Tag: Cy Young Award

2012 NL Cy Young Belongs to the Cincinnati Reds, but Who Will Win It?

It’s not often that the debate between the top two Cy Young candidates for a specific league becomes a debate over two teammates. But, that is exactly what is going on in the National League and in Cincinnati in 2012.

What makes this even more rare is the fact that it is going on in Cincinnati.The Reds have won their fair share of league MVP awards (12), Rookie of the Year awards (seven), and countless Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards.

But, they have never won a Cy Young award. Simply put, it is a statistical anomaly that the Reds legitimately have the top two candidates to take home this season’s award.

Johnny Cueto and Aroldis Chapman are without argument the front runners to take home the N.L. Cy Young award this season—no questions.

The real question remains though, which of them will actually win it?

You can make a great case for both of them, and personally I find it very difficult to choose. Let’s take a look at what makes them the top two candidates.

Johnny Cueto has developed into the ace and anchor of the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff. Many so-called experts called Cueto’s stats of a year ago a fluke. Cueto has stepped up this season and continued right where he left off and said “fluke this.”

Cueto owns a 15-6 record with a 2.45 ERA, leading the league in wins and coming in at a close second in ERA. What about the infamous WAR category? Johnny is one of only two pitchers with a WAR above four. Jordan Zimmerman owns a 4.4 WAR while Cueto is weighing in at a whopping 5.4—one full win (23 percent) more than Zimmerman’s second place ranking.

For those who are not familiar with WAR, in simple terms, it is a measurement of how valuable you are to your team based on how others perform at your position throughout the league during the same season. It isn’t the “be-all, end-all” stat that many make it out to be, but it is a very reliable measurement when evaluated in context with other performance stats.

That being said, many have been clamoring for knuckleballer R.A. Dickey to take home the award and I say nah-baby-nah.

Dickey has had a great season, but great does not equate to the best season. His peripheral stats look very good—15 wins and a 2.89 ERA—but his true value to his team has been nominal compared to the likes of Cueto. Dickey owns a pitching WAR of only 3.6. Cueto’s rating is an astronomical 50 percent greater than Dickey’s. 

Let’s switch over to Aroldis Chapman for a bit. Read this next potion very closely. Chapman owns a 3.1 WAR, ranking ninth in the league in this category.

Hold on, let’s say that again in a different context.

A relief pitcher has accumulated a WAR larger than the likes of Stephen Strasburg, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Gio Gonzalez, Zack Greinke, Cliff Lee and a list of other staff aces.

This is one stat fact that I cannot even find words to describe how astonishing it is. Most impressive is not the names I just listed but, that he has done it in only a third (58 IP) of the innings pitched.

Chapman would project to have a WAR of nearly 10 in a comparable amount of innings—that’s 85 percent greater than Cueto’s current number.

I am not normally a supporter of relief pitchers winning the Cy Young award. But every once in a while a player makes himself so valuable to his team that you must to look closer at it. The argument can be made that Chapman is the most important pitcher to his team. If you have not yet read Jason Stark’s recent article about why Chapman is the N.L. Cy Young, then you need to. He points out some even more eye-popping facts.

The debate will continue for the rest of the season. But one thing is for sure, the N.L. Cy Young hardware belongs and will end up in Cincinnati at the conclusion of the 2012 season.

Johnny Cueto for N.L Cy Young—Aroldis Chapman for N.L. Cy Young—who would you choose?

 

You can follow Joshua Ramsey on Twitter @JRamCincy.

Check out more B/R articles by Josh here.

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San Francisco Giants: The Real Ace on the Staff Is Ryan Vogelsong

If the Giants absolutely, live or die, had to win just one game (say in a wild-card situation) wouldn’t manager Bruce Bochy have to put Ryan Vogelsong on the mound?

He’s the obvious choice to me.  

