The Hall of Sense

Sabathia is the Obvious Choice

By: Rob Neyer (ESPN)

Obviously, the Cy Young battle was between only two men. Perhaps this wasn't fair to John Lackey (19-9, 3.01) and Fausto Carmona (19-8, 3.06), but that's the way it was. The voters had eyes for only C.C. Sabathia (19-7, 3.21) and Josh Beckett (20-7, 3.27).

Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but agreed. Carmona came virtually out of nowhere to support the Tribes legitimate ace, Sabathia. Lackey . . . Not sure why he doesn’t get more exposure. He’s worthy of it. 2007 was his third straight ace-like season, yet he still isn’t mentioned with the Sabathia’s, Santana’s, Holliday’s, Beckett’s . . . he should be.

Sabathia won, and the voting was not particularly close. But who should have won?
One popular argument for Beckett (especially in Red Sox Nation): "He won 20 games!"
Yes, he did. That really is a distinction without a difference, though. It's bad enough to ignore a candidate because his teammates didn't help him much -- Dan Haren, anyone? -- but it's just flat silly to argue that there's a meaningful difference between winning 20 games and winning 19. I mean, that single additional win does count. But it shouldn't count for much.

Amen! Wins are much more a product of a team than a pitcher. Take Lackey as a good example: ’05 – 14 wins, 3.44 ERA, 1.30 WHIP … ’06 – 13 wins, 3.56 ERA, 1.26 WHIP … ’07 – 19 wins, 3.01 ERA, 1.21 WHIP. Very close numbers (in fact he was better in some numbers – K/9, K/BB, BAA, HR allowed - in ‘05/’06) yet he won an average of one more game per month than before. What edge does Beckett’s one additional win give him? As Neyer says, NONE!

And I agree, Haren deserves mention with Sabathia and Beckett. Statistically he is there equal in every way, save wins.

So what else is there?

What are the best measures of how ‘Ace-like’ a pitcher is?
How many base runners he allows? (WHIP)
How much command he has of his pitches? (K/BB, BB/9)
How often he’s able to make a hitter swing and miss? (BAA, K/9)
How durable he is? (IP)
How often he gives his team a chance to win? (QS%)

We can look at hits and walks. The easy measure is WHIP -- walks plus hits per inning -- but WHIP's not much help in this case, as both Sabathia and Beckett gave up 1.14 baserunners per inning, tied for third-best in the league (behind Johan Santana and Erik Bedard).

Good start. (Side note: Given a full year, I believe Bedard would have been the Cy Young.) No advantage to either Sabathia or Beckett though.

Let’s move on. What more you got, Mr. Neyer?

We can look at quality starts, a rough measure of consistency, of how often each pitcher kept his team in the game for at least six innings. Of Sabathia's 34 starts, 25 were of the quality sort; Beckett was 20 for 30.

Yes we can look at Quality Starts. Better yet though, Quality Start %. Beckett was at 67% and Sabathia was at 74%. Edge to Sabathia … He is ahead by a nose.

We can look at strikeouts per nine innings. Some will argue that strikeouts are irrelevant, but I will argue that if a pitcher deserves credit for what he does, as opposed to what his defense does behind him, strikeouts are a great tiebreaker. Sabathia struck out 7.8 batters per nine innings. Beckett struck out 8.7 per nine innings.

I will argue that anyone who thinks strikeouts are irrelevant is more likely to show up in the parallel Idiocy Gene than in here. The ability of a pitcher to make a batter swing and miss is huge! A pitcher of strikeout quality effectively takes the bat out of hitter’s hands -- Doesn’t allow the hitter to influence the game in any positive way. This is one of the major points in Bedard’s favor in fact. Given a full season of 220 innings, he’d have struck out 267 batters. Only Randy Johnson, Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez have struck out more batters than that in any season over the last 8 years. Ace’s all of them . . .

Beckett gains back that edge Sabathia had taken with his superior K/9 numbers – Neck and neck now.

I would like to induct Eric Neel of ESPN. I realize he is a Dodger fan and therefore this nomination is quite biased. But I think if any of you read his article the day after the four homerun game against the Pads in '06, I think you will unanimously agree that he deserves a spot here. I remember reading that article when I was on vacation in Spain (yes I missed the game, believe me it still haunts me), and I just about cried like a little baby and had goose-bumps all over. Of course my Spanish girlfriend, who couldn't tell a baseball from a can of peas, thought I was a creep....

