Thursday, October 11, 2007

Thursday Debate: Who should be the AL Cy Young?

For the second straight Thursday Debate, let's focus on the AL Cy Young race, because there are lots of good candidates here. Much like the NL MVP race, any number of guys could reasonably win.

As mentioned a week or so ago, I like CC Sabathia to win the AL Cy Young Award. In my mind, with his peripheral numbers and league-leading amount of innings pitched, he is the best choice for this award.

But there are certainly a lot of other viable candidates. A brief rundown of them:

John Lackey - Led the league in ERA. Also had 179 K against only 52 BB.

Fausto Carmona - 2nd in the AL in ERA. Was GREAT at inducing groundballs. Sort of like a younger Chien Ming-Wang with more upside.

Johan Santana - Had a down year (relatively speaking) but still had nearly a 5:1 K:BB ratio.

Josh Beckett - Led the AL in DIPS among starters. Like Santana, a great K:BB rate.

Dan Haren - Was the leading candidate at the Break, and still had a fine year even though he tailed off a little bit. Third in the AL in ERA.

Erik Bedard - Might have been my Cy Young choice had he not gotten hurt towards the end of the year. Ridiculous K/9 rate.

Vote with your conscience.

Who should be the AL Cy Young?
CC Sabathia
Johan Santana
Fausto Carmona
Josh Beckett
Erik Bedard
Dan Haren
John Lackey
Other


4 comments:

Neil Joshi said...

No problem man, I enjoy reading your blog a lot and like that you have a different set of rankings and tell WHY you have it. Keep up the good work.

I believe Sabathia deserves to win it, but I think the voters will side with Beckett. That 20 win total just flashes at you, especially when you consider that he was the only pitcher to do it this season.

I absolutely can't wait for their Game 1 showdown....

In fact, Game 2 with Schilling/Carmona looks just as exciting.

Who needs the Yankees to have an exciting LCS?

stephen a said...

This is really tough. Obviously I think Santana is the best pitcher in the league, but I agree CC should be the Cy Young....Here's some food for thought: When/If Santana is traded to the Dodgers, think about the rediculous stats he's gonna put up. We're talking about being on the short list for greatest seasons ever, raw stats wise.

The Big Picture said...

i'd go with CC. beckett doesn't have the ERA...take away that run support and he's probably a 15-game winner.

JerryOwens said...

CC is lucky playoffs don't count. Got rocked tonight. I definitely wouldn't give it to Beckett, he's a 15-game winner or less on an average team.