Master Index of Archived Threads
Visions of Johan
| batmagadanleadoff Aug 22 2008 09:25 PM |
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Johan Santana is now second in the NL in ERA (2.64). He appears to be making a backstretch run for the Cy.
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 22 2008 09:32 PM |
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IOW, Webb wins. By a mile.
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| batmagadanleadoff Aug 22 2008 09:36 PM |
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I think that Webb is having an ever-so-slightly better season than Johan. They're essentially the same pitchers. Santana gives up the long ball and Webb is terrific at preventing the HR. That would seem to be the most significant difference, maybe the only difference between the two. Yet Santana's given up about as many runs as Webb has. Luck? Clutchyclutch pitching? I'm not touching that one. Also, I never realized how tough it is to run on Johan. If the writers voted for the Cy Young Award tonight, Webb would beat Santana convincingly. The writers dig the Wins. It's too bad. These guys are the same deal, so far.
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| AG/DC Aug 22 2008 09:41 PM |
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I think you're both saying that the voters will vote for wins. Yupsies.
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| batmagadanleadoff Aug 22 2008 09:45 PM |
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CC's a candidate for Pitcher of the Month again.
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| AG/DC Aug 22 2008 09:57 PM |
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Good job tracking that, by the way.
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| batmagadanleadoff Aug 22 2008 10:03 PM |
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See how Santana shuts down the opposition's base stealing? They don't even bother. Outstanding. Piazza woulda loved this guy.
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| AG/DC Aug 22 2008 10:20 PM |
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Alot of that, I guess, is just life as a lefty. Another part of it is just keeping them off the bases.
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| John Cougar Lunchbucket Aug 23 2008 06:00 AM |
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Yeah that was my point.
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| smg58 Aug 23 2008 10:14 AM |
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Interesting that the ERA's are so similar despite the difference in home runs.
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| Nymr83 Aug 23 2008 02:35 PM |
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where Tim Lincecum in this discussion? he has only 3 losses, 200 k's and a 1.18 whip to go with his 2.48 ERA
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| batmagadanleadoff Aug 23 2008 03:39 PM |
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I don't know that this thread was ever intended to discuss the leading Cy Young candidates. The opening post merely noted that Santana was gaining ground on the leaders and that his numbers are currently indistinguishable from Webb's. We then seemed to agree that Webb would undeservedly get more votes than Santana if the vote were held today. But no one expressly considered whether Webb would win it today, or whether he even should win it. Yeah, Lincecum's definitely in the mix. So is Volquez, among others. (Merged from Fragment from Lefties and Assbags, 8/28/2008)
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| batmagadanleadoff Aug 26 2008 09:12 PM |
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Meanwhile .... Webb's getting bombed in San Diego tonight (Five runs allowed in three innings, including a rare HR).
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| Edgy DC Aug 28 2008 07:07 AM |
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Re-attachment surgery successful.
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| smg58 Aug 28 2008 11:20 AM |
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15-3 with a terrible offense behind him. He certainly shouldn't be ignored.
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| TransMonk Aug 28 2008 11:49 AM |
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These sentences should not be so close to each other in a Johan thread. I had about 3.5 seconds of nauseous panic as I was skimming the page before I realized the context.
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| soupcan Aug 28 2008 05:57 PM |
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Visions of Bobby Ojeda?
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 04:01 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Sep 06 2008 05:12 PM |
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I posted this article in this thread because of the Santana-Webb comparison that is addressed below: In a Perfect World, Lincecum Would Win Cy Young By TIM MARCHMAN | September 3, 2008 Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants is perhaps the most stylistically unique starter to debut since Orlando Hernandez. Just as Jeff Bagwell's batting stance was something like the perfect inverse of everything you'd read in a book on how to hit baseballs, junior high school coaches could use Lincecum's violent delivery as the centerpiece of an instructional video called "How To Pitch Badly and Hurt Yourself." And in a triumph for nonconformity in baseball, Lincecum has been the best pitcher in the National League this year. What would work badly for the average 12-year-old works beautifully for him. Going into last night's start at Colorado, Lincecum's record was 15-3, with a 2.43 earned run average. He led the league in earned run average, strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings, and winning percentage, all by large margins. He rated third in wins and seventh in innings pitched, just 10.2 out of the lead. Adjusted for park and league effects, his ERA was 76% better than league average; no one else was more than 52% better. Absurdly, though, Lincecum probably won't win the Cy Young award this year; after all, he pitches for a lousy team and won't lead in wins. Since 1987, 18 starters have won the Cy Young. Only Pedro Martinez, when he won for Montreal in 1997, pitched for a losing team. Eleven led the league in wins, another four ranked in the top three, and the other three were Martinez, Greg Maddux, and Randy Johnson, in the kinds of monster years that make win totals irrelevant. One can just imagine Lincecum pulling it out if he wins all his remaining starts in impressive fashion. But more likely, he'll get jobbed. This leaves open the question of who will waltz off with his hardware. Milwaukee's C.C. Sabathia is in the midst of one of the more dominant pitching runs in decades, but he spent the first two months of the year in the American League, and so isn't really qualified. More likely, Arizona's Brandon Webb will win. He's 19-6, with five remaining starts, three against NL West rivals whom he usually grinds into dust. This wouldn't be an outrage — Webb is a terrific pitcher enjoying