Kuzul

Yesterday the Seattle Mariner front office garnered similar fan enthusiasm for their latest choice to manage the team, as one might find at an exciting university lecture on Wave Particle Duality and how that relates to quantum physics.

Lots of snoring, cat-calling, muttering, outright grumbling amidst the masses, scattered with skeptical “who the crap is that??!?

That’s right Seattle sports fans!  Your stellar ownership group has once again opted to rebuff your wants for proven winner Bobby Valentine and his four decades of baseball success, in favor of Cleveland’s cast-off manager and far more dubious Eric Wedge.

Yet another in a series of brilliant public relation moves by your pals Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln!

You would think at this point, given the track record of the past three years, that if Seattle fans wanted Snookie Polizzi and her Jersey Shore cast collegues to manage the team, Mariner management would have obliged!  Given that this ownership team has brought us four managers and two 101 loss seasons during the past three seasons.

Seven managers since Lou Pinella quit abruptly,  with some pundits suggesting this ownership team is difficult to work with and a tad arrogant. From the fan’s perspective, that suggests any one of us could write random names on a tree stump, cast darts at it, and likely come up with a manager who might deliver more wins than what we’ve just seen.

So the “Wedgie” choice is not likely to motivate fan excitement nor higher ticket sales and camping overnight for best seats.  Not until management demonstrates that they know more about these decisions than your average garbage man or beer delivery person.

Seattle fans wanted a man like Bobby Valentine, with a strong personality and a willingness to fight for what he needed.  Fans specifically made clear that they were tired of “yes men” managing the team.  And the larger question is how many more wins will Eric Wedge deliver over what Bobby Valentine would have?  Few believe there would be more wins under Wedge, so why not give the fans what they wanted?

Today, after the announcement, fans were apathetic and irate, assuming more of the same.

How do I know this?

Well, other than the scathing fan remarks from talk shows and comment sections in local newspapers,  Thursday I did my own poll research using roughly the same scientific methods that those polling the Patty Murray/Dino Rossi senatorial race are using.

We just put a question up and let anyone who wanted to, respond, happy to accept multiple votes from the same party.

And with this scientific method, my research indicates that roughly 92.4 percent of Seattle fans insisted on Bobby Valentine managing this team. Over all the other choices. Numbers that Saddam Hussein would be jealous of.

Now the Mariners, being the Mariners, of course did not listen to the fans. They felt it wiser to go with the mostly unknown former Cleveland Indians manager.  And perhaps this is indeed the better choice from a baseball perspective, but Seattle fans are very skeptical.

And this in spite of well-known sports talk hosts and newspaper columnists in Seattle, using the better part of the past few days trying to convince us that this was indeed the best choice available.

Similar arguments, ironically, to those presented at the hiring’s of Del Crandel, Chuck Cottier, Bill Plummer, and Jim Rigglemen.  

Predictably they’re having about as much luck convincing us as McCain & Palin did with the wisdom of the Bush economic policies in 2008.  So pardon me if my enthusiasm wanes, but I, like most Seattle baseball fans, am wondering why the Seattle Mariners fired Don Wakamatsu three months ago if a manager with the same skill set is what this team allegedly needs?

The Mariners claim they want a leader who works well with young players. Exactly the skills former-manager Don Wakamatsu was gifted at.

Interim manager Darren Brown had no better luck managing this team with it’s impotent offense, than Wak did.

Clearly it was never a manager issue.   It was a player decision and talent issue.

So the challenge for those running the Seattle Mariners this offseason will be in convincing skeptical and likely former-season ticket holders, why they should feel any more optimistic over the 2011 version of the Seattle Mariners than what we just saw with the 2010 version.

And at this point, many of us remain unconvinced that these latest moves made any difference whatsoever!

If anything, there is more egg on the faces of those running the organization and less fan confidence.

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As reported by CBSSports.com, the Seattle Mariners have hired former Cleveland manager Eric “The Grinder” Wedge, to replace fired skipper Don Wakamatsu following a 101 loss season.  For a team that has suffered from a chronic case of underachievement, Wedge doesn’t strike me as the antidote.  Furthermore, he doesn’t strike me as the solution to any team’s problems. 

Here are several reasons why.

