Who would receive your Cy Young vote?

Two things before I get into the main chunk of my post.

The first is 9/11.  It's so hard to believe that it's been five years since that day in 2001.  But, watching old footage and looking at pictures and reading stories, I was instantly transplated back to the bottom level of the bookstore at college, where I was standing with several other students, as we collectively watched the second plane fly into the Towers.  It was the moment that we all realized that this was not an accident, but a deliberate attempt by someone to hurt our country.  As the news came in of other planes, they started evacuating most of the city (I lived in downtown Minneapolis at the time), as all of my friends croweded in front of a tiny TV and watched the days events unfold. 

I'm not a New Yorker and I rarely stray from baseball on this blog, but I think this is important enough to discuss whenever possible.  The courage and dedication of the police force, the firemen and just the regular citizens of New York and DC will never be forgotten.  A big thank you to them.  If only our nation could stay as unified as we were that day instead of constantly attacking everyone except for the people who were truly responsible.

My second comment is not quite as serious.  It's NFL time and the Rams are 1-0.  Yes, that's right.  The Rams officially have a winning record.  After a rather disappointing season last year, it's great to see the Rams in the win column to start of the year.  Of course two other teams in the NFC West and there's still many games to go.  But, it still made for a good day.  Exceptionally with a not so hot weekend of Cardinal baseball.

Ok, on to my post about the Cy Young.  I was going to write this post after Carp's last start, but didn't get the chance, so I wrote it today after he started last night against the Astros.

Much like Albert Pujols, I am biased about Chris Carpenter, since he is a Redbird.  But, I do believe he has what it takes to win the Cy Young this year.  He's certainly one of the talked about candidates, but also like Pujols, he's not quite the "shoo-in" he was last year.

Still, I'm confident that he should receive the Cy Young, barring any kind of end of the season meltdown.  His closest competition would have to be Brandon Webb, as the Cardinals found out all to well, as they were 1-hit by Webb in the last series against Arizona.  (And that would be the series we're not talking about.....)

First, let me talk about the intagibles.  The kinds of things that you know when you watch the Cadinals day in and day out and observe the pitching staff nearly every game of the season.

And the biggest of these intangibles is that Chris Carpenter is a MACHINE.  He strolls to the mound.  Cold.  Methodic.  Calculating.  And he takes cares of business.  As a Cardinal fan, you just don't get stressed out when Carp is on the mound.  Maybe he walks a guy.  So what?  You're confident he'll get the DP.  And he usually does.  Maybe a fielder makes an error that allows the bases to get loaded with only one out.  So what?  He'll strike out the first guy and get the next guy with an easy ground ball.

He's started winning streaks and stopped losing streaks and consistently gets ahead of batters.

Basically, Carp can be summed up with this: he has been consistent on a team that has been somewhat inconsistent; the constant on a pitching staff that has been constantly under par.

But, a lot of people looking at Cy Young, look at much more than this.  They want numbers.  So, let's have a look at the stats that make Carpenter a very worthy candidate for this year's Cy Young award.

I mentioned earlier that, in my opinion, Webb is the closest competition for the award.  Well, Webb and Brad Penny of the Dodgers are tied with 15 wins and Carp is right behind them at 14.  But, of couse, you can't look at just wins.  If you did, you would have to conclude that Marquis is a better pitcher than Carpenter, since he reached his 14th win nearly two weeks ago.  Obviously, this would be a crazy and quite untrue assumption.

While Carpenter has had some legitimate losses he has been also the benefactor of low or late run support resulting in losses, or more often no-decisions.  So, next we look at ERA.  Carp leads the NL in ERA with a highly impressive 2.84.  He's also the only guy in the NL to have an ERA under the 3.00 mark.  He's 8th in strikeouts, but Webb is down at number 13.

One of the best marks of a pitcher today is consistency.  Carpenter definitely has this on his side.  He's gone less than 5 innings once (he went 4 on July 30) and in OVER HALF of his starts he's given up 1 earned run or less.  That's a pretty incredible stat.  He's only given up more than 5 earned runs three times all year.  His worst start coming on June 23 in that Detroit debacle.  He gave up 7 runs in 7 innings, striking out 9 and walking none.  When you strike out nine guys in your worst start of the season, you know you're pitching pretty well.

The other is the ability to go the distance.  Here, Webb and Carpenter are on equal footing.  They both have notched 4 complete games (along with Aaron Harang and Dontrelle Willis) and also have both thrown 3 shutouts (the only ones in the NL to do so).

Carpenter has given up only 63 earned runs to Webb's 68 and 168 hits to Webb's 194.  Carp and Webb's walk totals are 39 and 47 respectively and their strikeouts are 164 and 153.

The numbers are close, but Carpenter edges out Webb in just about every category.

But, of course, do all these stats even matter?  Or should the award be given based on which pitcher is most "valuable" to the club, as the MVP is?  If we're talking those lines, it's Carp by a mile.  Other pitchers don't come close.  Zambrano's Cubs are so far out of contention that his high strikeout total is void.  Peavvy also has a lot of K's, but his win total and ERA are atrocious.  Brad Penny also has nice numbers, but they look pretty simliar to Webb, only Webb's are slightly better, so between the two, you'd have to vote Webb.  The same could be said of Andy Pettitte.

The only other guy that I would give serious consideration to is Johnson of the Marlins.  He has decent numbers and definitely has been valuable to this rookie-filled club all season long.  He has 12 wins and has posted a pretty impressive 3.20 ERA.  His flaw is that he hasn't been that consistent rock all season that Carpenter has.  He didn't become a consistent starter until later in the season and yet his walk totals are about twice what Carp's are.  His strikeout total is also much lower.

If the voting ended today, my vote goes to Carpenter first, Webb second and Johnson third.  Of course voting doesn't end today and with the excpetion of Zambrano, I see almost any of the pitchers I've mentioned being able to make a legitimate run at getting the Cy Young.  Each pitcher probably has 3-4 starts left and any one guy putting an impressive streak together during those starts could tie it up.

You can check out my case for Albert Pujols for MVP here.  As always, I would love to hear who your picks are for MVP or Cy Young and if you think I have missed any contenders that you would put in your top 1, 2 or 3.

Kellia commented that she thinks if Howard hits 60, he's the MVP.  He's 4 away.  What do you think?  Comment away.

Carp & Pujols,

Tiffany