Time to take another look at the NL Cy Young award race.
Despite losing his last two decisions, our man R.A. Dickey has continued to pitch well. He now leads the National League in ERA, and is second in WHIP behind Clayton Kershaw. He is also one K behind Kershaw for the league lead. Can he get to 20 wins? Depends upon if the Mets lineup can figure out how to score more than 2 runs in a ballgame, or if R.A. can simply toss two more complete game shutouts. No problem.
Johnny Cueto, who appeared to be Dickey’s primary competition for the Cy Young has dropped off a bit lately. His ERA is still a nice 2.92, however.
Kershaw, despite his W-L record has made some inroads. When Felix Hernandez won the 2010 Cy Young award with a 13-12 record, it signaled a new era in baseball – one in which a starting pitcher’s wins and losses have been (correctly) pushed aside in favor of statistics that better reflect a pitcher’s performance. With that in mind, Kershaw has a real opportunity to steal the award away from Dickey. Full Disclosure: After I posted this, I just read that Kershaw is injured and may be out for the season. Soooo…never mind.
And don’t count out Gio Gonzalez. He’s held opponents to a .207 batting average, and will be counted on to be Washington’s ace heading into the playoffs.
Matt Cain and Kyle Lohse also have a shot at bringing home the Cy if they finish strong.
Hopefully, for us Mets fans, R.A. can race to the finish and close the deal. It would be a nice morale booster in an otherwise gloomy season.
| RK | Player | Team | W | L | ERA | G | GS | IP | H | BB | SO | AVG | WHIP▲ |
| 1 | Kershaw, C | LAD | 12 | 9 | 2.7 | 30 | 30 | 206 | 157 | 53 | 206 | 0.212 | 1.02 |
| 2 | Dickey, R | NYM | 18 | 6 | 2.67 | 31 | 30 | 212 | 171 | 50 | 205 | 0.223 | 1.04 |
| 3 | Cain, M | SF | 14 | 5 | 2.93 | 29 | 29 | 199 | 165 | 45 | 177 | 0.227 | 1.05 |
| 4 | Lohse, K | STL | 15 | 3 | 2.71 | 31 | 31 | 199 | 179 | 36 | 129 | 0.237 | 1.08 |
| 5 | Bumgarner, M | SF | 15 | 10 | 3.26 | 30 | 30 | 198 | 174 | 46 | 181 | 0.234 | 1.11 |
| 6 | Hamels, C | PHI | 15 | 6 | 3.06 | 28 | 28 | 197 | 172 | 49 | 192 | 0.235 | 1.12 |
| 7 | Gonzalez, G | WSH | 19 | 8 | 2.95 | 30 | 30 | 186 | 140 | 72 | 196 | 0.207 | 1.14 |
7 comments
Mr North Jersey
9/19/2012-5:07pm at 5:07 pm (UTC -4)
Paul out of curiosity can I ask if you manually created that table or used a table generator?
I have tried a few table generators and for whatever reason I never get them to comply to varying cell widths like I am seeing here.
Paul Festa
9/19/2012-6:25pm at 6:25 pm (UTC -4)
I copied it from MLB.COM’s stat page, then pasted it into Excel. In Excel I deleted some columns I didn’t need, then resized the other columns to make it fit in the post. Then I copied and pasted it out of Excel into the WordPress Editor. Kind of a hack, but it was easy.
Mr North Jersey
9/19/2012-6:27pm at 6:27 pm (UTC -4)
I never considered copying and pasting from excel. I’ll have to remember that. Thanks
srt
9/19/2012-7:08pm at 7:08 pm (UTC -4)
Go RA!
And since wins seem to matter more than it should for some voters, sure would be nice if the offense would show up for his final few starts.
Sylow59
9/19/2012-11:23pm at 11:23 pm (UTC -4)
Gio or RA at this point. Edge RA because of team suckage
kingman 26
9/19/2012-11:47pm at 11:47 pm (UTC -4)
Paul, nice post, excellent opinions, and really just a fine piece.
RA winning a Cy to add to the Met collection would join Harvey’s arrival and Niese’s stepping up to really underline the future foundation of this team, which is what can be a great starting rotation.
If Wheeler is as good as Harvey?
Dickey/Harvey/Niese/Wheeler?
There may be hope….
srt
9/20/2012-7:41am at 7:41 am (UTC -4)
I’ve been so impressed with Harvey in his starts up here so far. Read so much before he came up saying he’d probably top out at a number 2 or even number 3 type pitcher. So far, he’s been far better than that. Only thing he really needs to work on his lowering his pitch count.
Wally even said he’s never seen anything like it. So maybe there is something to the fact that he was a bit bored his last couple of months down in AAA.
That start last night….giving up no hits thru 7 after the lead off HR was damn impressive. Almost a good thing he did give up that one hit. Can you imagine the controversy if he got thru 7 with a no hitter? I’m thinking there’s no way Terry would let him go any farther with his PC over 110.
Let’s hope Harvey picks up next season right where he left off. Add Wheeler to the mix and we might have a SP rotation to look forward to for years to come.
Now if we can only fix the offense. The way that game ended…..UGH. I’m blaming the anemic offense almost as much as that one mistake pitch by Edgin to Howard in the 9th.