Cy Young Rumblings

[Optimist]

I really enjoyed this article.

 

Cy Young Rumblings

By Jayson Stark

 

If Mariano Rivera wasn't one of the three best pitchers in the American League this year, we know a whole lot of people who need new eye prescriptions.

 

But there is official evidence that at least six people didn't think he was -- because somehow, six of the 28 ballots for the AL Cy Young award (that's 21 percent) came back without the great Mariano's name on them.

 

Anybody got a decent explanation for that travesty of voting justice?

 

Well, we've got one. And the sad truth is, you don't need to be a descendant of Goose Gossage to know this had nothing to do with how Rivera pitched. It had everything to do with when he pitched.

 

His crime, clearly, is that he pitches the end of games -- not the beginning of games. And baseball's award voters have been subtly telling us for years that they don't think relief pitchers fit the qualifications for this, or any, major award.

 

The Cy Young is for starting pitchers. The MVP is for position players. And don't even get us started on the Hall of Fame.

 

So what's the role of relief pitchers in those otherwise-prestigious elections? Basically, as far as we can tell, they exist only to help fill out the ballots.

 

Well, it's time to fix that.

 

It's time for the Baseball Writers Association to create a new award -- say, the Rollie Fingers Relief Excellence Award -- to honor the Mariano Riveras and Billy Wagners and Trevor Hoffmans who go through life giving up about one run a month, but get recognized only when they accidentally turn a win into a loss.

 

This, friends, is an innovation that's more overdue in this sport than letting umpires haul out the instant-replay monitors.

 

True, nine of the 90 Cy Youngs in history have been handed to relief pitchers. Five relievers have even won an MVP. But they've won only when there was no compelling "normal" candidate to vote for. Check out the voting results. They couldn't be more clear on that.

 

And the man who serves as human proof -- better than any relief pitcher of his, or any other, era -- is Rivera. This was his ninth season as a closer. It was the sixth in which his ERA was under 2.00. He owns zero Cy Youngs. In fact, this was the first year he'd even finished as high as second. Crazy.

 

Also, is there any doubt in the mind of anyone who has watched a Yankees game since 1998 that Rivera has been the single most indispensable Yankee in just about every one of those eight straight first-place seasons (including this one)? Shouldn't be.

 

But how many MVP awards has he won? Zilch, of course. How many times has he even finished in the top 10 in the voting? How about once (a token ninth-place showing, in 2004). What a joke.

 

"This guy is going to go through one of the greatest careers of any pitcher in history," says longtime BBWAA secretary-treasurer Jack O'Connell, "and not have any hardware to show for it."

 

He's right -- unless something changes, that is. So let's turn and face those changes. Let's establish an award that acknowledges, finally, that relief pitchers are real people -- people who have every bit as huge an impact on teams and seasons as the Bartolo Colons of our world.

 

Unlike most ideas we come up with, this one might actually happen. O'Connell says he's open to the idea of introducing a new award. BBWAA president Peter Schmuck was even willing to describe this as "logical." So maybe that sound you're hearing in the distance is the Rollie Fingers Award ball rolling.

 

'Bout time. In fact, there's only one problem we can see with establishing that award:

 

It wouldn't be long before we'd have to rename it ...

 

As the Mariano Rivera Award.

 

Link

[YankeeDoodle]

There's the Rolaids Relief Award which isn't subjective to voter bias since it's based on statistics. I guess you could make the case that Rivera gets robbed, but maybe his performance is taken for granted, and in any case his career doesn't need to be validated by some trophy.

[Pinstripe_Pride]

This one's pretty good too:

 

STOP, THIEF! RIVERA WAS ROBBED

 

November 9, 2005 -- ROBBED? Mariano Rivera wasn't just robbed yesterday. He was mugged. He was pistol-whipped.

 

He was bound and gagged and put under an interrogation lamp by a blind gaggle representing the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who voted overwhelmingly to make Bartolo Colon one of the most underwhelming Cy Young Award winners ever.

 

Ridiculous?

 

It isn't just ridiculous, it's shameful. It's dreadful. It's woeful. And don't think for one second that the fact that Mariano Rivera plays for the New York Yankees wasn't held against him in certain quarters. So that makes it spiteful, too.

 

They're going to hand out an award to the best pitcher in the American League this year and they aren't going to give it to Rivera? Then why hand the award out at all? Or why not simply re-work the language describing what the award should be: best pitcher in the league with at least 20 wins.

 

That's the crazy part: Colon wasn't even the best starting pitcher in the American League this year; Johann Santana was. The fact that Colon not only won, but did so in Reagan-Mondale fashion, only underlines how absurd this campaign really was.

 

As if Mariano Rivera finishing second didn't do that already.

