From The Windup: The Perplexing 2008 NL Cy Young Race and Considering CC

From The Windup is FanHouse's daily, extended look at a particular portion of America's pastime.

While discussing the Cy Young on Sunday night, Joe Morgan said, predictably, that it was "Brandon Webb's to lose". In fairness, he's probably right. But ... I don't really think he should be. See, the Cy Young is all about perception.

Headshots via Getty Images
Well, not all about perception, but there's a pretty hefty chunk of voting attribution distributed towards the feeling of performance, rather than the strictly statistical discussion of how various pitchers have excelled throughout the season.

If that wasn't the case, then Randy Johnson would have won the Cy Young in 2004, when he very clearly outperformed Roger Clemens on the mound.

In an "ideal" world, there would be someone stuck squarely in the upper left quadrant above -- a pitcher with obviously dominant stats that were publicly recognized (because his team didn't stink). That rarely happens, though, and this year's Cy Young race is, when you really start breaking it down, one of the most intriguing we've seen in a few years.

After all, we have the heavy favorite in Webb, the best pitcher in the National League in Tim Lincecum, the discussion incumbent (Johan Santana), the early season surprise (Edinson Volquez) and a few darkhorses in Danny Haren and Ryan Dempster, the latter which is nothing short of shocking.

See, it's perception that led smart baseball guru types Bill James and Rob Neyer to create a formula entirely devoted to predicting the Cy Young balloting. Not "should win" mind you, but "will win" based entirely on what the voters tend to look for in their winner.

As you can see from the list, Salomon Torres is the eighth most likely pitcher to win the CY. I'm willing to bet he won't get any votes come the end of the year. But a guy who deserves some votes, or at least some Award-worthy buzz, for what he's done since the beginning of July, is CC Sabathia.


CC won't get credit for his time spent with the Indians and that's fine. But people are counting him out -- Miller and Morgan included him as an aside in the SNB telecast -- simply because he joined the National League less than two months ago.

And frankly, that seems a little unfair. After all, Sabathia has yet to lose (not necessarily important, but the voters care) since he came to Milwaukee, he's thrown six complete games -- three of which were shutouts -- and he's affected the wild-card race like no other single individual in the National League. Much of a win can be attributed to assistance from batters and the bullpen, but when you go the distance at a casually routine pace, I'm willing to assign a little more credit to the win, regardless of what it's doing to your arm's shelf life.

Not saying it's some badge of honor; but I think we can all agree that if you keep the ball out of Eric Gagne's hands, you've done everyone involved a tremendous service.

And all of that -- CC's actual performance -- doesn't even include the fact that there's already a precedent set for including someone based on only half a season; Rick Sutcliffe throttled the competition for the award in 1984, despite having 68 less IP, 121 less K's and a higher ERA and WHIP than second place finisher Dwight Gooden.

With that in mind, and based on the formula that Neyer and James created -- with their Victory Bonus number tweaked to represent BP's playoff odds divided by 10 -- maybe we need to look a little harder at Carsten Charles' case.



Now, clearly he's way behind the leaders in the clubhouse. But that's primarily because strikeouts and win-loss records are cumulative statistics and he's only been picking up these stats since July 8th.

In other words, CC's presence on this list (he's top 10 once you rule out the relievers the who aren't going to win in a season like this anyway) means that the voters just don't know how much they like him yet. And the mere fact that he's even in the same conversation, or should be in the same conversation, with people who have a three-month head start on him speaks volumes to the works he's done since he arrived in Milwaukee.

Sabathia's argument aside, there's also the the borderline criminal prospect of Timmy Linc not even really getting considered simply because he plays on a shoddy Giants team, which hearkens back to the Clemens and Unit example.

If these eyes could hate, Brian Sabean would be unpopular.

Lincecum has been nothing short of dominant and hasn't fallen prey to bad stretches like Webb. But the Giants can't sniff the playoffs, and as was the case with Hanley Ramirez and the MVP last year, everyone knows you can't be valuable if your team isn't winning!

People will also argue that his games don't "mean as much" but that reeks of malarkey, and so does the notion that Sabathia can't win the award by only playing a half season in the National League.

It's not even so much that he can't win as it is that, even if he pitches at remotely near the pace he's set since coming over from Cleveland, he won't win. This can be traced simply to the mindset of people who are voting (exhibited by Mssrs. Morgan and Miller): if a guy like Webb wins 20 games and posts decent ERA and strikeout totals, then he should just be handed the hardware without questioning why.

On the other hand, CC could keep throwing kind of no-hitters for the rest of the season and backdoor his way into the award. But then either his arm is going to fall off accepting it or Ned Yost is going to get sued by Hank Steinbrenner at some point in 2009, so it's going to end up being ugly either way.

Just you make sure and remember where the "CC in '08" campaign trail started.

All fancy pictures by Brinson via Getty, with assistance from Prez and Troutman.
Inspirational tip of the cap to Ziller, of course.