American League Cy Young Reaction

Today, the Cy Young Award was announced and the Mariners Felix Hernandez was one of the awards finalists. Along with Corey Kluber of the Indians, Chris Sale of the White Sox, Felix was one of the favorites to win the award.

Unfortunately, Felix didn’t win the Cy Young, losing to Kluber by a mere 10 votes. The question surfacing on twitter was “Did Felix Hernandez get screwed out of his second Cy Young?”

Ken Rosenthal from Fox Sports wrote an article explaining his decision to vote for Kluber. In the article he stated that he voted for Kluber because, “of the way he finished. He pitched in front of a much poorer defense, against comparable opponents.

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He also had a sub-par start against the Nationals on Aug. 29 and failed to beat the Athletics on Sept. 13 despite allowing just two runs in seven innings.”

While this is a valid statement to make, nowhere in the article did he explain the lack of run support that Felix got in many of his starts.

I personally think if Felix was on a team that put up runs every game (granted a team isn’t going to put up runs EVERY game but you get what I am saying) he would be an easy 20 game winner every season, that is how great Felix is.

Did he get robbed though? I think he did. I am not big on the sabermetrics part of baseball, I look watching a guy play and judging him on that. However, I do like to look at some stats when supporting my claim.

Felix was a 15 game winner, 3 behind Kluber. Felix played on a team that offensively was ranked bottom third in the league.

The Indians were ranked roughly 11th in the league offensively. It is hard to win a game when your team struggles to score.

Comparing to the Felix’s numbers this year and his Cy Young winning year in 2010, his numbers are better. More wins (15), lower ERA (2.14), less hits (170), more strike outs (248), less runs allowed (68), and not to mention the lowest WHIP (walks+hits/innings pitched) of any pitcher since Pedro Martinez in 2000 (0.915.) I almost forgot to mention the fact that in a span of 3 months, Felix had 16 consecutive quality starts.

While it is a tough end to a great season for Felix, I can only think this will motivate him harder next year.

I cannot wait for the season to start, according to my count down 144 days until opening day, and it can’t come soon enough.