Porcello and Scherzer Win Cy Young Award

The Cy Young award — named after the Hall of Fame pitcher who died in 1955 — was first handed out in 1956 to Don Newcombe, with the goal of recognizing the “most valuable pitcher” from each season. The first eleven years of the award saw one pitcher per year receiving the honor, but in 1967 the Cy Young began being handed out to a pitcher from each league who was voted on as the best from the season.

Voting for the award is fairly straightforward.

Two writers from each city of both the American League and National League make up the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) voters for the Cy Young award, making a total of thirty voters for each league (fifteen teams, with two voters per city). A first place vote earns a player seven points, a second place vote gets four points, a third place vote receives three points, a fourth place vote is worth two points, with a fifth place vote earning a single point. Once added up, the player with the highest overall total wins.

The 2016 Major League Baseball Cy Young award winners for both the American League and National League were announced Wednesday night on MLB Network. Here are the winners, along with my thoughts on each:

AMERICAN LEAGUE CY YOUNG

Original Pick: Justin Verlander

Finalists: Corey Kluber, Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander

Winner: Rick Porcello

Thoughts On Rick Porcello Winning

The stats of the top pitchers in the American League from 2016 were so close that it was a challenge to choose the player who was the very best. Their ERA’s were within mere decimals of each other, with many other statistics also standing very close to even.

But Rick Porcello and his 22 wins wound up proving to be the most worthy of the Cy Young, as far as the voters were concerned, barely beating out Justin Verlander and his 3.04 ERA, who finished just five votes back of Porcello — the second closest margin since 1970. This also marked the second time in voting history that the player not receiving the most first place votes won the award.

The close race between the two caused a bit of controversy around the baseball world, as despite the closeness of the final tally, Verlander winning 6 more first place votes wasn’t able to do it for him in the end (due in great part to him not being named at all on two ballots).

Corey Kluber finished in third with his 3.14 ERA, with 3 first place votes and 98 overall points, with the favorite by many to win the entire award, Zach Britton, getting the other 5 first place votes and coming in fourth.

Porcello went 22-4 on the season, recording a 3.15 ERA along that time. For that reason alone, he is definitely deserving. However, there are still a lot of people who don’t feel that way. A lot of people felt that Verlander was far more dominant that Porcello throughout the year, and I find myself agreeing with them.

But it is what it is, and the focus here isn’t on Verlander’s extremely close loss (the second such of his career, with a 149-153 loss coming to David Price in 2013) but instead Rick Porcello’s deserving win.

NATIONAL LEAGUE CY YOUNG

Original Pick: Max Scherzer

Finalists: Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester and Max Scherzer

Winner: Max Scherzer

Thoughts On Max Scherzer Winning

As hard as picking the winner was from the candidates in the American League, the National League was just as difficult. With Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester and Max Scherzer all having very different cases for winning, choosing the one who stood above the rest wasn’t an easy task.

Hendricks led all of baseball in ERA with a mere 2.13; Lester posted a great ERA of his own, at 2.44, to go along with 19 wins; and Scherzer struck out a stellar 284 batters, despite his 2.96 ERA being the highest of the group.

But in the end, the voters went with Max Scherzer, and it wasn’t even close. Scherzer tallied up a total of 192 points, earning 25 first place votes, with Lester finishing runner up with just one first place vote and 102 points, leaving Hendricks coming in third with 2 first place votes and 85 points collectively. (The other two first place votes surprisingly went to Clayton Kershaw, who finished fifth in the voting).

The deciding factor for Scherzer’s Cy Young win likely came down to his utter dominance. Although he had the highest ERA of the finalists, Scherzer posted an 11.2 K/9 rate this season over the course of 220.1 innings, including a 20-strikeout performance against his former team, the Tigers, this year.

This marks Max Scherzer’s second career Cy Young award, joining him with Roy Halladay, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez and Gaylord Perry as the only other pitchers to win a Cy Young in both leagues.

But if 2016 was any indication, Scherzer may not be done setting records.

BBWAA Award Finalists Announced

It’s that time of year again. After months spent grinding things out throughout the baseball season, all leading up to the first World Series title for the Cubs in 108 years, award season is finally here.

Although the winners of the major awards won’t be officially announced until next week, the top three vote-getters were unveiled on Monday evening. For the mot part, I agree with the finalists for the Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and MVP awards, but there were a few I was surprised about.

Here are the top three players still in the running for the major MLB awards:

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR FINALISTS

American League: Tyler Naquin, Gary Sanchez and Michael Fulmer

National League: Kenta Maeda, Trea Turner and Corey Seager

I have Gary Sanchez and Corey Seager winning the Rookie of the Year award.