Slow starting teams: in his entire tenure with Cleveland (7 years), the Indians had only one winning April (2007).  To me, this is an indication of a manager who doesn’t know how to prepare a team for a season during spring training.  Regardless of talent, his teams begin every season flat.  When a team is under .500 and 5+ games out of first by the beginning of May, it’s really tough to make the postseason.

Failure to meet expectations: the three Indians teams that received the highest preseason praise under his tenure were the ’06, ’08 and ’09 squads.  The best record any of those teams had was 81-81 in 08.  Much like the Indians, the Mariners have a history of underachieving, especially in recent years.  Does it seem like a good idea to add an underachieving manager to that mix?

Teams crack under pressure: the best teams Wedge managed (’05 and ’07) both cracked when the pressure was turned up.  In 2005, his team was a shoo-in for the playoffs, until the last week of the season.  The Tribe lost six of their last seven to the Royals, Rays and White Sox and finished two games out of the postseason picture.  The ’07 team had a 3-1 lead in the LCS, with the #1 (C.C. Sabathia) and #3 (Fausto Carmona) pitchers in the Cy Young race scheduled to pitch in games 5 and 6.  They still managed to crack under the pressure and allowed the Red Sox to win the last three games and take the series.  Like Indians fans, Seattle fans put A LOT of pressure on their teams to break through and give their city a winner.  I really doubt a Wedge-led team will be able to handle the pressure.

Bad managerial decisions: offensively, Wedge is a “get some guys on and swing for the fences” manager. This strategy certainly doesn’t fit the talent on the current 25-man roster or the dimensions of Safeco Field.  There is little nuance in his game plan…don’t expect to see stolen bases, hit-and-runs or sacrifices.  Wedge’s handling of his pitching staff is a cause for concern as well.  Jake Westbrook and Cliff Lee spent the early years of their career being bounced back and forth between the rotation and bullpen, making it difficult for them to settle in at the major league level.  In his later years, a similar situation has occurred with lefty Aaron Laffey, who ended up missing the majority of this season with arm fatigue. Fausto Carmona started ’06 as a starter before moving to long relief, set-up, and eventually closer.  After his failure replacing Joe Borowski as closer, he was demoted to AAA and returned to the rotation.

You can chalk this up to sour grapes on the part of a disappointed Indian fan if you want.  Trust me, after several years of the “Grind,” you’ll be ready to run Wedgie out of town on a rail.

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“Six-and-a-half games back and not playing very well in a season we thought we ought to be in contention.  I think we were losing ground with the field,” Ranger managing general partner George W. Bush said in June of 1992 upon firing his manager.

The manager?  None other than Bobby Valentine, a baseball man with nearly four decades of baseball experience sorely needed in the dullard Seattle Mariner organization, made famous for its uncanny ability to create 100-loss seasons regardless of the payroll or who is running it.  Valentine has the personality horsepower needed to confront a dogmatic front office that Mariner fans are ready to run out of town amidst a mob of ropes and flaming torches.

The Texas Rangers were 46-41 at the time of the firing, and were in third place in the division, 5.5 behind first-place Minnesota in the days of dual divisions in each league.   Valentine then in his 25th baseball season at the age of 41, his eighth with the Rangers,  he had been the third-longest tenured manager in the major leagues behind only baseball icons Tommy Lasorda of the Dodgers and Sparky Anderson of the Detroit Tigers.  Bobby Valentine had been the youngest manager in the major leagues when offered the job on May 16, 1985.  A former Dodger, he had long been a favorite of Lasorda and once was thought to be his heir apparent as manager of the Dodgers.  

Almost a decade later on a different team, Valentine was again fired, but this time following a tumultuous and controversial summer of 2002 in New York.  The Mets finished with a 75-86 record in spite of their $102 million payroll, in last place in the NL East for the first time since 1993 and below .500 for the first time in six years.  It had been a mere two years after Valentine had led them to the first Subway Series in four decades.

Many felt Valentine had taken the fall for then knucklehead general-manager Steve Phillips.  Valentine left with an overall record of 536-467, reaching the playoffs in 1999 and 2000.  But in late-season 2002 came one of the worst months in team history with a 12-game losing streak where the Mets didn’t win a game at Shea Stadium in August, during a NL-record 15-game home losing streak.