Anyway...any takers on Eric Neel?

Yup. Good stuff. Beckett may be a better "clutch" performer, but CC had less play-off experience and may have been outta gas after pitching 241 innings during the season. As such, CC had more impact on getting his club into the post-season, while Beckett had more impact getting his club through the post-season. That would seem to speak for Beckett pitching for a stronger club that could pace him, while CC needed to carry his club.

Haren had a great season, but didn't get much run support from a suddenly dreadful A's line-up. Lackey continued to firm up his ace credentials, but wasn' the regular season impact CC was or the post-season impact Beckett was. Meaning it wasn't Lackey's year.

Bedard continues to become the player I thought he would be (a bit later for me in SCRUBS than I had hoped), but the injury bug struck him again. His peripherals look great going forward.

Snatana may be the best SP in the AL, and all of MLB, but there is nothing wrong with any of CC, Beckett, Lackey, Haren or Bedard. If Haren and Bedard are truly being offered around it would take a huge bounty of young talent to acquire either. The time to get either one was 2-3 years ago when it wasn't obvious to everybody that they were gonna be real good. I saw it in Bedard then, but not Haren. Lackey has been flying under the radar for over a year.

ceyheyjay:

KevinElsterWasFAT:

I would like to induct Eric Neel of ESPN. I realize he is a Dodger fan and therefore this nomination is quite biased. But I think if any of you read his article the day after the four homerun game against the Pads in '06, I think you will unanimously agree that he deserves a spot here. I remember reading that article when I was on vacation in Spain (yes I missed the game, believe me it still haunts me), and I just about cried like a little baby and had goose-bumps all over. Of course my Spanish girlfriend, who couldn't tell a baseball from a can of peas, thought I was a creep....

Anyway...any takers on Eric Neel?

I remember the article you speak of and it was the greatest article ever written, and yea, I cried too. I wish someone would find that article here and post it in this thread. Absolute brilliance.

And hey, I just said some really good things about a BoSPiN writer. Somebody get me an aspirin.

I tried to remember Eric's name the other day when we were "discussing" BoSPiN guys that know something of the Dodgers, but all I could remember was "the Page 2 guy".

He has had a number of good pieces, which are good because they tend to be a bit off kilter in addition to not being yet another story about the Yanks, BoSox and Mess.

Continued...

When I was your age, or maybe a little older, I remember a back-to-back-to-back night from Steve Garvey, Ron Cey and Jimmy Wynn. I watched that game with my papa. We laughed and danced. It was, for a long time, my favorite baseball story because it seemed so out of this world, so unbelievably cool. It felt like that tonight, too. If he was still alive, I'd have called him for a dance, but instead I was back in your doorway, ready to take you for a sleepy spin, when mom called out from the office to ask what had happened.

She got excited and nervous at the news, the way she does, wishing for something great and worrying that we might be let down. But I was all in now. I hurried back to the set.

When Anderson came up, and there was still nobody out, I thought we were going to catch them, T, I really did. (Marlon had a gi-normous game, by the way; 5-for-5, two home runs.) But I didn't think for even a second that it would be another home run.

Which is exactly what it was. On the first pitch. Deep to right. Four home runs in the ninth inning! Four in a row.

Nomar Garciaparra
Jeff Gross/Getty Images
Do you believe what you just saw?

Vin (and you can tell he's flabbergasted, even though he's seen most everything) says, "This is why baseball is such a wonderful game. You just never know what you're going to see."

I've certainly never seen anything like it. No one has. Not in 30 years anyway. The last time it happened was with the Twins in 1964, before mom and I were born. (And, of course, that didn't happen in the ninth inning to tie a game.) The fans in the parking lot at Dodger Stadium who'd left to head home, thinking the game was over before it was over, were scrambling back into the ballpark. They wanted to be a part of history. The ones who were still in the stands were crazy loud. Do you know what "apoplectic" means?

They were apoplectic.

This kind of game would be great in April, but in September, with only half a game separating the two teams, with the division title at stake, it was epic. You could see it on the faces of the kids in the stands. This was a night they'd remember forever, and they knew it.

I figured four dingers and a tie ball game was officially something to talk about, so I slipped into your room and whispered to you, "They've come back, T. Four home runs in the ninth inning. You won't believe it." You stirred, but didn't wake.

