In the Baseball Writers Association voting for the American League Cy Young award, David Price and CC Sabathia received a combined 25 percent of the first-place votes. As meager as that showing might have been, they did better than I did. I got not quite half their total, 12 percent.
No, I was not running against Felix Hernandez, not literally, at least. But I was figuratively because last week I wrote in this space that the Seattle pitcher should not win the award.
Even though Hernandez had terrific numbers for earned run average, opposing batting average, strikeouts and innings pitched, he won only 13 games, I wrote. It would not be a good idea, I explained, to give him the award and lower the standard for wins for a starting pitcher even further than they were last year when Tim Lincecum won the National League award with 15 wins and Zack Greinke the American with 16.
This was nothing personal against the Venezuelan right-hander. In fact, I wrote, I think he’s the best pitcher in the league and should have won the award last year when he won 19. But this year, I said, I thought CC Sabathia or David Price would have been a better choice than Hernandez.
I expected to hear from a lot of readers who disagreed with me, and I did. In a record response to a column in the nearly two and a half years I have been writing on this Web site, 82.7 percent disagreed with me, saying the writers selected the right winner. Only 12 percent agreed with me while the remaining 5.3 percent took no position on the Hernandez question but offered comment on other aspects of the column.
The outcome was not surprising. I wrote the column because I had sensed from reading and hearing talk about the award that Hernandez would win. And if the writers had voted for Hernandez, certainly the fans favored the man known as King Felix.
What was slightly surprising in the email responses was, with some exceptions, their civility. I have found that, in the Internet age, when readers disagree with an opinion expressed in a column, some of them react indecently, as if they are letting out their pent-up rage at the writer. They are incapable of expressing their opinion civilly and intelligently.
Henry, for example, wrote, “You’re old, you suck…”
For the most part, however, the responses were not only civil but also intelligent. The point that seemed to be made by most readers was that, as Randy put it succinctly, “Pitchers don’t win games, teams do.”
As much as I might understand the thinking behind that view, I am not prepared to write off wins for starting pitchers. Developments in baseball have made it more difficult for starters to gain victories; they come out of games earlier, for example, leaving more time for bad relievers to relinquish leads.
But starters have long had to deal with bad relievers; weak run-producing teams, like Hernandez this year; porous defenses and small ball parks, and some of them have managed to win games. They were not accidentally good.
I believe the best pitching development in years has been the effort Nolan Ryan is making in Texas to get pitchers to work deeper into games, trying to get them to learn to get more outs with fewer pitches while at the same time conditioning themselves to be able to throw more pitches.
If he is successful with the Rangers, other teams may become brave enough to copy him. Pitchers have been pampered for far too many years.
But I digress. Another point made by many who wrote was that the Hernandez decision was not a case of old statistics versus new statistics.
As many noted, the new numbers weren’t needed to prove Hernandez’s case to those who believed he should win the award.
“I also am not a huge fan of the newer stats,” one reader wrote. “However, you don’t need new stats to vote Hernandez to a Cy Young Award. All you need to do is look at the statistics you yourself cited in the piece. OPBA, ERA, IP and K’s. These are not new statistics and they are significant enough to give him the award.”
I acknowledge that maybe I over did the impact of new statistics. I anticipated – incorrectly, as it turned out – that they would be used. But if I recall correctly, I don’t think one reader cited one of the fancy acronyms. I was impressed.
Finally, many readers took exception to my suggestion that good pitchers find a way to win. Of course, contrary to what some suggested, I don’t expect a pitcher to win his own game by hitting a two-run home run.
But some good pitchers pitch to the score, giving up runs if they have a big lead but giving up nothing if their team has not scored.
Jack Morris was that kind of pitcher, and he was good enough to be in the Hall of Fame, in my opinion (yes, that opinion has also invited critics to write). But his pitching style has cost him because those who don’t think he belongs in the Hall cite his 3.90 earned run average.
Hernandez’s supporters cite his low run support (3.06 runs a game, lowest in the majors) to explain his having only 13 wins. But he pitched some games that he could have won had he allowed fewer runs.
Two examples: The Mariners scored 3 runs against the Rangers May 1, but Hernandez gave up 5 runs in 4 1/3 innings and lost, 6-3. The Mariners scored four runs against the Angels Sept. 11, but Hernandez allowed 7 runs (4 earned) in 6 1/3 innings and lost 7-4.
That’s not to say that Hernandez should have been perfect, but he cost himself some games that would have improved his won-lost record. And don’t forget his eight-start stretch from May 1 through June 8 in which he allowed 27 earned runs in 49 2/3 innings for a 4.89 e.r.a. But nobody’s perfect.