s. Would Verlander
have deserved it had he won? Absolutely! Would I have thought he was the best
pitcher in the AL? No.
As for
the NL, Dickey won this as a popularity vote. Really that’s all it was. Not to
take away from a generally fantastic season, but in all honesty he wasn’t the
best pitcher in the NL. Especially in the second half. There was some major
regression in the second half for him, although during that time he did have
some really good starts. But “some really good starts” shouldn’t win you the
Cy. I felt that even in a worse year by his standards, as he led the NL in ERA
and WHIP and was second in K’s (even though he missed some time in the second
half), Kershaw would have been my choice. Yes, he “only” won 14 games. Too bad…we
gave the Cy to Felix Hernandez a few years back when he won less than that—13
to be exact. In this day and age, we give the award to the best pitcher—not the
one who racks up the most wins. Also, yes, Gio was a brilliant pitcher. But in
my mind he has too many holes to win the Cy Young—he doesn’t throw enough
innings, is too easily rattled, and is predictable in the way he pitches. Maybe
that’s because he basically throws 2 pitches—which is an incredible ability and
also a curse.
It
seems as though the Cy award has gone through a major renovation in thought in
the last few years. When King Felix won the award in 2010 with 13 wins and 12
losses, it was just about as close to a coup as you can get in baseball. Generally,
you had to go something along the
lines of 20-5 to even be considered. But Hernandez won it based on pure
dominance, and the advent of Sabermetrics (a special mathematical set of
statistics developed for analyzing baseball players) helped him win. Now, are
we to the point of just going by the numbers to determine the winner? No. And
hopefully never will be. But I really think that the advanced data set that
sabermetrics provide give us a greater insight into seeing just how dominant a
pitcher really is.
And that's all I got.
