My objective was not to find their “true talent”, as it’s a no-brainer, TL55 has more talent than AW50, and perhaps more than CC29, but to try and figure out who was more valuable down the stretch, because I viewed it as an even race in August.

One can fault me because I still value wins as an important stat (as guys that give up a lot of runners and runs don;t generally post a good W%), while acknowledging that it is not “solely under the pitcher’s control”, but I still place some value on it, and I don’t try to completely isolate a pitcher’s performance from the team defense aspect because it is a team game, and pitcher and defense work together.

If you want to show that TL55 was the CY this season because of his WHIP (or any stat representing him not giving up many hits or walks), IP, and K’s … I could not argue with that. AW50′s gives up more hits and K’s less, it’s not even close.

The big difference seems to be that I give a player on a division winning (or playoff) team a *nudge* UNLESS the other player’s stats are so darn dominant that you cannot ignore it (like Grienke). I think a case could be made that TL55 was that dominant.

The difference between TL55′s dominance & AW50′s team + individual success is so razor thing, that I can accept either TL55 or AW50 as CY. I concede that CC29 misses out because he is 25+ IP shy of the others. His performance was not dominant enough to overcome that.

Now, I am split on whether JV or DH dominance was enough to trump CC29′s individual + team success for 2nd or 3rd place votes, as I look at the cards offense as not dominant, nor was their defense spectacular with “tryouts” at 3rd and OF at 2nd, Duncan in LF for a time, and Ankiel trying to dive through walls, and Ludwick is just plain average. Khalil Greene broke down, and a 1B can only do so much defensively.

Because, IMO, many people place “extra points” on performance in big games (or for playoff contending teams), in all sports. I’m just up front about it. I think that’s reflected in much of the voting with Wainwright and Carpneter being placed higher than Vasquez and Haren. While some of AW50′s stats do not measure up to some of the other CY-candidates (while other stats do), I give him “extra points” for pitching very well in the playoff chase, against strong opponents, and having a dominant season for a division winning team.

My voting (for conversation sake) would have been [1] AW50, [2] TL55, and [3] Any of the 3 (Carp, Vasquez, or Haren). But, I cannot argue or oppose TL55 as CY, that dude is as dominant and exciting as anyone since Doc.

I followed the Dbacks season closely and Haren’s season was OUTSTANDING. I believe at one time he had a streak of 16 straight games allowing 3 runs or less (maybe even 2 runs or less). The DBacks had 8th inning BP nightmares that killed that team. I know we cannot (or should not) award “points” for “what could have happened”, but really Haren *could* have won possibly 25 games with some bullpen help and a tad more run support. He was amazing. Obviously what hurt Haren was playing for a last place team without being overly dominating over the other contenders for the award.

Well I don’t know how good you are at math but
that comes up to:

Linc 72 Batters allowed on (in .2 innings more than Wain)
Wain 72 batters allowed on
Carp 74 batters allowed on

Now you failed to show stats such as xTRA to show how hard these pitchers where hit, and still failed to notice that linc put away more batters via strike than the others. And yet his ERA and W/L is still greatly different. You just showeded an example where W/L and ERA fail to show a pitchers true talent level.

Um, what? You do know what FIP stands for, don’t you?

Yes, it sounds like you missed my point a bit.

The games themselves are more important but the pitcher cant do anything about that… to him, it is just one start out of many.

It would be like me saying “On june 18th so- and so pitched a great game put team x in first place for the first time, therefore that game should be weighted more heavily.”

its nonsensical thinking

Sure, I am. I don’t hide it at all.

How can you possibly expect to still be in this conversation after that response?

More to the general discussion, though, its scary that Haren wasn’t even in the picture on so many ballots…

223ks

38bb(!!)

1.00 WHIP

SLG% against: 375

FIP: 3.26

in 229 IP

The strike against Carpenter here ( as others have mentioned) Is the IP discrepency… ( 193 for Carp) The fact of the matter is that Haren was excellent for a longer period of time, this kind of stuff has to come into play here.