Ubaldo Jimenez (15-1), the 26 year-old phenom had an ERA of 0.78 after 11 starts this season. Since then, his ERA has evolved to 2.38, which is not horrible but not nearly as impressive as the previous mentioned statistic.
The Rockies ace has been the most dominant starter in baseball after the first 14 starts this season. Since then, the Colorado pitcher has had a bunch of rocky outings.
He gave up 8 earned runs his first 11 starts and then a total of 27 earned runs his last 8 starts. Jimenez was such a overriding pitcher earlier this season that he overshadowed his no-hitter with his overall ERA and record. And although his record is tainted by only one blemish on May 9th against the Dodgers, where he lost even though he only gave up one run in seven innings, Jimenez is not as feared a figure—at least not compared to the other lights-out pitchers in the league.
Jimenez has had four outings where he has given up 4 or more earned runs, and in those four outings, he is 1-0. He gave six runs in one game and seven in another, yet his outcome was neutralized and unmarked on his record. This isn’t to say that Jimenez is not a great pitcher but what this does say is that records are deceiving. For example; at this point, the strongest pitcher in the league is arguably Josh Johnson. With a 1.62 ERA and 130 strikeouts to 28 walks, he shows command and supremacy—but his record is 10-3. Again, don’t get me wrong—it’s a great record but not nearly as exciting as 15-1. Yet Johnson’s loss was the only game he gave up 4 earned runs (which occurred in the first game of the season against the Mets). Since then his two losses happened once in Florida on May 29th, where he gave up one run (unearned) in seven innings. And the other lost happened on June 26 at the Marlins residence—this time he pitched eight innings and gave up two runs (both earned). In total, Johnson has given up 12 less earned runs than Jimenez and 12 more strikeouts than Jimenez.
But who is a better pitcher this year? Jimenez (15-1) or Johnson (10-3)?
When it comes down to who I would give the Cy Young to, it would be Johnson—unless Jimenez turns it around and revives the residue of starts he had earlier this year. I would think Johnson is in the lead of this candidacy. Sure, he doesn’t have the most innings pitched (he’s 15th in the MLB) and of course he doesn’t have the most about of K’s (7th in the MLB), but he does have the 5th best K/BB ratio (4.64—Cliff Lee leads the major leagues with a 13.86 K/BB ratio, which is twice better than the second leader Roy Halladay!) and Johnson has given up the fewest runs, Johnson has the lowest ERA, Johnson has the second best WHIP, Johnson has one of the best K/9 ratios and Johnson has one of the best H/9 ratios.
What does Jimenez have? A no-hitter, the best H/9 ratio, major league-leading 15 wins, one of the top ground-out inducer (no one tops Tim Hudson), 2 shutouts, and an unbelievable ability to not lose regardless of how many runs he gives up. Records speak volumes but Johnson is the mute button. Regardless of the phenomenal year Jimenez is having, I don’t know if he will win the Cy Young or at least deserve to win the Cy Young. The year of the pitchers has created the most competitive pitching duels in recent decades.
In all honesty, I’m not even sure if either of these two pitchers will win the Cy Young over Wainwright—who is 14-5 with a 2.02 ERA and has pitched in the third most amount of innings than any pitcher in the major league this year. With such outstanding competitive action among the pitchers, this year’s Cy Young candidate will be a great toss up (at least we can count out Lincecum this year--or can we?).
Hey, maybe ESPN will do another special on “The Decision” and explain how the MLB picked the Cy Young?
3 comments:
I think it all depends on if the cards make the playoffs. Yes? Then Wainwright. No? Then Johnson. I liked the ending and the amount of stats you threw out there were awesome (although Cliff Lee is in the American League not the National haha).
