Wins Mean Nothing
I've been waiting for this article since 1990, when Bob Welch stole the Cy Young from Roger Clemens, Bobby Thigpen, Dave Stewart, and Dennis Eckersley.
(Sure, there have been many years where the BBWA have voted for the wrong guy to win the Cy Young Award--for instance, off the top of my head, the 1987 and 2004 NL Cy Young Award voting comes to mind--but I can't think of any year where there were four guys who deserved it more than the winner!)
posted by Jackson Ellis at
2:24 PM
2 Comments:
Read that this morning. A damn fine article, but it somewhat went under the banner of "lies, damn lies and statistics." I have always felt that the only thing standing in between Dave Stewart and the hall of fame was how he got robbed of Cy Youngs four straight years while being arguably one of the most dominating pitcher of that time.
But concerning Welch, I think it was "elephant in the room" to not give the guy with 27 wins the award. I'm sure there were lots of arguments among sportswriters that ended with"...yeah...but, 27 WINS!"
4:22 PM
yep, sadly, i think that's exactly how they justified their arguments for voting for him. it's not much fun belittling the efforts of a man who won a whopping 27 games and put together what really was an outstanding season, but still...
*welch averaged less than 7 innings a start.
*his teammate stewart was superior in every single pitching statistic except wins.
*clemens had an ERA more than a full run lower (and below 2.00, which i believe only pedro martinez and greg maddux have done since clemens 1990, correct me if i'm wrong).
*if anyone wants to get hung up on numbers, thigpen recorded 57 saves, which registers just as high on my "holy shit-o-meter" as 27 wins, and he did it with a 1.83 ERA.
*eckersley had a 0.63 ERA and arguably put together the best season a closer has ever had, plus the mustache/mullet combo has to factor in somewhere.
*the fact that chuck finley doesn't even enter this conversation shows just how great those other four guys pitched.
but yeah...27 wins.....damn, i hated the oakland a's back then.
5:17 PM
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