 

It's galling, is what it is, because if any of the people who cast votes for Colon over Rivera had bothered to do any homework - which includes watching the Yankees occasionally - then the vote couldn't possibly have gone any other way.

 

Colon had a very nice year. He was 21-8. He had an ERA of 3.48, which wouldn't exactly make Sandy Koufax envious but is a respectable number in these offensive-minded times (even if it was more than half a run higher than Santana's). He also had 157 strikeouts, a shockingly low number for a strikeout pitcher. And Colon may be singularly responsible if Alex Rodriguez wins the MVP Award over David Ortiz, thanks to the three homers he surrendered to A-Rod in one game back in the spring.

 

And there isn't a baseball player alive who recoils in fear at the prospect of having to face Bartolo Colon. Not this year. Not ever. Not one.

 

Then there is Rivera. You know how it used to be required that Joe DiMaggio be introduced as the Greatest Living Ballplayer? Rivera, by universal acclamation, is now referred to as the Greatest Relief Pitcher Ever. There is no question about that. It is highly likely that even the people who voted for Bartolo Colon have referred to him that way often in their newspaper stories.

 

Now, the Cy Young isn't a lifetime achievement award. But there ought to be some kind of law that when the Best Relief Pitcher Ever has his best year ever, it gets recognized - especially since there were no Koufaxian shoo-ins this time around.

 

Rivera blew two saves in the season's first three games; he blew exactly two more over the final 159. He allowed one earned run on the road all year. He had 43 saves. He had 80 strikeouts against only 18 walks. His ERA was 1.38, and even those who scoff at relievers should have been able to figure out that having an ERA more than two full runs lower than Colon's should have counted for something.

 

But it didn't. And that's a travesty, although not the first one directed at him, for the bizarre Cy Young bias against Rivera is nothing new. Get this: Rivera finished third in the voting in 1996, 1999 and 2004 - and those are the only other years besides this one when he's even received a vote!

 

Think about that for a second. The single-dominant weapon in baseball over the last 10 seasons, and in six of those years not one voter wrote his name on a Cy Young ballot. It's staggering. It's sickening. And it cheapens the award.

 

Look, worthy candidates get scammed all the time. It took winning 114 games in 1998 for Joe Torre to win a Manager of the Year Award. In other years, the likes of Johnny Oates, Jimy Williams and Tony Pena earned the nod over him. That was crazy. But it wasn't criminal.

 

This Cy Young Award is both. michael.vaccaro@nypost.com

[Pinstripe_Pride]

his career doesn't need to be validated by some trophy.

 

Yeah that's the bottom line. He has four rings sitting somewhere in his house and he can take solace in the fact that he was always the one on the mound throwing that last pitch to get his team those rings. That's award enough.

[Optimist]

and in any case his career doesn't need to be validated by some trophy.

 

Very true.

[ARod2212]

This one's pretty good too:

I posted that somewhere too, another common sense article. Again, Bartolo Colon is one of the worst choices ever for Cy Young.

[He Hate Me]

Heres a good way to decide who is the better choice for Cy Young. Who would you rather have, Bartolo Colon or Mariano Rivera?

[Moose]

Heres a good way to decide who is the better choice for Cy Young. Who would you rather have, Bartolo Colon or Mariano Rivera?

 

Haha... What are you talking about, dude?

[redsoxrules]

Heres a good way to decide who is the better choice for Cy Young. Who would you rather have, Bartolo Colon or Mariano Rivera?

 

like you guys keep saying to us cant you just face it colon won it period!

[He Hate Me]

like you guys keep saying to us cant you just face it colon won it period!

 

But Mo has so many more late game heroics. Plus, isnt a strikeout in the 9th worth more than a strikeout in the 3rd?

 

 

disclaimer: please note for the sarcasm detector challenegd, that the preceding post was a sarcastic post. It was done in jest and the writer does not confirm nor deny any truths based on his statements.

[ARod2212]

like you guys keep saying to us cant you just face it colon won it period!

Colon was a statistically bad choice. Rodriguez was a statistically good choice. There's no parallel

[redsoxrules]

Colon was a statistically bad choice. Rodriguez was a statistically good choice. There's no parallel

 

oh really ,well first of all he was the only 20 game winner ,stat wise hes up there with the rest of the league so whats the argument, you dam know there not gonna give it to someonewho only wins 15 games

[He Hate Me]

oh really ,well first of all he was the only 20 game winner ,stat wise hes up there with the rest of the league so whats the argument, you dam know there not gonna give it to someonewho only wins 15 games

 

But the intangibles! what about the intangibles?? liek leadership, Colon's a bad teammate! Mo's strikeouts were all 9th inning strikeouts, that counts for more than anything that happened prior to that!

 

disclaimer: please note for the sarcasm detector challenegd, that the preceding post was a sarcastic post. It was done in jest and the writer does not confirm nor deny any truths based on his statements.