Unlike the MVP voting, Cy Young really has absolutely nothing to do with how good your team ends up doing. Greinke won in the AL last year for a team 32 games below .500, while Lincecum has won these past two years while his Giants missed the playoffs. And last year Lincecum even beat out two division winning pitchers in Carpenter and Wainwright. Granted, you could make the "split the votes" argument for those two, but that doesn't explain why Wainwright received nearly 50% of the third place votes. So many third place votes indicates that most voters viewed Lincecum's numbers better than Wainwright's, regardless of winning the division. Furthermore, you have to go back to 2007 in the AL (Sabathia) and 2005 in the NL (Carpenter) for the last division winners in each league to win the Cy Young. Even just looking at Roger Clemens, only 2 of his 7 Cy Young awards came for a division winning team. The bottom line is individual numbers and pitching greatness, produce the award, not team numbers or team greatness.
As for this season, the beauty of the races are that it really is impossible to predict who will win the award even at this point in the season. Look at last year. It seemed by the end of May that Zach Greinke was by far the runaway winner (much the same way Ubaldo was viewed at the same point this season). But come August, Josh Beckett and Roy Halladay had seriously entered the conversation for winning it. Don't believe me? By August 14th, Greinke/Halladay/Beckett had ERA's of 2.33/2.65/3.10, wins of 11/13/14, and K/9 of 9.04/7.49/8.60. Yeah, Greinke still had an overall slight edge, but he was fading while the other two were cruising. Heck, by that point Beckett had already had 8 starts of 0ER (as compared to 6 by Greinke)! From that point til the end of the season though, those trends flipped, and Halladay ended up 5th in the voting while Beckett didn't even garner a single vote. Simply put, as Yogi Berra said, "it ain't over til it's over." It only takes a few bad starts to ruin a pitcher's ERA. Again, take Beckett. Even with more 0ER starts than Greinke, 3 6+ER games from Beckett were all it took to create a sizable difference in ERA. This year, as Taha so accurately pointed out, Ubaldo's getting all the attention while Josh Johnson quietly really has the better numbers. How different would it be if Ubaldo had Johnson's offensive support (as Taha again accurately pegged)? And perhaps most importantly, how different would it be if Johnson's dominance had started from the beginning of the season, rather than after he had already given up 7ER in his first 10IP? As always, these last 2+ months are still a tremendous part of deciding who wins the Cy Young. And to think, it isn't even too hard to imagine Ubaldo being shut out of the top 3 vote-getters overall. Continuing anything close to his 6.39 ERA over his last 5 starts, and voters will have no choice but to exclude his name from their ballot, regardless of how many wins he achieves.
First off, let me clarify that when I said Cliff Lee is better than all the pitchers in the league--I meant the Major Leagues and not the individual National League.
Second of all, Mike, you bring up a great point of how the wins are pretty insignificant in terms of the teams progress in the overall voting system. That raises the question of how important individual wins are to a Cy Young candidate? If a teams overall progress is a non-factor to the Most Valuable Pitcher award, then how affective is the players wins when it is impossible for a pitcher to win without any run support? The entrance of run support skews the perception of pitchers because it isn't about the pitcher--it's about the overall team as well as the pitcher. For example: David Wells has a total of 239 wins and 157 losses; which proves that he is an outstanding pitcher--but he was also the pitcher the Yankees gave the most run support to. One season, he was 17-10 with a 4.82 ERA. If he was traded to another team for that season (other than the Red Sox or then Indians or the Mariners or even the Braves)--his win-loss record could have easily slipped to 10-17! Although he was a Cy Young candidate twice in his life, he was never able to win it because he was not the best pitcher in the league although he might have had the most wins.
Similarly, Jimenez is the league leader in wins and he will probably finish the year with the most amount of wins--but if Greinke can win it with a 16-8 record with a 2.16 ERA, then I'm sure Johnson has a higher credibility with a 10-3 record with a 1.62 ERA. The only issue is, there is no set ratio to determine which category is more important and how the diverse statistics are weighted relative to each other (some might argue that this is not an issue but it's the beauty of this process).
When it comes down to it, If Jimenez does not start inducing the ground outs he is accustomed to--the fly outs will eventually get out of Coors Field, and so will his slight chances of winning the NL Cy Young.
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