IT'S NOT WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE; IT'S HOW WELL YOU PLAY THE GAME: The AL Cy Young race this year may be the most interesting one in a long time. That's not exactly because it's close. Just about everybody with an opinion thinks it's not close at all. It's just that a huge portion of the people you ask say that the Yankees' C.C. Sabathia is the only possible choice, and another huge portion of the people you ask say that there is no rational argument for anyone other than the Mariners' Felix Hernandez. (A small percentage of the people you ask would like to give it to Liriano or Lee.)
The argument for C.C. Sabathia is that he is going to hit and exceed the 20-win mark while pitching pretty well, which indicates that he just "knows how to win." The argument for Felix Hernandez is that he has been better than Sabathia in literally every respect other than the ability to play for a team that scores runs. Quite literally everything that a pitcher does, Felix has done better than Sabathia (including performance in high-leverage situations, which indicates the Felix pitches better when the game is on the line and puts the lie to the "knows how to win" line). Yet Sabathia is the favorite, because 120 years ago some writer decided to assign wins to pitchers, and because a diminishing but still significant number of baseball writers believe that everything that ever was should ever be, to the exclusion of sense and reason.
Yes, I am a Mariners fan. Last year, though, Felix had a great year and more wins than Greinke. You may recall that I said in this very space that Greinke deserved the Cy by a wide margin. Is there really any argument this year that Felix doesn't?