CY YOUNG FINALISTS

American League: Corey Kluber, Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander

National League: Kyle Hendricks, Jon Lester and Max Scherzer

I have Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer winning the Cy Young award.

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER FINALISTS

American League: Mike Trout, Mookie Betts and Jose Altuve

National League: Kris Bryant, Daniel Murphy and Corey Seager

I had David Ortiz and Kris Bryant winning the Most Valuable Player award. However, with Ortiz not being a finalist, I am thinking Mookie Betts will likely take home the award.

The winner of each award will begin being announced next week on MLB Network.

Here’s the schedule:

AL & NL Rookie of the Year: November 14th

AL & NL Cy Young: November 16th

AL & NL Most Valuable Player: November 17th

I plan on posting a recap of each winner, along with a look at how well I did with my predictions, in a blog entry after each award is officially announced. So be sure to check back for that at some point next week.

My Vote for 2016 A.L. Cy Young Award

Each year there are usually several pitchers from each league who have incredible seasons, making it difficult to choose between them for who most deserves the Cy Young award. This year is no different. The American League saw Rick Porcello, Zach Britton, Corey Kluber, Masahiro Tanaka, Aaron Sanchez and Justin Verlander all having great seasons. However, in the end, only one player can take home the Cy Young award.

Although Rick Porcello had a great season that helped carry the Red Sox into the postseason, I don’t feel he’s one of the top few candidates for the Cy Young award. His 3.15 ERA on the year is really good, and his 22 wins — given, wins aren’t as big of a deal as they used to be — stand out, but Porcello didn’t quite do enough all around to earn my vote.

Holding the same fate, Masahiro Tanaka also had a fantastic year, posting a 3.07 ERA over the course of nearly 200 innings pitched for the Yankees. However, his all around stats don’t really hold up when compared to the others in the running. Even so, Tanaka looks to be the ace of the staff moving forward.

Aaron Sanchez’s season was also something special, recording an American League best 3.00 ERA, and virtually taking the Blue Jays to the postseason. With that said, he still didn’t do enough to win the award, as he made a handful of starts fewer than the frontrunners, leading to his strikeouts being lower.

Finishing third on my list is Corey Kluber, who had an amazing year despite it not being on the level we have seen before from Kluber in the year he won the Cy Young. Kluber struck out 227 batters over 215 innings pitched, and held opponents to a .216 average on the year, but likely won’t win the award when all is said and done.

Happening only a handful of times in baseball history, I’m not completely against a reliever winning the Cy Young award, but they have to have posted an unbelievably historic year. Zach Britton certainly fits that category, recording a 0.54 ERA on the season while notching 47 saves, but I don’t see him as more worthy than a certain Tigers’ ace.

The deserving winner of the American League Cy Young — even if he doesn’t wind up being the one to win it — is undoubtedly Justin Verlander. Having a bounce back season, Verlander lead all of the American League in strikeouts, with 254 on the season, and recorded a mere 3.04 ERA while holding opponents to a .207 average. All combined, Verlander is the rightful winner of the top honor for pitcher in the American League.

Could We See a 30-Win Pitcher in 2016?

More and more as time goes on, the win statistic is becoming less and less relied upon when it comes to determining how good a pitcher is performing over the course of any given season. Given, there are many better stats to look at — ERA being the most comprehensive one — to determine whether or not a pitcher is having a good year, but the win isn’t completely worthless as some suggest.

After all, to receive the individual win, the pitcher had to place their team into position to pull out the victory in the ballgame. Although pitchers can still record a win after giving up 8 runs, as long as their team scores more runs in that given game (that’s what makes the pitcher-win controversial), the win is still something that a pitcher strives to notch each and every time out on the mound.

But not since 1968 has the baseball world seen any pitcher been able to record 30 or more wins. It was in that year that the Tigers’ Denny McLain tallied 31 wins in his campaign that saw him going on to win both the Cy Young award and MVP. You simply don’t see pitchers having seasons such as that one anymore. But if things continue as they have so far, it could in fact happen once again this season.

In order to have a chance of breaking the nearly 50-year drought of thirty wins in a season, a pitcher needs to be nearly perfect on the year. Back when Denny McLain recorded his milestone season, it took him 41 starts, as opposed to the 32-34 starts pitchers receive in today’s game, making perfection a necessity.

With that in mind, there are four pitchers who I feel have the only remaining shots at the coveted 30-win season this year: Rick Porcello, Jordan Zimmermann, Chris Sale and Jake Arrieta, who have all won every single start they’ve made this season.

Porcello is the least likely of the four to keep up the win streak, in my mind. While he’s had a decent season in a struggling Red Sox rotation, he’s also been the beneficiary of timely run-support. Porcello gave up ten total earned runs over his first three starts, but has settled down recently, not allowing a single earned run since April 20th. Even so, I don’t see his win-streak continuing.