Okay, Matt Cain has that perfect game under his belt.  He’s also got a few really beautiful shutouts this season.  Classic, gorgeous pitching.  But Cain also labored in five terrible innings against the Mets, for crying out loud.  I was there to see the very first pitch go over the wall.

I mean, if you are going to put the Giants starting pitchers in order of preference based on consistency, command and placement, I’d have to go:  Vogelsong, Cain, Bumgarner, Lincecum and Zito.  And Vogelsong really gets a lot less respect than he has earned.

I’m not a huge stats and numbers nerd, but his numbers are difficult to ignore.  Sixteen consecutive games allowing three runs or fewer.  This is the longest single-season streak in San Francisco Giants history (since 1958).  Twenty games where Vogelsong has gone for six innings or more.  In 19 starts, Ryan Vogelsong leads all of Major League Baseball with an ERA of 2.22.  (H/T to SFGStats for their diligence.)

Is it possible to discuss the Cy Young Award and not bring up the name Ryan Vogelsong?

In all honesty, Vogelsong scares me a little.  You can’t make eye contact or speak to him on game days, and even the day before he’s a bit squirrely.  Vogelsong is 35 and his professional baseball story is an epic tale of a guy who just refused to stop believing in himself.  I mean, it’s a stinking Kevin Costner movie.

So let’s just admit it: Vogey is the real ace.  Timmy has the hair, Cainer has the perfect game, Bumgarner has that country drawl and Zito has the troops.  Vogey has the fastball, and he used it 73 out of 98 times on Friday…and it was working.

See you at the ballpark.

 

For more of my work and original photographs please check out:  www.GiantsintheYard.com.

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AL Cy Young Award Rankings: White Sox Lefty Chris Sale Cracks Top 5

Through two months (just about) of the 2012 MLB season, the American League Cy Young race features some usual suspects and one not-so-usual suspect.

That would be Chicago White Sox lefty Chris Sale. He hasn’t gotten a whole lot of attention, but he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball for the month of May, and his numbers for the season are all solid. His first season as a starting pitcher is going pretty well.

The question is where Sale ranks among the competition for the AL Cy Young. Is he up there with Jake Peavy and Justin Verlander, or does he still have work to do before we can call him one of the Junior Circuit’s elite pitchers?

Good question. The answer lies within my updated AL Cy Young award rankings.

 

Note: Feel free to check out last week’s rankings.

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2012 MLB Season: Front-Runners for Awards After the First Quarter

That’s gone by fast.

It seems as though just yesterday was the start of the 2012 MLB Season. Yet we find ourselves in the middle of May at the quarter-mark of the 162-game season wondering, “Where did all that time go?”

That’s baseball for you, folks. The next quarter will fly by as quickly as the last, and soon enough, it will be September, in the heat of playoff races. And playoff time means time for awards. 

This year has been nothing short of thrilling. This season has seen the explosion of some young players, the resurgences of older players and big-breaks for prospects. 

It’s time for early predictions for the awards that the MLB will hand out in the fall. All statistics are as accurate as May 22nd, 2012.

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MLB AL Cy Young Award Rankings: Brandon Morrow Emerging as a Legit Contender

With a little over a week to go in the month of May, the race for the American League Cy Young award is starting to heat up.

As things stand right now, there are some pretty heavy hitters in the mix to win the award, including several former Cy Young winners. The guys who are supposed to be pitching well are pitching well, which I suppose makes perfect sense.

There’s always at least one surprise contender every year, however. In recent weeks, Toronto Blue Jays right-hander Brandon Morrow has been stating his case to win the award, as he’s been on a hot stretch that has pushed his record to 5-2 and his ERA comfortably below 3.00.

Morrow is definitely a guy to watch as things move forward in the American League. For the time being, here are my weekly top five contenders for the AL Cy Young.

Note: Feel free to check out last week’s rankings.

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AL Cy Young Award Rankings: Stacking Up Jake Peavy and the Top Contenders

The first month of the 2012 Major League Baseball season is over, so let us all sit back and entertain various “If the season ended today…” scenarios.

