The Grammy for Best Pitcher Goes To ... (One Sixty-Two: Day 155)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Fifty-Five: David Price, Tampa Bay Rays

Almost every time I check out the baseball section of my newspaper or flip through an on-line news site, I find more debates over who should win the American League’s Cy Young Award this season. The award is supposed to go to the league’s best pitcher. But in 2010, that’s not an easy thing to determine.

Is the best pitcher the man who has won the most games? If so, then New York Yankee CC Sabathia holds that honor right now. Or should the award go to the man who has given up the fewest runs and struck out the most batters? If so, then hard-luck Seattle Mariners ace Felix Hernandez gets the trophy in 2010. It’s an odd comparison, as Sabathia has 20 wins, 189 strikeouts and a 3.26 earned-run average, while Hernandez has just 12 wins but has struck out 227 batters while compiling a league-best 2.31 ERA.

Many baseball writers and fans are arguing that Hernandez is simply the best pitcher this year, and to deny him the trophy is to deny a very obvious fact. It’s not Hernandez’s fault that he has a weak offense to support him, the argument goes. But others disagree, deferring instead to the long tradition of Cy Young winners posting high win totals. Most of the pitching awards throughout baseball history have gone to men who racked up the W’s. Why, this opposing side counters, should that tradition change now?

It’s a curious debate. In the old days, it was very easy to see who the best starting pitchers were, because they always pitched complete games. According to Baseball-reference.com, there have been 147 winners of 30 or more games in the history of baseball. However, all but 21 of those men won 30 or more in the 19th century. Of the few 30-game winners in the 20th century, only three did so after 1930, and only one surpassed 30 wins after 1934.

That takes us to the 20-game winners, who are also becoming a vanishing breed. Through the 1980s, it was very common to see several 20-game winners in each league every season. But as relief specialists and pitch counts have become de rigeur, starting pitchers rarely have the chance to finish their own job. In two of the past four years, no pitcher has won 20 games at all. This season, three pitchers have already won 20, but no one will get any higher than 22 this year.

So that brings us back to the Cy Young race. Do we throw up our hands and just forget about the number of wins a pitcher has in the 21st century, or do we still count those victories as significant when measuring a hurler’s Cy Young credentials? My thoughts are this: We take the Grammy route.

Every year, the Grammy Awards nominate a very interesting bunch of artists for Album of the Year. Some of the nominees are there because they’ve pushed the envelope, taken some risks and given music a new look (such as Amy Winehouse in 2008, Radiohead in 2009, or Lady Gaga in 2010). Other nominees are on the list because their album was enormously popular (Kanye West in ‘08, Coldplay in ’09, and The Black Eyed Peas in ’10). This diversity among the nominees creates a fascinating debate and keeps a number of viewers awake watching an awards show until after 11 on a Sunday night in winter. And then, when the victor is announced, mouths fall agape “The winner is .. Herbie Hancock! … Robert Plant and Alison Krauss! … Taylor Swift!”

The Grammy people love compromise picks, and these selections have all the spice and flavor of a rice cake. The envelope-pushers inevitably become popular anyway, and the top-sellers remain top-selling. But clearly, one of them should have won the award, right? In the realm of music, safe picks make no sense.

But in terms of pitching, there’s a lot to be said for following the Grammy road. Because as important as it is to honor a great season, I just cannot hand over a best-pitcher trophy to a guy with 12 wins. That’s an offense to the labor of Charlie “Old Hoss” Radbourn, who chalked up a record 59 wins in 1884. Or even to Denny McLain, our last 30-game winner, who tallied 31 victories in 1968. Baseball is about tradition, and winning games is something pitchers have always celebrated. That’s why the starters always head into the clubhouse when a reliever has blown the lead for them. On the other hand, though, it is understandable that a man with 20 wins who gives up a whole run more than the league leader should not win the Cy Young trophy. He has, of course, benefited from more luck than the average pitcher.