As with Porcello, Zimmermann isn’t very likely to keep up his perfect start to the season, but that isn’t meant to take away anything from the start he’s had this year. Posting a 0.55 ERA over his first five starts, Zimmermann is truly breaking out as one of the top pitchers in the game. But despite playing in a Tigers uniform — the same as McLain back in 1968 — I don’t see another 30-game winner in Detroit.

Chris Sale has been one of the most dominant pitchers in the recent history of the sport, but I’m not convinced that he can hold things together to record a 30-win year. Even so, sitting at 6-0 on the season, with a 1.66 ERA, Sale is continuing to impress the baseball world with how good he is, and he’s seemingly only getting better. Perhaps he will end up proving me wrong when all is said and done.

However, if I had to put money on which of the four pitchers on my list I feel has the best shot at 30 wins this year, I would go all in on Jake Arrieta. There is no other pitcher in baseball who has been more dominant than Jake Arrieta since the second half of last season. After picking up another win on Tuesday night, Arrieta becomes the first Cubs pitcher since Mordecai Brown in 1908 to begin the year 6-0. That’s absolutely amazing when you think about it.

Despite the great starts the aforementioned starters have gotten off to in 2016, a 30-win season is obviously very difficult to achieve. Given all of the obstacles pitchers have to overcome in getting there, the odds of it happening yet again aren’t all that great. But even so, my pick to accomplish the feat, Jake Arrieta, has already defied all logic by going 17-0 over his last 19 regular season starts, dating back to last season.

The odds of that happening weren’t great either.

Recap of the 2014 Baseball Winter Meetings

For the most part, I like to write about big time trades and/or signings within a day of when they occur. I feel that waiting too long to give my thoughts on a particular transaction causes it to become old news and therefore not really relevant to the everyday fast developing topics around baseball.

However, for the 113th annual baseball Winter Meetings that took place this past week in San Diego, things were happening so fast and at such a high volume that I would’ve been blogging multiple times a day to keep on top of the action. I didn’t have time to do that, nor did I want to do that. And thus, I decided to post this recap upon the conclusion of the Winter Meetings. (Keep in mind, not every single signing or trade is included in this post; just the major ones, in my mind.)

Ending on Thursday, this years meetings saw an unprecedented amount of teams signing or trading players. Practically every ten minutes news broke of a new deal or trade that was sure to shake things up in 2015 and beyond. Seeing more trades go down over the past week than the last three Winter Meetings combined, a lot of exciting things look to be in store for the 2015 season.

The Winter Meetings were kicked off with a trade of Brandon Moss by the Athletics on the very first day. Getting sent to the Indians in return for minor leaguer Joe Wendle, Moss will certainly add a bit of pop to Cleveland’s lineup, having hit 25 or more home runs each of the last two seasons.

But the A’s weren’t done parting with players. Following the departure of Moss, Oakland traded away pitching prospect Michael Ynoa to the White Sox along with breakout pitcher Jeff Samardzija, whom the A’s gave up a few of their extremely promising prospects for in a trade back in July. In return for Samardzija, the White Sox simply had to toss a few prospects to the Athletics, in Marcus Semien, Chris Bassitt, Josh Phegley and Rangel Ravelo.

In my opinion, and the opinion of many others, the Athletics didn’t get back quite enough in that deal. All of this coming after the trade of Josh Donaldson to the Blue Jays, many are really questioning the A’s logic.

No one, however, is questioning the White Sox. After acquiring Samardzija, a lot of people began to talk about the White Sox’ playoff chances in 2015 with their improved pitching staff. But those talks only increased when the Sox announced a four-year, 46 million dollar signing of David Robertson. After the past few seasons Robertson has been able to put together, saving 39 games last year for the Yankees, he was near the top of available free agent relievers. The White Sox adding Robertson to their roster gives their fans hope for a promising upcoming year.

The White Sox aren’t the only Chicago based team that’s setting themselves up for a nice 2015 season, however. Across town, the Cubs are also in line to be much improved. Following the addition of veteran catcher Miguel Montero to their lineup in a trade that sent two minor leaguers, Jeferson Mejia and Zack Godley, to the Diamondbacks, the Cubs obtained one of the biggest free agents heading into the Winter Meetings.

While it took awhile for him to decide on the Cubs, Jon Lester made the choice to head to Chicago for the next six years, signing a contract worth 155 million dollars. Combined with a new manager in Joe Maddon, and a talented young roster of players, it should be fun to watch the Cubs moving forward.