a terrific year — but a solid half-dozen pitchers have been at least as good this year, and one of them might steal the award from him before he can steal it from Lincecum. The second-best pitcher in the league has been Johan Santana, who's third in ERA, first in innings, and first in having his record ruined by lousy luck and bad bullpen support. He's at the top of a tier of non-Lincecum contenders including Webb, his teammate Dan Haren, Milwaukee's Ben Sheets, Chicago's Ryan Dempster, Philadelphia's Cole Hamels, and Los Angeles's Chad Billingsley. All have adjusted ERAs between 41% and 52% better than average; all have pitched between 175.2 and 196 innings; all have between 160 and 177 strikeouts. In other words, there's little to tell the difference between them. We can discount several of these men out of hand. At 13-10, Billingsley is barely above .500; Hamels could win all his remaining games and not top 16 wins, and Haren is having a great season, with a K/BB ratio nearing six, but won't beat out a teammate who boasts, as of now, five more wins. These may be dumb reasons, but you could safely bet your house that none of these three will win. Santana and Sheets are, no matter how good they've been this year, just barely more credible candidates for a Cy Young, because of their identical 12-7 records. Sheets has an injured groin and two games remaining against Chicago, who have whacked him for a 4.86 ERA in three starts this year; he isn't winning anything. For Santana, the problem is that, the way the schedule works out, he may only have four starts the rest of the way. Should he end up winning his 17th and clinching a Mets playoff spot on the last day of the year against Florida, that might change things. But more likely he'll be able to offer his thanks to the wrecking crew in the Shea bullpen for ruining his chance at becoming the fifth pitcher to win a Cy Young in each league. By process of elimination, that leaves us with ... Ryan Dempster? Yes, Ryan Dempster. Having spent the last several years as a generally terrible closer for the Cubs — his ERA last year was 4.73, the year before that it was 4.80 — he's had an inexplicable and highly entertaining revival in the rotation this year, and flaunts a 15-5 record and a 2.95 ERA right now with five starts left on the year. Two of those will almost certainly be against Milwaukee, whom he's dominated this year with a 2.37 ERA in three starts, and another two will be against St. Louis, against whom he's pitched well in one start. If he wins out, he'll end up with 20 wins for the best team in baseball, and quite possibly a sub-3.00 ERA. Should Webb stumble, the Braden Looper of Chicago will be right there to snatch up the prize. No one would have seen it coming, but then who ever would have thought baseball's best team would be playing on the North Side anyway?
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| AG/DC Sep 06 2008 04:57 PM |
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It seems a lot of smart guys this season are through with telling the voters who to vote for and having more fun predicting who the voters will come out for based on past patterns.
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| holychicken Sep 06 2008 05:22 PM |
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It is two games, pick the player who deserves the award and who will actually get the award.
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| Benjamin Grimm Sep 06 2008 05:31 PM |
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If in fact we've reached the point where it's generally accepted that the deserving player won't win, then the awards themselves become virtually meaningless.
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 05:50 PM |
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Who gets to decide on the player that deserves the award, in order to determine who wins this game?
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 05:55 PM |
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There already exists a considerable number of fans that've been agreeing with your two points for many many years.
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| Benjamin Grimm Sep 06 2008 05:56 PM |
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Yeah. I find that I still want the Mets players to win these awards, but other than that, I really don't care who wins. Nor do I remember from year to year who the previous winners were.
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 06:10 PM Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Sep 06 2008 06:11 PM |
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I don't know that the image below is big enough to read. It's Newsday's back page from earlier in the week. The text touts Delgado as an "MVP candidate". By any reasonably objective measure, there are at least two dozen NL'ers more worthy of the MVP than Delgado.
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| holychicken Sep 06 2008 06:10 PM |
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It gives you insight into the time and how players were viewed. The stats will always show you who did what (thus who contributed the most to their team winning), but they don't necessarily paint a full picture of the time.
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| holychicken Sep 06 2008 06:13 PM |
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Me. If that is deemed unacceptable, it becomes a rhetorical game.
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| AG/DC Sep 06 2008 06:24 PM |
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Eventually, impressive arguments, ably defended against attack with data and reason, will lead to a consensus of hard-thinking opinion. Lazy thinking arriving at lazy conclusions informed by fallacies will lose out.
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 06:39 PM |
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Yeah. But Jimmy Rollins still won the MVP last year.
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| AG/DC Sep 06 2008 06:47 PM |
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Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither were Utica or Schenectady.
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 06 2008 06:53 PM |
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That dog don't hunt even if it should. The way it usually works is to wait 'em out until they die off, to be replaced by the next generation. It'll take a while with writers because they work considerably longer than the athletes they cover. They're still on the active roster when they pass away. I suppose this idea might sound a little morbid, but isn't the truth always a defense?
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| AG/DC Sep 06 2008 07:01 PM |
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When a player comes up to bat now, his OPS is often shown on the screen. Rob Neyer said he'd believe it when he saw it. It nonetheless happened.
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| batmagadanleadoff Sep 07 2008 09:32 AM |
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The Johan Predictor:
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