1:05 PM Eastern
When one follows the team that employs arguably the best starting pitcher in all of baseball, then one generally pays special attention when the Cy Young Award is handed out for that team’s league. That day is today, and Roy Halladay, sadly, isn’t really even in the conversation for the American League Cy Young.
Halladay got off to a fantastic start to the season, going 10-1, 2.53 with a WHIP of 1.04 through his first 14 starts, but that 14th start was cut short by a tweak in the groin that cost him 2 1/2 weeks. He came back and while he wasn’t as fantastic as he had been before, his team stopped hitting for him.
Halladay only picked up one win from June 8 to August 4th despite posting an ERA of 3.16 and a WHIP of 1.18 over eight starts. Over that span, he left down 1-0 in the 4th (injured), left down 2-0 after six, left in a 5-5 tie after seven, left down 3-2 after seven, pitched a complete-game six-hitter and won 3-1, left after nine in a 2-2 tie, left down 3-2 after seven, and threw a complete-game and lost 5-3. Clearly, there was something horribly wrong with him. Or not.
Remember, this was the time when the “trade Doc” circus was happening, with the near-daily updates. Obviously, this was throwing the Jays’ hitters off their game…..or something.
Outside that span of little-to-no run support, Halladay went 16-6, 2.67 with a WHIP of 1.11. If the Jays had been able to support him a little over those eight starts, he’d be the clear Cy Young – or at least be right in the heart of the debate.
Instead, the main contestants for the hardware are the Royals’ Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez of the Mariners, the Yankees’ CC Sabathia and Detroiter Justin Verlander.
My vote is for Greinke. Hopefully voters will look past the fact that he only managed 16 wins, three fewer than the other three (there were no 20-game winners this year). Greinke led the league in ERA, WHIP, and fewest home runs per nine innings and was second in strikeouts, complete games and shutouts. I’m not sure you could ask for more than that.
Once you make the case for Greinke, who didn’t have an earned run scored against him until his 5th start (Vernon Wells with the RBI single!) and managed to keep his ERA under 1.00 until May 31st, there really isn’t a case to be made for anyone else. As much as he didn’t face the beasts as often as Halladay, you just can’t ignore the numbers.
Seeing how the voters didn’t get sucked in by the traditional stuff when they picked the rookies of the year, let’s hope they can look past the wins (Greinke had SIX no-decisions in which he gave up two runs or fewer) and make the right choice.
Tomorrow – the Managers of the Year!
Rational, reasonable comments are always welcome!
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Mike
To follow up on my previous question about the Jays rebuilt scouting staff, I agree with your remark that quality is key. Are you suggesting they hired quality? If so, which guys hired are the “quality” scouts?
MW: I don’t know if they’ve hired quality or not, I’m sure Alex thinks they have and we’ll find out over the next few years how right he is.
- Danmichael,
- darrell bishopgood call on greinke for the cy.
you know your baseball.
his 16 wins with the royalers needs to be computed as the equivalent in dog yrs. to a few of the usual suspects i’m quite certain.
the way he pitched this yr. put him in a pin stripe uni as an example & he’s perhaps posting a record only denny mclain from 1968 could be prouder of. he was money indeed. true that…
if he doesn’t garner (it says here) them voters are just silly is all……
btw michael,
- darrell bishopneedless to say most certainly stretching the truth considerably on the greinke (even in dog yrs) vs. the 68′ denny mac season comparison.
he’s good. very good in fact. but he ain’t no denny mclain……
but he’s still the right pick for the a.l. cy.
Until you look into the numbers, a 16 win Cy Young winner looks very odd.
But the voters overwhelmingly agreed with you.
When was the last time that happened??? (A 16 game or less Cy Young winner, not people agreeing with you :-)
MW: They overwhelmingly agreed with me because they saw the whole picture, and more and more people are starting to realize just how little control a pitcher has over the numbers of wins he gets. Brandon Webb won the Cy Young with 16 wins in 2006 – but that year he actually shared the league lead in wins.
- GaryTrue that Zack deserved the award. This year it’s the Mariners fans that will be left fuming. I read Zack is getting married this weekend so a great week for him all around. I hope he doesn’t get upset if his fiance decides to keep her maiden name ;)
MW: Mariners’ fans shouldn’t be fuming – King Felix didn’t deserve to win.
- RezBut I still think that if you asked 30 managers and 30 General Managers who’d they pick to start game 7 of the World Series, Doc would be the overwhelming favourite. Agreed, Mike?
MW: Overwhelming? No.
- Richard BridgmanI agree with your endorsement of Greinke for the CY. A question: I don’t know his contract situation, but assuming he is still good when it expires, would the Royals make a play to keep him and build a team around him? They must have had quite a few high draft picks in recent years. Might they make a TB Rays type run?
MW: Greinke is under contract through the end of the 2012 season. They don’t need to make a TB Rays type run, they’re in the Central.
- ol brucieWell Mike, you basically called it.
I agree with your assessment but would have loved to see the doc get it
However, he was at least a mention with 5th place and 11 votes
MW: As much as you would have loved to have seen Halladay get it, he didn’t deserve it.