For example, who would win the American League Cy Young if the season ended today?

Good question. Jake Peavy is an outstanding candidate, and at this point we have to recognize Yu Darvish as a legit Cy Young contender. Very quietly, Felix Hernandez has looked a lot like the pitcher who won the AL Cy Young back in 2010.

Okay, we’ve established that there are several candidates for the award. Now all we have to do is rank them.

And away we go…

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MLB 2012: Updated Predictions for Every Major Award

The new season is has been in a full swing for three weeks now and we have seen just a preview of the great baseball to come the rest of the year.

There have been many surprises this year so far, the most recent being Philip Humber of the Chicago White Sox throwing a perfect game against the Seattle Mariners.

I will be taking a look at every major MLB award and have an updated prediction for it.

Enjoy.

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Justin Verlander MLB 2k12: AL MVP Deserving of Awesome Video Game Cover

The American League Cy Young and MVP winner for 2011 was Detroit Tigers starting pitcher Justin Verlander. That’s not where the honor stops, though.

Verlander is now on the front cover of video game MLB 2k12.

Verlander took to Twitter to show the world:

While many athletes just get a normal image of themselves posing, the people at 2k Sports have taken the idea of artwork on the front to a new level.

Just like Roy Halladay from last year and Michael Jordan on the front of the NBA 2k games, the star seems to be moving through a mist. It’s fantastic to look at.

The coolest part of the actual cover is the fact that his arm is electrified. While it’s not a big detail or something that everyone will catch, the fact that they are showing his arm in a super hero like fashion could become the staple of the covers.

And there may be no more deserving athlete in the last five years that deserves to be on the front of this game. He was absolutely lights out this year.

Verlander started 34 games this season for the Tigers, picking up 24 wins. Many of those wins broke up losing streaks and kept Detroit in playoff contention through good times and bad.

With 250 strikeouts and an ERA of 2.4, Verlander was the clear choice for AL Cy Young. The Tigers pitcher one the MVP award because no hitter did more for his team’s success than Verlander. People said pitchers shouldn’t win the award, but no one meant more to their team in the entire MLB than Verlander this year.

Such an amazing season should be immortalized with a fantastic video game cover. Verlander deserves the honor.

Check back for more on the Major League Baseball as it comes, and check out Bleacher Report’s MLB Page to get your fill of all things baseball.

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2012 NL Cy Young Award Winner Clayton Kershaw: Top 5 Things Fans May Not Know

Clayton Kershaw won the 2012 NL Cy Young Award on Wednesday, a fact you surely know unless you’ve been on the moon or taking a Rip Van Winkle-like nap for the last couple of days. 

But there are things about Clayton Kershaw that you may have thought you knew, or never knew at all.

1. Kershaw attended high school with Detroit Lions Quarterback Matthew Stafford at Highland Park High School in Dallas, Texas. Other famous alumni from the school include Angie Harmon, Jayne Mansfield, Morgan Fairchild, Aaron Spelling, Doak Walker, Bobby Layne, Kyle Rote, Jr. and Chris Young.

Oh, and because every school seems to have one, would-be President Reagan assassin, John Hinckley, Jr.

2. In a high school playoff game against Arlington Martin High School, Kershaw threw an all-strikeout perfect game.

3. Following a Christian mission trip to Africa, Kershaw and his wife, Ellen, are building an orphanage in Zambia. The couple will also release a children’s book in January 2012 about their life since middle school and the effect the trip to Africa has had on their lives.

4. In high school Kershaw played on a traveling baseball team, the Dallas Tigers, with Los Angeles Angels Closer Jordan Walden, Dodgers top relief prospect Shawn Tolleson and the aforementioned Matthew Stafford.

