NL Cy Young Award?

[clydepepper]

Bill- once again, you have proved yourself the master researcher....thanks for allowing the rest of us to continue having lives (little lol)

As a retired lefty who struck out more than my share many moons ago, I will point out that as seductive and sexy the punch-out can be, it, in higher numbers lends itself to the other fielders being back on the heels and not being as prepared to handle batted balls.

I can certainly see your point about FIP, but what I just mentioned is the down-side of such 'dominance' in a team game.

Again from the left-handed perspective - I would not be unhappy if Kershaw won again- even though that would break Sandy's Dodger record for Cy Young awards won - I could always fall back on the fact that Sandy's awards were during time when only a single award was given for all of MLB - that's still amazing!

As far as the teammates canceling each other out- ideally, it is a flawed argument, but the reality is that the votes are from geographically specific media organizations and thusly are prone to choose a pitcher from their 'area', thereby voting for one and not the other - and, in general, that would play out for the entire 'area' - the human homey-bias is identical to the regional disparity you see with every Heisman selection.

As you have said these guys are incredibly close in performance. I just think it would be more of a shame if either Arrieta or Greinke didn't win since this year in particular, you cannot say, as you could last year, that Kershaw was clearly the best.

-and it takes a lot out of me to go against the southpaw - and so I believe it adds to the validity of my conclusion.
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[chaddurbin]

alot of words to say arrieta is pipped by either kershaw or greinke in whatever pitching metric you measure these guys by, and fip/xfip unfairly penalizes greinke who's become more of a pitching wizard through his craft and artistry. he's consciously pitching toward hard contact this year as he (correctly) deduces those turn into more outs than pitching to soft contact and having dunkers and bloopers fall in for hits.

as jonah keri points out even if you dig deeper kershaw still delivered the most raw value as a pitcher, followed by greinke and arrieta. all the numbers are still ridiculously close this year, and at this point it really doesn't matter who the cy young is, it's gonna come down to subjectivity and biases...and although i'm a dodgers fan i think arrieta will come out ahead for the reasons i listed in my previous post. and greinke won't care, he'll still opt out and get a huge 25-30mil deal for 6-7 years.