- Richard from AREveryone really needs to take a breather when it comes to Vernon Wells’ defensee. UZR ranked hinm last or next to last but do 95 percent of people on this blog (even media experts) know what the heck uzr is? I watched probably 250 to 275 baseball games and although I concede that Vernon looked “slower”, I refuse to think, based on what I saw, that he’s the worst cf in the league.. I mean let’s be real here, derek jeter has been sub par as a defensive ss for some time now and all of a sidden, just cause uzr says he’s good, all of a sudden he’s revered as a defensice ss. It’s mind boggling! Does anyone really know what Jeter has improved at? Stats are good, but you also have to WATCH the players. If uzr says that Jeter can 180 his game around, then I’m sorry, but I’m inclined to believe that Wells can absolutely turn his UZR rating around too. I just think that a lot of people rely on UZR as a be all-end-all rating when not a lot of people know what the heck UZR is.
MW: You’re right, and even if they do know what it is it doesn’t matter. There’s no one measurement that tells you everything you need to know about a player. UZR (Ultimate Zone Rating) is one tool to measure defense that works well with plenty of others, including plus/minus, runs saved and zone rating just to name a few. Take Covelli Crisp, for example. Here are his UZR numbers from 2006-2009: 1.3, 22.4, (-15.6), 19.6. What does that tell you about him as a defender? Nothing.
- Karim SunderjiMichael,
I keep hearing about Adrian Gonzalez being on the block. Do you think its possible the Jays might be able to get another team involved and do some sort of Halladay for Gonzalez deal?
Or do you think the Jays are looking to load up on prospects rather than one player in exchange for Halladay?
MW: Gonzalez is only under control through 2011. The Jays wouldn’t be interested unless they could lock him up long-term.
- Uncle BenCito for Manager of the Year? It takes a special skill set to survive a mutiny by the players whom you manage. The likelihood that Cito was responsible for many losses with his antiquated style is pure gravy. Political survivability skills should garner some votes, no?
MW: Having the team President be incredibly loyal to you is a special skill set?
- mikeCC Sabathia should be disqualified automatically for not getting at least 20 wins playing for the Yankees
- JPRI too called Greinke to win the Cy (a cromulent choice indeed)with Hernandez 2nd. However, Doc should have been 3rd ahead of the fat man and Verlander. That’s where the Jay obscurity in the lower mainland became a factor.
MW: I don’t know if that’s true.
- CarlosMW: Having the team President be incredibly loyal to you is a special skill set?
Well the skill comes in giving said President 2 consecutive World Series championships. There’s your mad skillz. That’s why Beeston is loyal to Cito Gaston.
To get back to Wells, I’m only relying on my own eyes, but when I watch the Jays games on tv, it seems to me that Wells’s defense is way down from what it used to be. He’s nowhere near as fast, he doesn’t always take the best route to the ball and he often misjudges the trajectory of a fly and misses it or misplays it.
Then there was the curious case of the dog in the night-time. Whoops! I mean the ball flipped to the right-fielder in one of the last games of the season. Wells got the ball on a line-drive single, and instead of throwing it back himself, he flipped it over to the other guy to send back. That made no sense at all unless his wrist was hurting so bad he couldn’t throw the ball himself.
But unfortunately surgery to correct that won’t help to correct the other stuff. It’s not just that he’s slower courtesy of his hamstring problem, it’s that he seems less able to judge where the ball is going and how to get there. Maybe he’s developed a vision problem and needs corrective lenses or whatever.
MW: If he had a vision problem, it would have been discovered in pre-season physicals, unless it developed during the season and yes, his wrist/hand was the reason for that little flip to the right fielder in Boston the last week of the season.
- reyesHere’s something that looks like an oddity about Halladay’s season: he threw a round number of innings in every start. I don’t know whether he ever left after starting an inning and not getting an out. (In the injury game against Florida, he left without facing a batter in the 4th.) If he actually was never lifted in the middle of an inning, that would have to be really, really unusual–but just how unusual?
MW: Probably not as unusual as you think. It’s Cito’s way with his superstar pitcher.
- Cincinnatus C.MW: Probably not as unusual as you think. It’s Cito’s way with his superstar pitcher.
Maybe (and I certainly do acknowledge that it has as much to do with the manager as with the pitcher). But as far as I can see, Morris never did it, Stewart never did it, Hentgen never did it, Clemens never did it (here or anywhere else)…. Poking around in the game logs of Gibson, Seaver, Carlton, Marichal, and Maddux (although not exhaustively, because my net connection is terrible) for the years where their inning totals end with a .0, I’m not finding any perfect strings of .0 under IP. Gibson comes the closest that I’ve come across: in 1969, he never left in the middle of an inning before the 10th. So–how many guys can you come up with, say, since the mid-’60s who started 30 or more games in a season and pitched a round number of innings in every one of them?
MW: I can’t, because honestly I’m not interested in doing the research, but I’m surprised that you found what you did. Maybe it’s only Cito’s way when he has just the one horse on a staff full of rookies.
- Cincinnatus C.