azdad1978
Championship!!!!
By Ed Price, Tribune
Can Randy Johnson win his sixth Cy Young Award today? Diamondbacks teammate Brandon Webb would tell him it’s going to be tough.
A year ago, Webb was statistically superior to Florida’s Dontrelle Willis in most significant statistics, except wins and losses. Willis was the National League Rookie of the Year and Webb finished third in the voting.
If the 32 members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who voted on this year’s NL Cy Young Award (ballots were cast before the playoffs began) use similar criteria as last year’s Rookie of the Year voters, Houston’s Roger Clemens is probably the favorite to be named the winner today.
Clemens went 18-4 with a 2.98 ERA for a playoff team. But he led the league in just one major category: winning percentage.
Johnson led the NL in starts, strikeouts and opponents’ batting average; threw a perfect game; and was second in ERA, 2.60.
He also ranked higher than Clemens in complete games (4-0), innings pitched (245 2 /3-214 1 /3), strikeouts per nine innings (10.6-9.2) and walks per nine innings (1.6-3.3).
Johnson’s 8.10 hits-pluswalks per nine innings was the fourth-best such mark since 1968 (after Pedro Martinez in 2000 and Greg Maddux in 1995 and 1994).
The crux of the matter — because Arizona scored two runs or fewer in 17 of Johnson’s 35 starts, Johnson’s record was 16-14. He was 13-2 when the DBacks scraped together three runs or more.
Voters overlooked wins and losses somewhat in 1999, when Johnson won his second Cy Young Award with a 17-9 record.
But 16-14?
No starter has won the Cy Young Award in a non-strike season without a record at least eight games better than .500. The only starter to win the award with as few as 16 wins in a full season was Rick Sutcliffe in 1984, when he went 16-1 after being traded from Cleveland to the Chicago Cubs in mid-June.
It has been 28 years since a Cy Young Award winner had more than 11 losses (Randy Jones was 22-14 for San Diego and Jim Palmer was 22-13 for Baltimore in 1976).
Ignore win-loss records, and Johnson was clearly the NL’s best pitcher. Whether those were ignored will be known today.
"You talk about Cy Young, you’re talking about the baddest dude in the league, aren’t you?" Colorado Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said in late September. "He’s the baddest dude in the league for me."
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=31255
Can Randy Johnson win his sixth Cy Young Award today? Diamondbacks teammate Brandon Webb would tell him it’s going to be tough.
A year ago, Webb was statistically superior to Florida’s Dontrelle Willis in most significant statistics, except wins and losses. Willis was the National League Rookie of the Year and Webb finished third in the voting.
If the 32 members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America who voted on this year’s NL Cy Young Award (ballots were cast before the playoffs began) use similar criteria as last year’s Rookie of the Year voters, Houston’s Roger Clemens is probably the favorite to be named the winner today.
Clemens went 18-4 with a 2.98 ERA for a playoff team. But he led the league in just one major category: winning percentage.
Johnson led the NL in starts, strikeouts and opponents’ batting average; threw a perfect game; and was second in ERA, 2.60.
He also ranked higher than Clemens in complete games (4-0), innings pitched (245 2 /3-214 1 /3), strikeouts per nine innings (10.6-9.2) and walks per nine innings (1.6-3.3).
Johnson’s 8.10 hits-pluswalks per nine innings was the fourth-best such mark since 1968 (after Pedro Martinez in 2000 and Greg Maddux in 1995 and 1994).
The crux of the matter — because Arizona scored two runs or fewer in 17 of Johnson’s 35 starts, Johnson’s record was 16-14. He was 13-2 when the DBacks scraped together three runs or more.
Voters overlooked wins and losses somewhat in 1999, when Johnson won his second Cy Young Award with a 17-9 record.
But 16-14?
No starter has won the Cy Young Award in a non-strike season without a record at least eight games better than .500. The only starter to win the award with as few as 16 wins in a full season was Rick Sutcliffe in 1984, when he went 16-1 after being traded from Cleveland to the Chicago Cubs in mid-June.
It has been 28 years since a Cy Young Award winner had more than 11 losses (Randy Jones was 22-14 for San Diego and Jim Palmer was 22-13 for Baltimore in 1976).
Ignore win-loss records, and Johnson was clearly the NL’s best pitcher. Whether those were ignored will be known today.
"You talk about Cy Young, you’re talking about the baddest dude in the league, aren’t you?" Colorado Rockies manager Clint Hurdle said in late September. "He’s the baddest dude in the league for me."
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=31255