5. Kershaw is the great-nephew of the astronomer that discovered Pluto, Clyde Tombaugh. Tombaugh was also keenly interested in UFOs, which would seem to make him a better uncle for former MLB player Bill “Spaceman” Lee

Clayton Kershaw is as talented a young pitcher as the Dodgers have had in their rotation in a generation. It also appears from his accomplishments to date that Kershaw is not only an accomplished athlete, he’s a remarkable young man.

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Justin Verlander: Detroit Tigers Ace Rekindles Debate over Pitchers as MVPs

Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander has had, by all accounts, a remarkable season. With the Triple Crown of American League pitching all but sewn up, Verlander has virtually guaranteed to  himself the AL Cy Young Award in a landslide. He is, without a shadow of a doubt, the most outstanding pitcher in the American League this season.

But is he the Most Valuable Player? Furthermore, should a starting pitcher even be considered for the MVP, much less find himself in position to win it?

And how, if at all, would those arguments change if baseball had a more legitimate counterbalance to the Cy Young, a Most Outstanding Hitter award?

 

Don’t Know Much About History 

Verlander’s candidacy has rekindled the decades-long debate about pitchers as MVPs. As the argument for him goes, Verlander is the sort of dominant pitcher who stops losing streaks cold in their tracks.

His 24 wins, or at least those that he would have earned above an average replacement, turned the AL Central race into a one-horse runaway for the Tigers. He has had a greater impact on Detroit’s success in 30 starts than any of his competitors have had in 600 or so at-bats across 162 games.

The argument against Verlander as the MVP? A) He doesn’t play every day, and, B) that’s what the Cy Young is for.

Suffice it to say, I don’t quite buy either one, much less both in tandem.

Nor do I believe that such “wisdom” is necessarily received or particularly dogmatic, as so many notions in baseball are.

Since the Cy Young Award came into being in 1956, there have been nine occasions in which one person has taken home both the Cy Young and the Kenesaw Mountain Landis (MVP) awards in the very same season. Seven of those guys were starting pitchers, with the other two being Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley.

Granted, nine times out of a possible 99 opportunities doesn’t exactly make the occurrence of a pitcher winning the Cy Young and the MVP simultaneously a likely one, but it’s not as though we’ve never seen it happen.

And it’s not as though pitchers hadn’t won awards before the Cy Young came around. 

Between 1931 and 1955, when the Baseball Writers Association of America voted on the MVP and before the institution of the Cy Young, baseball’s greatest honor was bestowed on pitchers 11 times in 50 opportunities, a mark bested only by outfielders, who claimed 12 MVPs within that same span.

 

Can Hank Still Wield His Hammer? 

It would seem, then, that the Cy Young changed the way writers thought and still think about the MVP. Without the Cy Young, or with a comparable award for hitters only, would Verlander and his incredible season be so easily brushed aside as a non-entity in the MVP discussion simply because of the peculiar position he plays?

To the effect that the Cy Young is a pitcher’s consolation prize and the MVP belongs instead to a great everyday player with monster numbers, I offer this question: What about the Hank Aaron Award?

It’s perfectly understandable if you’re not familiar with this particular award because, to be honest, I really wasn’t either until I looked it up. I’ll let the description on MLB.com tell you what the Hank Aaron Award actually is:

“This coveted honor is awarded annually to the best overall offensive performer in both the American League and National League. Originally introduced in 1999 to honor the 25th anniversary of Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, the Hank Aaron Award was the first major award to be introduced in 30 years.”

Whether the award is actually “coveted” is questionable.

Have you ever found yourself mixed up in a heated debate over who should win the Hank Aaron Award? Have you ever seen or heard any of the all-knowing talking heads blabber on about the Hank Aaron Award and why Player X should earn it over Players Y and Z?

Probably not, and you might say the reason for that is the “newness” of the award or that the MVP is essentially the same thing but much more prestigious, and you’d be right, at least in part.

Baseball lends itself to traditionalism and vague, unwritten rules set in stone somewhere next to the original Ten Commandments, wherever they may be, in part because it is such an old cultural institution.

