AL Cy Young Race

[EDGECRUSHER]

The correct answer is Felix Hernandez. Not David Price, who has had an amazing season and certainly not CC Sabathia, who has also had an excellent season.

Wins are a team stat. It's not Felix' fault that Seattle scored 339 fewer runs than the Yankees, so don't punish him for having 8 fewer wins than Sabathia.

[MaineDolFan]

Buchholz has more wins than Felix does and only a slightly lower ERA.

Why isn't Clay in your line of thinking?  Curious.

[Sunstroke]

The correct answer is definitely Felix Hernandez.

I'd put Clay in the conversation...and even consider him a top-5 candidate, but his limited innings shows in the K's (232 to 120). The K/9 has enough of a disparity (8.36 to 6.22) to make me disregard the IP disparity. Felix also beats out Clay in BAA (.212 to .226 ), WHiP (1.06 to 1.20) and a number of other relevant pitching stats.

I love Clay...and several of my fantasy squads "really" love him, but Felix definitely did have the better season.

Interesting stat to compare... Clay Buchholz received 6.79 runs of support per start. Felix...a tiny-tiny 3.75 runs of support. If King Felix had been on even a "decent" team, he would have won 20 going away, imo... The guy has made 34 starts this season...and 30 of the 34 were quality starts.

Sports writers should say really nice things about Buchholz...but they really better hand the Cy Young to Felix.

[EDGECRUSHER]

Buchholz has more wins than Felix does and only a slightly lower ERA.

Why isn't Clay in your line of thinking?  Curious.

Clay has had an amazing season, but his innings total is about 75 lower than Felix'. That's about 10-11 starts. On top of that, his strikeout totals are kind of low for his ERA and his walks are kind of high. Strikeouts, to me at least, show that you are dominating the hitter and don't rely on your defense to get outs.

That being said, I would still vote for Clay over CC, despite Sabathia also having around 60 more innings. About 0.80 ERA lower than another pitcher makes up for the innings IMO.

[Denver_Bronco]

John Lester had 5 straight games of 10 strikeouts or more. That's  pretty f'in impressive. Last pitcher to do that was Johan Santana in 2004.

I couldn't give the Cy Young to a guy with 13 wins, (Hernandez) regardless of your method of thinking. How do you know CC wouldn't have had a lower ERA had he not had 3-4 run cushions to work with early in games? Guys do pitch to the scoreboard ya know.

I'd go Lester, or Price considering that Price outpitched CC twice down the stretch. Ok, maybe once since the one game went extra innings.

[EDGECRUSHER]

Lester had a shot if he pitched well tonight and got to 20 wins. Instead, he stunk up the joint, raised his ERA up over 3 to 3.25 and finishes the season 19-9.

Still an outstanding season from the young lefty, but awards voters are in love with wins and magical numbers like 20 wins and 200 K's. So, he probably just eliminated himself.

[Tenshot13]

Homer alert!  Price for Cy Young!

[Sunstroke]

Price or my fantasy MVP for being a later round super-gem this season.

He may have to share my fantasy MVP award with the guy I picked up on most of my squads about two weeks into the season...Blue Jays RF Jose Bautista. Jose a big reason that most of my squads popped 10/10's in both HR and RBI.