30 Sep 2010
by: Lenny Smalls
Felix Hernandez is the Boise State of MLB. He may not win the Cy Young this year because of factors that are obviously outside of his control. The same way Boise State (and TCU) was denied an opportunity to play for a National Championship last year due to factors outside of its control. Why doesn’t everybody else look at the situation the same way I do and get this thing right?
The Cy Young is supposed to be an individual award and not an award given to a team for a group effort, correct? They award the Cy Young to the best individual pitcher for a season and not the pitcher who plays on the best team, correct? Not so fast. If Hernandez does not win the Cy Young this year after posting an ERA of 2.27 and dominating opposing batters to a tune of 30 quality starts (6 IP, 3 or fewer ER’s) while Sabathia or Price win while not performing INDIVIDUALLY as well as Felix while enjoying almost twice as much offensive and bullpen support then it is obvious the award is not what it seems to be on the surface.
On the surface the Cy Young is an award given to the league’s best pitcher for that year but behind that façade it is just another team award given to the “have’s” and hard to award to the “have not’s”. Pitchers from Seattle, Pittsburgh and Baltimore can forget about winning the award because their offensive teammates don’t live up to their end of the bargain when the ace is on the mound and quality starts are wasted in 1-0 losses. If the Mariners would have scored more than 7 runs during his 12 losses then Hernandez would be a 20 game winner right now and I would be working on my “honey do” list instead of sitting at my laptop with a cup of coffee and an elevated heart rate.
What makes things worse for AL pitchers on offensively challenged teams is that they don’t even get to pick up a stick and help out their own cause. Felix dominates opposing batters and then takes a seat and watches as his team make Kyle Davies, KC (8-11, 5.31 ERA) and Kevin Millwood, Bal (4-16, 5.10 ERA) look like they should be considered for the Cy Young themselves! And don’t get me started on Seattle’s bullpen which is probably more to blame for this conversation than Seattle’s anemic offense. If you leave a game with a lead in the 8th inning in professional baseball you should be confident you will win the game most of the time but this was not the case this year in Seattle.
It is obvious Felix Hernandez will have to go the same route Boise State has gone this year. Boise State had to set themselves up for a chance at the national championship by first dominating their schedule and completing an entire season undefeated and using last year’s success to begin the season as a top 5 team this year. The fact that they are in position to play for the national championship is largely based on last year’s performance because they otherwise would have again started the season ranked outside the top 10 and found it impossible to climb high enough to get into the championship game even if they did win all their games again. If Felix doesn’t win at least he has set himself up to win next year with another dominating season, it’s just a shame that he has to do it twice while Yankees and Rays players don’t face the same challenges.
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