Thus, how can an award just now approaching its Bar Mitzvah and named after a living legend whose career accomplishments have (technically) been surpassed possibly hold as much gravitas as a 56-year-old prize given out in honor of a dead guy whose records won’t ever be sniffed, much less approached?

 

A Recall at Baseball’s Ballot Box 

Tough competition, to say the least, but there’s something else at play here, something else holding back the Hank Aaron Award from greater importance and, perhaps, pitchers like Verlander from taking home two awards at once.

That something is voting.

What separates the Cy Young and the MVP awards from the Hank Aaron Award, what elevates the former two above the latter one, is the simple fact that the Cy Young and the MVP are determined by the BBWAA while the Hank Aaron is currently awarded by way of a fan vote. The voting system for the Aaron Award has changed five times in 13 years.

Not unlike the Cy Young and the modern MVP, which both underwent significant changes in their methodologies early on, though the voting for those two has always been left to the BBWAA.

The credibility of any award in Major League Baseball ultimately hinges on the opinions of the sport’s writers. Ford C. Frick, the commissioner of baseball who instituted the Cy Young Award and had been a journalist himself, knew this full well.

Journalists are the gatekeepers of the establishment, the ones who laud baseball’s traditions and deride those who dare tread on hallowed ground or disrupt an otherwise fragile status quo.

 

Wasted Words 

So what does that mean for the Hank Aaron Award? Why haven’t the writers necessarily given it their blessing?

Because they don’t vote on it. Why should baseball writers care about an award in whose distribution they have no say? Why should the writers bother publicizing the Hank Aaron Award with their words and their work when it’s not within their jurisdiction?

That’s not to say there’s any sort of intentional grudge being held here, that baseball writers necessarily despise and shun the Hank Aaron Award because of its vulgarity or its corporate sponsorship (it’s officially known as “Sharp presents the Hank Aaron Award”), though those factors certainly don’t help its case.

 

Nothing’s Written in Stone 

The bigger question is: Would giving writers a say in who gets the Hank Aaron Award, either in part or in whole, change the way the honor is perceived?

Would that shift in polling make the Hank Aaron Award a worthy counterweight, something that baseball writers will ponder and pontificate about as profusely as they do the MVP and the Cy Young?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

There’s only one way to find out.

At the very least, a stronger Hank Aaron Award would, theoretically, put to bed, once and for all, the notion that hitters have the MVP and pitchers have the Cy Young and that one individual should not win both.

It wouldn’t guarantee that a pitcher of Verlander’s caliber would win the MVP, but it would at least remove a needless crutch from the conversation—one that yields only a circular justification when prompted—and allow for more stimulating and honest debate.

I can’t help but imagine that there are at least some voters out there who would be willing to cast their MVP ballots for Verlander if they knew that they could also hand a hefty piece of hardware to Jacoby Ellsbury, Curtis Granderson, Orlando Cabrera, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Bautista or whomever else belongs in the discussion.

 

Adding to the Conversation 

Now, I doubt that Major League Baseball, with the snail’s pace at which its infinite wisdom advances, would even think about surrendering the Hank Aaron Award to writers, much less consider the possibility in a serious light, though I could very well be wrong.

Perhaps, Bud Selig would switch the balloting for a sixth time and put more power in the hands of the BBWAA if its members prompted him.

I can only hope this sort of development happens soon, not for the sake of Verlander or the sake of the game, but for the sake of discussion.

Because, at the end of the day, what makes baseball America’s pastime are the endless and timeless debates that its history stirs up. Making Hank Aaron as worthwhile a mantelpiece as Cy Young would add positively to those never-ending discussions.

Verlander, in his own infinite wisdom, put it best:

“I’m just glad I’m able to mix it up a little and give people something to talk about, something to argue about. That’s what baseball’s about, isn’t it? Numbers and arguing and who should and who shouldn’t.”

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