Felix and the Cy Young Award
I briefly mentioned this in a game thread the other night, but for those curious, he’s a slightly more expanded reasoning on why Felix shouldn’t really have any shot at winning the Cy Young award.
As Mike Salk noted on his blog, one of the M’s suggested that Zack Greinke has “come back down to earth” after a hot start. This is somewhat true, and will probably be used as tool to promote Felix’s candidacy.
After all, Greinke was ridiculous in April, running a 0.50 ERA in five starts, but not surprisingly, he wasn’t able to sustain that kind of performance. No one could. But, just for the sake of argument, let’s throw out April, where Greinke was amazing. After all, the M’s went 5-0 in Felix’s starts in April as well, so the end result of their first month dominance was the same for both clubs.
May 1st to present.
Greinke: 174 1/3 IP, 156 H, 36 BB, 180 K, 11 HR, 2.48 ERA.
Felix: 182 1/3 IP, 156 H, 54 BB, 160 K, 13 HR, 2.47 ERA
The “coming back to earth” version of Greinke? Still better than Felix. Even if we wanted to arbitrarily remove Greinke’s best stretch of performance of the season while not penalizing Felix in the same way, we can’t do any better than saying Felix has only been a little bit worse than Greinke.
Felix is a terrific pitcher having a great season, but Greinke is having a season of historic proportions. And he’s doing it with a pretty miserable cast of characters around him. He not only deserves the award – he deserves to win it unanimously. He’s been that good.
I love Felix, but he’s been the second best pitcher in the AL this year.
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Does Felix winning the Cy Young award make it more or less likely that the M’s can sign him to an extension? I think (no evidence just a gut feel) that it makes it somewhat less likely. OTOH it does increase his value if the M’s decide to trade him so I am selfishly rooting for him to win.
It has no impact. Teams don’t value players based on the votes of baseball writers.
Dave made a good argument as to why the Cy Young award should go to Greinke, but not all the voters are going to follow his train of thought. The question is, if Felix’s next turn is on September 30th do you let him pitch again on October 4th or is he done for the season?
If you want to pitch Felix in the finale to squeeze in the extra start, it would make more sense to move him up to the 29th so he can be on a normal four days of rest both times.
Should they do that? He’s already at a career high of 216 IP, but it is a chance at winning the Cy Young award, for whatever that is worth.
Does he have any incentives in his contract for the Cy Young? If he does they surely have to give him the best shot at it, even if it costs the team money.
One thing I noticed while searching google for Felix fangraphs to get his page.
Did you mean: Feliz fangraphs
Don’t you think it makes a difference marketing wise? Wouldn’t you expect a GM to ask for more in return? Can’t a pitcher who wins the Cy Young expect to command more salary? Why would it be different for trade value?
Nope. He did get an extra 50k for his all-star selection though. (or 25K, I’m not sure)
I’m sure that Scott Boras would make that argument.
Drayer just tweeted that Felix will indeed start the final game of the season.
I find this fanpost at Royals Review to be a good read in support of Zack Greinke. Needless to say, Greinke has pitched phenomenally and has been getting massively hosed by his team.
Win and Losses are probably the only reasons why there is a Cy Young race in the AL.
But hey. Felix, whoooo!
I honestly don’t care. At 23, Felix has had a season that, in other years, would have been a perfectly fine Cy Young season. Compare Randy in 1997, who had a great season, just statistically behind Clemens. Greinke had a better season, fine. Felix can get him next year. Or not. If he’s in the range of this season as long as he’s an M, I’m one happy fan.
I remember being disappointed that Gregg Olson beat out Griffey for Rookie of the Year. In retrospect, let’s just say that I can live with that disappointment.
Hmm, so maybe we should say “Feliz Felixidad”.
The aggregate OPS of batters faced:
Sabathia .748
Greinke .752
Hernandez .760
Verlander .763
Halladay .777
Not sure what to make of that.
Thanks DW and jvalentine for the information and that great website. You both are absoulutely right about Greineke and after last nights gem he definitely deserves the CY Young. Thanks.
I’m afraid of what some of the voters will make of that if CC is also the only one with 20 wins, OPS is about as sabermetric as some of those writers get, not to mention the dreaded East Coast Bias.
G Man,
I think your reading that backwards, which is of course how the voters probably will too:-)
If I read it correctly that isn’t their OPS vs each pitcher, it is their OPS overall.
So CC has had the easiest opposition and Halladay the toughest with Felix in the middle. But in reality how much difference is there between .748 and .777 as the range?
I agree Greinke is the obvious choice for the AL CY… but then he was the obvious to start the Allstar game for the AL and he got hosed out of that. So who knows.
Whether it happens this year or not, Felix is going to win a Cy Young or two and pitch a no-hitter (at least); the real question is whether any of that happens while he’s still in an M’s uniform.
Yeah, I totally believe Greinke deserves the Cy Young. Still, my fan bias really wants Felix to win it anyway. It’s nice to see the M’s receive some recognition occasionally.
Hopefully Greinke gets lit up here soon… maybe Felix can leapfrog him if he puts up 7ER in a game…