So we look in between the Sabathias and the Hernandez’s. And that’s where we find David Price. The Tampa Bay Rays left-hander, in just his second full season, has been electric all season long. Price has an 18-6 record, a 2.84 ERA, and 179 strikeouts. What’s more, he has given up more than five runs in a start just once all season. Last night, as Price outdueled Sabathia for a Rays victory at Yankee Stadium, he put a final stamp on his claim to the award. He may lack Sabathia’s wins, but he’s got plenty. And while he’s a little short of Hernandez’s K and ERA numbers, he’s more than holding his own. This year in the American League, Price is right for Cy Young honors.

The 20-game winner might be fading out of view, and this era of WHIPs and WARs and K-to-BB ratios has so many fans crunching more numbers than they ever imagined they’d see next to a ballplayer’s name. But there’s no need to go nuts with the statistics when looking for your Cy Young. Just uncover this year’s Alison Krauss. It makes for a lousy Grammy pick, but it works just fine in baseball.

Cy Three (One Sixty-Two: Day 130)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day One Hundred Thirty: Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter & Jaime Garcia, St. Louis Cardinals

Every summer, our local library holds contests for kids each week in different parts of the building. There’s the “Find Buddy the Worm” contest, in which children have to find the laminated cut-out of a cartoon worm somewhere in the children’s section. There’s the “Fun Facts” contest, in which kids are asked a science question, often one about animals. There’s also the “Guess How Much Candy” math question, in which the youngsters try and determine how many Tootsie Rolls or lollipops are inside a clear jar. For all of these contests, the kids write down their answers, place their paper into a large jar, and hope that their correct answer will be the one randomly chosen that week.

So this morning, the phone rings, and it’s the library. Chelsea, I’m told, has won the “Find Buddy” contest, and her prize is waiting at the front desk. I tell her this, and her eyes light up. Her immediate instinct is to go and tell her sister … who is not so happy.

“What about me?” Katie asks. Oh, dear. Here we go.

The phone rings again. It’s the library once more. Katie has won the “Fun Facts” contest this week. Her prize is waiting, too.

Crisis averted. Cheers of joy in the house. It must be my day.

You can’t win everything. It’s just not possible. Even Michael Jordan finished more NBA seasons without a championship than with one. We learn, early on, to enjoy the journey and the many triumphs along the way in life, rather than expecting a prize for everything we do. Somehow, though, that hasn’t stopped me from announcing all the chores I do each day; my wife has explained that no medal is forthcoming, nor will it ever be. But that’s a different blog post for a different day.

The girls pulled off the rare sibling sweep of summer library prizes this week. But that kind of stuff doesn’t usually happen. Over on the baseball field, a trio of pitchers by the names of Adam Wainwright, Chris Carpenter and Jaime Garcia would all love to win the National League’s Cy Young Award this season. And all have put together years quite worthy of this honor. In fact, it is staggering to see just how much these three starting pitchers have carried the St. Louis Cardinals this year. Going into tonight’s action, the Cardinals were 69-59 on the year, good enough to keep them in second place and five games behind the Cincinnati Reds in the National League Central.

But without Wainwright, Carpenter and Garcia, the Cardinals’ season would be long gone. Out of the 69 team wins, the three aces have combined to win 43 of those games. Out of the 59 losses, they’ve claimed only 19 of them. All three men have earned-run averages below 3.00, with Wainwright and Garcia actually both below 2.40. In the way of strikeouts, the three pitchers have combined to punch out 440 batters, versus only 160 combined walks.

To put all of this in perspective, no other Cardinals starter has more than four wins on the year. The next-highest win total on the team comes from closer Ryan Franklin, who has won six games. The Cardinals have baseball’s best player at first base in Albert Pujols. But this season, Pujols has not been the only one handling the heavy lifting.

If any of these three men is to win the Cy Young Award, it will likely be Wainwright, who has more wins (17) and strikeouts (178) than the other two. But Wainwright could easily fall short of the honor himself, to premier pitchers such as Ubaldo Jimenez of the Rockies, Roy Halladay of the Phillies or Tim Hudson of the Braves. For now, though, one thing is very clear: The Cardinals are still in the pennant race because of the pitching of three incredibly capable men. These guys don’t need their library to call and tell them they’re winners: They’ve got a dugout full of teammates telling them that every day.