A comeback like that, in one crazy rush, makes you feel invincible, you know? You feel sure your club will win. But they stalled out at 9-9, Sweets, and they struggled with Aaron Sele on the mound in the 10th inning. He gave up a double to Brian Giles and a single to Josh Bard, and just like that we were down again, 10-9.

I can tell you now, after it's over, that back-and-forth is what makes a game great. I can tell you, now that it's over, that ebb-and-flow is how this game deserved to go. I can tell you it made a kind of poetic sense that the Padres found a way to take the lead again. But that's not how I felt about it when it happened. When it happened I felt like throwing up. Seriously. To come all the way back, and to do it on four homers, and then to lose it? When San Diego regained the lead I felt like I'd fallen off a wall, like I'd gone down hard with a tray full of ice cream sundaes the way Fancy Nancy does in that book you like so much.

And then, incredibly …

We get to the bottom of the 10th inning down 10-9, but Hoffman's done, see, so they have to go to Rudy Seanez. And he can't throw strikes. He walks Kenny Lofton. When he does, Vin says something about the Dodgers having "a rabbit" on the basepaths, anticipating a steal.

But this isn't the sort of game to be won with a stolen base and a single, right? This is home run derby night.

And sure enough, up comes Nomar, and Seanez gets behind, three balls and one strike, and then he grooves a fastball low and … pow. Gone. Out into the screaming crowd in the left field pavilion seats.

I'm laughing out loud as he runs the bases. And dancing, too. And so is mom. I'm singing out my list of all-time Dodgers games and shaking my head like a bobblehead. We waltz into your room and sidle up to your top bunk and I just say, "We got 'em, T."

I want to tell you more, but like me, you're lost in a dream.

So I've set it down here. So we'll both feel like nothing can stop us now. So we'll both have it to point to when the boys are celebrating the division crown. So we'll both have it to remember years down the line. So we'll both know, when the morning comes, that it was real.

Come on man, somebody fix it where it's in the right order. I can't believe you found that kewf. That's awesome!

Yay for the Hall of Sense!!! And a great first TWO articles to kick it off with - props to Brendt and KEWF.

And I have no idea why the posts got reversed - it was doing that in another thread, too. We'll see what we can do.

kennerbuggy:

KevinElsterWasFAT:

damn...not sure why, but the second half of the article got posted first....

HA has been oinking about that glitch for days. I guess this means that it wasn't operator error like I thought.

Unless it's tied to the man who started said thread.......

ceyheyjay:

Yea, I agree. It's got to be Brendt's fault. Unless, somehow we can blame it on mamma. (see, Kyle, I got your back sometimes

All y'all can go ear it out your blow holes . . .

hunteralan:

ceyheyjay:

Yea, I agree. It's got to be Brendt's fault. Unless, somehow we can blame it on mamma. (see, Kyle, I got your back sometimes

All y'all can go ear it out your blow holes . . .

See, even when he posts things, it gets outta order...

grabarkewitz:

BluePastorKyle:

hunteralan:

ceyheyjay:

Yea, I agree. It's got to be Brendt's fault. Unless, somehow we can blame it on mamma. (see, Kyle, I got your back sometimes

All y'all can go ear it out your blow holes . . .

See, even when he posts things, it gets outta order...

C'mon, Brendt, you are not gonna let that one slide, are you?

Go it let? Of jealous is Pastor of grasp my English superior language just.

That him for fault can't.

Sad thing is, if this out of order glitch ever gets fixed, PastorKyleBlue will probably be incomprehensible. It's the only thing holding his posts together coherently . . .

hunteralan:

Sad thing is, if this out of order glitch ever gets fixed, PastorKyleBlue will probably be incomprehensible. It's the only thing holding his posts together coherently . . .

My posts are coherent?

I actually know a guy named Alan Hunter. This is all making sense perfect, now.

Great post, that article brought back such wonderful memories!

hunteralan:

The fallout begins!

Kenny Rogers, come on down! You have just earned your place in the Hall of Sense!

Just saw on the crawler on ESPN that Rogers has fired Scott Bore-a$$ and will represent himself this winter!

All missteps . . . Any wrong-doings . . . All sins baseball related are hereby pardoned.

Bore-a$$ will probably sue the players for collusion if any more do this.