Earlier that summer Mets part owner Fred Wilpon issued several dreaded “votes of confidence,” but by mid September was fed up with underperforming players, seven of whom Newsweek magazine had claimed were caught smoking marijuana and goofing off.  “The team just did not respond to the manager,” Wilpon explained at a packed news conference after the fact.  “Whatever grip Bobby had on the team was gone by the end of the season.”

Sports pundits ripped the move.  Ian O’Conner of USA Today wrote a scathing column insisting the Mets had fired the wrong guy, and that the Mets “should’ve fired his loser of a general manager, Steve Phillips.”  Phillips had embarrassed Valentine by refusing to allow him to attend the winter meetings and embarrassed the franchise with rumors of an extramarital affair with a subordinate.”

Valentine himself said, “I told Fred that that he had to give the next manager authority in the clubhouse and on the field, that he had to get Steve off the field and out of the clubhouse.  You can’t let a GM high-five guys and joke around after a win and then after a loss act like it’s the end of the world. Get him out of there for the sake of the next guy.”

Sobering words for Mariner fans, given that current Mariners manager Jack Zduriencik spent a large part of July and August this past summer hobnobbing in the dugout with Mariner icons while “evaluating” soon-to-be fired manager Don Wakamatsu, claiming that Wak too had “lost control of the team.”   

Mariner fans responded in ways not seen before.  Fed up with a perceived meddling by an incompetent front office, radio talk shows and newspaper comments were bombarded with scathing rebukes of long-time Mariner management figures Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln.  Fans weren’t buying management’s latest line about “needing change, ” considering the next hire will be the team’s seventh manager since Lou Pinella left in 2002.

If this franchise was a horse, it would have been shot two decades ago.

The Seattle Mariners are in dire need of a manager like the only successful manager in team history: Lou Pinella.  Unlike his predecessors, Pinella routinely had shouting matches with owners who felt they knew baseball better than he did.  Pinella had no problem getting in the face of decision-makers and publicly scolding them for failed or non-existent moves.  Valentine is a guy who shares this trait.

Whatever the real story in the clubhouse as Mets manager, off the field Valentine had been a force for compassion following the unsettling attacks at 9/11.  People close to the manager felt his unyielding commitment to the families of victims put things in perspective for Valentine, and perhaps made sports far less important.  Gone was the focus, some claimed, which led to apathy towards superstar tantrums during his last season in New York.

He has held various jobs in baseball other than his managing stints.  Following his departure from Texas, early in January 1993 Valentine was hired by the Cincinnati Reds to be an advance scout that included consulting player personnel and watching talent on other teams during spring training. 

Also spending part of the last decade in Japan managing the Chiba Lotte Marines, Valentine was soon headed back to the United States for reasons other than on-the-field success.  Making somewhere around $3.9 million a year, he priced himself out of the market and was told by Marines management that the club would not be able to afford him after the 2009 season, regardless of how many games his team wins.  Thus he returned to commentating on ESPN this past season.

Valentine’s players may have been chided for misbehaving, but he too has been known to be part of on-field mishaps and mayhem.  In December of 1998 he admitted he made a “bad guess” when he speculated why Todd Hundley blamed him for being replaced by Mike Piazza.  Hundley felt Valentine had it in for him, but Valentine blew it off saying, “It’s an Italian thing.  He thinks that I would do something because he’s not Italian or because I am Italian.  I think that’s ridiculous.”

And then who can forget the infamous if not somewhat humorous two-game ban and $5,000 fine in June of 1999?  While Met manager, Valentine returned to the dugout during a game versus Toronto donning a fake mustache and glasses after being ejected from a game against the Blue Jays.

He might need that humor if hired in Seattle, since this is only one of three organizations that have never played in a World Series.  But clearly Valentine would hold the most baseball experience of anyone in the organization.  On a team in Seattle with cranky fans still living in memories of the past, hiring Bobby Valentine should be a no-brainer.

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It’s the end of an era. George Kenneth “Ken” Griffey Jr., better known as Ken Griffey Jr.—the Kid, the Natural, the Swing—has officially retired from MLB.

