AL Cy Young

Earlier on the thread, somebody said it would be unfair to compare Rivera to Soria and Soriano in saves because he can't control how many opportunities he gets. He can control his percentage converted, which is down to 90.6 now. Soriano's is 95.5. Soria's is 94.9. Both of them have blown only two saves this season while Rivera has blown three.

 

Rivera pitched two innings Friday night and was as wild Saturday night as I've ever seen.
He walked Vlad, for god's sake, to start the inning. The other walk was intentional .. the first time all year he has walked 2 in an inning.
It also was the first time since May he had given up two runs and his ERA "soared" to 1.36 (the lowest of his career) and his WHIP is up to .811 (second lowest of his career).
The only issue is his innings are down to 53, second lowest of his career.,.. but he his close to 41 years old.

He deserves as many Cy Young Award votes as Soriano and Soria ... ZERO.

 

Further proof that we aren't stupid

http://bostonherald.com/sports/baseball/other_mlb/view/20100912new_math_made/

Based on my "exit polling" of baseball writers, I think Felix is going to win.

 

Am I the only one thinking that post was going to be more fun before you edited it?

On that last point, I agree with you. That's how this all came up. Somebody brought up Rivera for the Cy Young and I pointed out that he isn't even clearly the best closer in the American League this year. I think Soriano has been the best, but you can make a very good argument for any of the three.

And with strong candidates among the starting pitchers, no way should any of those guys win the Cy Young.

 

More...

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=jp-tendegrees091210

 

Rivera was just on the verge of getting his ERA under 1.00 before he gave up those runs. While I didn't think he should have won the award, and it was probably inevitable that he would give up a few runs, I do think it would have been pretty interesting if he had ended the year with a sub 1.00 ERA.

CC hasn't helped his cause with two of his last three starts. Felix has been great. I'm much more open to the idea of Felix winning than I was previously and am not nearly as confident in my earlier prediction that CC would win.

If he's going to win it, a dominating game against Price & the Rays tonight would be a good start.

And, BB, a question: the voters are two writers per city, but not the same writers each year, right?

I understand why you wouldn't want the whole BBWAA membership voting, because it would be affected by geography, but I think it's interesting how the voting could change from year to year based on individual voters criteria.

Passan's article mentions how last year was a "test" and this year would be a "referendum".

Does anyone have a sense if last year's voters were representative of a mind shift among al voters or an aberration based on who happened to be voting? (BTW, not saying that Greinke didn't deserve to win.)

What about this year's voters?

 

Last year would have been a test if there were any 20-game winners. There weren't, so voters looked at other things.

 

That's correct. There may be a few who retain their votes in the smaller markets, where there aren't enough beat writers to go around, but I'd say mostly they change. I'm gonna guesstimate that maybe 20 percent are repeat voters for the same award. I'm in a pretty big chapter, with both leagues, so I have lately been having Cy Young every year, alternating between leagues.

There's really no way to tell. I can just tell you from my sense of talking other members of the voting pool (not necessarily those who have votes in this particular race this year), that there is a strong sentiment against relying on wins.

Also, I don't think you are giving voters much credit when you say they can give wins the proper weight (or lack thereof) when we have 19-game winners, but if someone gets to 20 it goes out the window. See Brandon Webb, 2008.

 

More...

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=5567575

(Although I believe his earlier AL Cy Young column was already posted on this thread, so this is sort of double-counting.)

He fills out his ballot 1. Felix 2. CC, which brings up an interesting question to me. Felix and CC aren't 1-2 in any ballot in which you are judging all the candidates by the same standard. If you are going by wins, CC is 1 and Felix is, whatever, 35. If you are judging by pitching effectiveness, Felix is 1 and CC is probably 4-6ish, with Cahill, Price, Buchholz, Lee, Wilson each having a case to be ahead of him.

So, how do you come up with Felix and CC 1-2? The only way to do is if you are using different criteria for the different spots on the ballot, which I disagree with.

This happens from time to time in the MVP, where some people refuse to consider a guy on a non-contender for MVP, but they'll put him 2nd. I don't get that.

 

Jayson places a moderate amount of value on wins. You don't have to completely disregard wins to think King Felix is deserving.

 

I can't wait to hear the spoiled, entitled Yankees fans start crying and screaming when CC wins 21 games and Felix wins 13 but Felix gets the Cy.

 

That's interesting. I'm not sure you can honestly come up with any sort of weight that you'd apply equally to all candidates that would end up with Felix 1 and CC 2, or vice versa.

I think the only way you could get there is if you have innings pitched as one of your most heavily weighted stats. I don't think that would be a very good way to go, or else Livan Hernandez would have won 5 Cy Youngs already.