Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
November 13, 2003
NL Cy Young

Baseball will award the NL Cy Young trophy later today. It's a tough choice for voters, with Gagne, Schmidt and Prior all deserving of the award. Gagne earned 25 wins shares, while Schmidt, Prior and Livan Hernandez all earned 22. No one talks about Livan for Cy Young, probably due to his 3.20 ERA and the fact that he didn't pitch well down the stretch.

I actually like Gagne for the award this year. Dennis Eckersley won the award in 1992 (and it wasn't Eck's best year) and Gagne's 2003 is better than Eck's 1992. One thing Eck had working for him that year is that it was difficult to pick a clear winner from the starters. The guys with great ERA's didn't win 20 games, and the guys who won 20 games didn't have great ERAs. The same thing may work for Gagne this year. Russ Ortiz is the only 20 game winner, but he's not in the top 10 in ERA. The best win total among the leaders in ERA is 18. Gagne deserves the award, and while I'm not crazy about a reliever getting it, he had an amazing season. We'll see this afternoon if the voters agree.


Posted by David Pinto at 09:42 AM | Awards | TrackBack (0)