14 November 2005

Baseball Musings 11/14/2005

While we wait for the announcement of the AL MVP ...

Ryne Sandberg is an idiot - Thanks to Big Lou, I found Ryne Sandberg's article on how he would pick the Cy Young winner. His main criteria include: if the pitcher is on a playoff team, ERA and wins. Hmmmm. Of those three stats, how many does the PITCHER HIMSELF control solely? Exactly ZERO. So, by Ryne's argument, the best pitcher should be the guy who happens to find himself in a happy place where is team wins a lot, scores a lot of runs for him and has decent defense. Nothing to do with the pitcher's actual performance with his control, or ability to keep runners off the bases, or ability to pitch deep into games. No, just if he happens to be on a good team that gets him lots of wins and gets to the postseason. This is what, my friends, we can garbage sportwriting/analysis based on conjecture and hunches. Its like "intelligent design" applied to baseball.

This is not to say that Chris Carpenter was not deserving, but to dismiss Dontrelle Willis offhand because the Marlins miss the playoffs is an affront to Willis and to all intelligent baseball fans. Just to show, yet again, that Ryne Sandberg is a poor man's Joe Morgan: They base all of their picks on the old school ideas like "intangibles", "leadership", "carrying the team on their shoulders" and garbage like that.

Anyway, here are some of the Cy Young winners since 1990 that would not have won by Ryne's standards:
2003 - Eric Gagne & Roy Halladay
1991, 1997-98 - Roger Clemens
1996 - Pat Hentgen
1994 - David Cone

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