AL Cy Young

The sad part is that I don't think you were until you realized that your argument wouldn't hold up.

 

Come on. Look at the time stamps.

I got you didn't I?

When I saw the M's were up 1-0 in the 6th last night, I didn't know who their starting pitcher was. I looked to see if it was Felix and if he was going to be required to pitch a shutout to earn the win.

It wasn't him, but French did need to do it to get the win.

 

I saw the time stamps. You wouldn't be the first person to think better of what he wrote as soon as he hit post.

I know some people wanted to write off Cahill after his rough outing earlier this week, but he improved to 15-6 with a 2.72 ERA with six shutout innings today. Not bad given how little support he gets from Oakland's offense.

 

Only knock on Cahill? he has 94 strikeouts for the season, well below Hernandez, Buchholz, Sabathia, etc.

 

Even though he didn't give up any runs, he only went six innings because it took him 116 pitches to get through six.

And, not only does he not strike out a lot of batters, but he walked more than he struck out.

In the first game of a day-night double header, Buchholz could only give the Red Sox five innings and 95 pitches.

In the American League, where you don't have to pinch hit for the pitcher, an ace has to give you more innings than that.

In the Chicago start last week that you guys are so down on, CC went seven when he didn't have his best stuff & got the win.

These two, when they were pitching well, couldn't give their teams seven.

Which of the three would you give the ball to if you needed to win one game?

 

CC is a lock now. You could make an outside argument that he also deserves MVP.

 

Do I get the Yankee offense if I take Sabathia?

 

It would never happen, but it's not inconceivable, because of the differing nature of the criteria, that two different pitchers could win the MVP and Cy Young Award.

 

Good question. Probably Felix. More likely to absolutely dominate. But Sabathia is right there. He's probably two more seasons from locking up Cooperstown. That would put him at about 200 wins, and you figure no matter what he's able to claw his way to the 40-50 more it will take.

 

He wasn't one of the choices!

Felix leads the league in innings pitched & CC is second.

The choice was between six inning Cahill, five inning Buchholz, and CC.

Part of being an ace is pitching deep into games so that you don't have to rely on crappy middle relievers to protect the lead. CC & Felix do that.

 

Might happen if you had a crazy year where you had two pitchers with transcendent seasons, say similar to a McGwire-Sosa or DiMaggio-Williams duel. As the balance tips back toward the pitching, it could happen.

 

Buchholz has one short outing and you want to label him as a five-inning guy? Jeez, could you be more intellectually dishonest?

Even better, we now have Yankee fanboys trying to argue that giving up five runs in seven innings is somehow better than no runs in six. Give me a fucking break.