All this year's awards do in my mind is hammer the ridiculous fact the you just need to be a 6 inning pitcher to be in the conversation! There is absolutely no need for the workload of starters to be dropped as dramatically as they have over the past decade.
Hehe. Fail.
Lincecum was #1 in the NL in complete games and #3 in innings (8 behind the league leader who had 2 extra starts). Greinke was #2 in the AL in complete games and #5 in Innings (11 behind the league leader who had 2 extra starts).
I think Jack McDowell does a fine job refuting his own argument.
you start to worry about perennial low ERA, high strikeout guys like Vasquez being propelled to the highest level of respect
Those are exactly the pitchers who should be respected. That is, after all, what they get paid for. A guy who strikes out has no chance to hurt your team. And a guy who has a perennially low ERA is perennially giving your team a chance to win.
All this year's awards do in my mind is hammer the ridiculous fact the you just need to be a 6 inning pitcher to be in the conversation! There is absolutely no need for the workload of starters to be dropped as dramatically as they have over the past decade.
I don't have the numbers at hand, but I think this is also false. As players salaries have gone up teams have spent more money looking into the best way to protect their investments. And other than Dusty Baker, I think the answer has been to keep them on a shorter leash.
0-3 to 4-3. Worst choke in the history of baseball. Enough said.
Matthias wrote:I think Jack McDowell does a fine job refuting his own argument.
you start to worry about perennial low ERA, high strikeout guys like Vasquez being propelled to the highest level of respect
Those are exactly the pitchers who should be respected. That is, after all, what they get paid for. A guy who strikes out has no chance to hurt your team. And a guy who has a perennially low ERA is perennially giving your team a chance to win.
He also alludes to the idea that a high number of Wins should be an important factor in determining a Cy Young award since pitchers are paid to Win games. If Greinke only won 13 games last year, would he have won the Cy Young? That team was terrible. I would like to think that pitchers are paid to make all efforts to win games but they shouldn't be penalized by the fact that the owner of the team can't cough up enough dough to help with offense, defense, etc.
McDowell definitely could have spent more time with his post, because his discussion veers all over the place and doesn't have a lot of focus. The comments by other users are a bit scathing as well and unfortunately he doesn't do a whole lot to back up his points. I feel that the 6 inning comment was misguided given the winners, so this post seems less like a jab at the Cy Young award designation and more towards the soft handling of starting pitchers these days. He should have focused his post in that direction instead so we'd really know where he was coming from.
In 1993 McDowell faced 1067 hitters and pitched 256 innings, he threw 3615 pitches or 14.1 pitches per innings . Last year Verlander faced 982 hitters and pitched 240 innings and he threw 3937 pitches or 16.4 pitches per innings.
The simple fact is hitters are better these days and they take a lot more pitches, pitchers also have to throw max effort more because there aren't nearly as many holes in the lineups. If McDowell pitched in today's game even without innings limits he probably wouldn't throw over 220 or so innings a year.
Dan Lambskin wrote:maybe there was a second spitter
That was Roger.
onto topic at hand, I personally think the CY needs to start being based more like the MVP. Why is it pitchers on crappy teams get a pass, but hitters cant?
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by EWeaver » Mon Mar 01, 2010 6:34 pm 
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