But although there were large deals such as the one Jon Lester signed with the Cubs that went down over the course of the Winter Meetings, there were also multiple smaller deals that could end up having large impacts on the given team(s) involved.

Francisco Liriano resigned with the Pirates on a deal worth 39 million over the next three years; and the Twins picked up Ervin Santana for the next four years, set to pay him a total of 55 million over that span. But the smaller signings I like the most are the ones the Astros made by adding Pat Neshek and Luke Gregerson to their struggling bullpen, which had the worst ERA (4.80) in all of baseball in 2014. After not getting David Robertson or Andrew Miller, the Astros had to settle with these two relievers, but Neshek and Gregerson will go a long way in helping a bullpen that had 26 blown saves in 2014. Even so, the Astros aren’t likely to make the playoffs just yet.

Just the opposite, the Dodgers have been a playoff team for the past two years and seemingly would be so again in 2015 regardless of if they did anything to change their roster. But that didn’t at all stop them from making moves — big moves.

After making an impactful 4-year, 48 million dollar signing of free agent starting pitcher Bandon McCarthy, who was terrific in the second half of 2014 with the Yankees after an up and down career, the Dodgers proceeded to reshape a good portion of their team.

Coming after weeks of rumors that the Padres were interested in Matt Kemp, the Dodgers complied with the Friars, sending Kemp and Tim Federowicz to San Diego for Yasmani Grandal, Joe Wieland and Zach Eflin.

The fact that this trade went through came as a shock to many, as Kemp is a superstar when healthy, and the Dodgers didn’t get much in return, but it needed to be done with the overcrowded Dodgers outfield.

Although the Dodgers were quoted as saying that their All-Star second baseman, Dee Gordon, was not being considered for a possible trade, the baseball world did in fact see Gordon, along with Dan Haren and Miguel Rojas, leaving the Dodgers. Unlike the Kemp trade, Gordon and company getting shipped off to the Marlins in a trade for Andrew Heaney, Chris Hatcher, Austin Barnes and Enrique Hernandez made sense, as this swap seemingly would help both sides.

Part of the trade, though, wouldn’t last even an hour. A brief time after obtaining promising pitching prospect Andrew Heaney, the Dodgers flipped him to the Angels in exchange for Howie Kendrick. In addition, the Dodgers also flipped Zach Eflin, whom they received for Matt Kemp, and another prospect to the Phillies, in a swap for Philadelphia’s franchise hits leader, Jimmy Rollins.

Doing so subsequently fills the holes left by the loss of Hanley Ramirez and Dee Gordon, and now gives the Dodgers a double play combo of Rollins and Kendrick. That’s certainly not bad at all, especially with Kendrick basically coming over for free with the trade of the newly acquired former Marlin Heaney.

But the Andrew Heaney deal with Los Angeles didn’t quiet the Marlins. After locking up Giancarlo Stanton to a 13-year, 325 million dollar deal last month, the Marlins made a promise that they would surround Stanton with talent capable of winning a lot of ballgames, and so far they’re keeping good on it.

Following the addition of Dee Gordon, Dan Haren and Miguel Rojas, Miami later made a trade for another key piece to place in their starting rotation — Reds’ solid pitcher, Mat Latos. Getting Latos for the price of Anthony DeSclafani and Chad Wallach, the Marlins could very well be setting themselves up to be a playoff contender as soon as 2015.

That’s what the Red Sox are attempting to do. Going from last to best to last over the past number of years, logic would tell you that the pattern indicates that 2015 would be another up year. Unfortunately, things don’t always follow patterns. And thus, things have to be done to actually improve the Red Sox’ team and not leave them merely hoping for a miracle season.

The main need for Boston heading into the Winter Meetings was pitching. Signing Justin Masterson to a 9.5 million dollar contract for 2015; trading away Rubby De La Rosa, Allen Webster and another prospect for Wade Miley; and acquiring Rick Porcello from the Tigers by trading off Yoenis Cespedes, Alex Wilson and Gabe Speier; the Red Sox quickly added three solid pitchers to their poor rotation in a matter of days. Those three should drastically help them next season, as they already own a great lineup following the signings of Hanley Ramirez and Pablo Sandoval.

So there you have it — a recap of the majority of the deals and trades that took place at the 2014 baseball Winter Meetings, and the possible impacts each move will have for each given team. As many have pointed out numerous times, this was one of the most active Winter Meetings in their long history. But nonetheless, there are still a number of valuable free agents that remain on the market.

From James Shield and Max Scherzer to Melky Cabrera and Chase Headley, there are multiple impact players that are available to any team that does what it takes to get them. With every free agent having to find a home somewhere, the exact ball club they wind up with could have a big effect on the outcome for teams in 2015.