Griffey leaves the MLB with a legacy as being one of the most prolific home run hitters and best defensive outfielders in baseball history.

Over a 22-year career, Griff sits fifth on the all-time home run list with 630, 14th on the all-time list in career RBI and 219 hits short of 3,000, with 13 All-Star Games, 10 Gold Gloves and an MVP award, not to mention being tied for the record of most consecutive games with a home run.

Griffey is considered to be one of the few elite players of the Steroid Era to be free of steroid-use suspicion, which makes his accomplishments even better. Unfortunately for Griffey, though, his career was slowed after he became plagued with injuries. Had it not been for these injuries, Griffey was easily on pace to beat Hank Aaron’s home run record and would have become MLB’s home run king.

In 1990 and 1991, Griffey and his father became the first son and father to play on the same team at the same time. On September 14, the pair hit back-to-back home runs in the top of the first off California Angels pitcher Kirk McCaskill, becoming the first father-son duo to hit back-to-back home runs. The duo played a total of 51 games together before Griffey, Sr. retired in June 1991.

Junior also released a pair of video games for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System—both of which I continue to play on a regular basis, reveling in its 32-bit glory.

On June 2, 2010, Griffey released a statement through the Seattle Mariners organization announcing his retirement from Major League Baseball effective immediately:

“I’ve come to a decision today to retire from Major League Baseball as an active player. This has been on my mind recently, but it’s not an easy decision to come by. I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to have played Major League Baseball for so long and thankful for all of the friendships I have made, while also being proud of my accomplishments.

“I’d like to thank my family for all of the sacrifices they have made all of these years for me. I’d like to thank the Seattle Mariners organization for allowing me to finish my playing career where it started. I look forward to a continued, meaningful relationship with them for many years to come.

“While I feel I am still able to make a contribution on the field, and nobody in the Mariners front office has asked me to retire, I told the Mariners when I met with them prior to the 2009 season and was invited back, that I will never allow myself to become a distraction. I feel that without enough occasional starts to be sharper coming off the bench, my continued presence as a player would be an unfair distraction to my teammates, and their success as team is what the ultimate goal should be.

“My hope is that my teammates can focus on baseball and win a championship for themselves and for the great fans of Seattle, who so very much deserve one. Thanks to all of you for welcoming me back, and thanks again to everyone over the years who has played a part in the success of my career.”

Sadly, Griffey’s retirement was the right thing to do. He’d had one at-bat in nine days, lowering his batting average to .184. He’d hit 19 home runs last season and none in 108 plate appearances this season. He had a glove, but being forced to DH because of his drop-off in speed and jump, he would never need it to play the field. He wore the familiar uniform and number, but his game had passed, even if the swing remained nostalgic.

Most importantly, he leaves the game with a sparkling name when just about everyone else from his era has been tarnished during the Steroid Era.

He made the right choice. As he fades into retirement, he leaves behind his legacy as the best of his generation. He won’t have the numbers to prove it, or the trophies, or even a single World Series appearance. But put him on a baseball field, level it, and play baseball—the Kid stands above them all.

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Ichiro Suzuki is an aberration.

At 5’9″ and 170 pounds, Ichiro’s slender frame belies his incredible talent. He has one of the most feared arms in all of baseball. His bat is lightning quick through the zone. His speed on the base paths is that of a track star. But you wouldn’t know all that just by looking at him.

Naturally quiet, Ichiro keeps a low profile. Besides being one of baseball’s best, the 10-time All-Star seems to shy away from the attention usually sought by superstar athletes.

He doesn’t make outrageous statements or call out his teammates. Instead, Ichiro goes about his business day in and day out and leads his Seattle Mariners team by example.

**(Continue reading at GackSports.com)

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The Seattle Mariners enter the 2010-2011 Major League Baseball offseason in dire need of some runs. The team did not merely take up the rear in American League run scoring: They finished with 100 fewer runs than the Baltimore Orioles, who finished second-to-last. The Mariners pitching staff had a 3.95 ERA, good for the fifth-best in the AL, but because of the dreadful, anemic, monumentally inept offense they put on the field, Seattle won just 61 games.

Given that premise, there is a surprising degree of very genuine optimism within the Mariners front office. Team chairman Howard Lincoln and general manager Jack Zduriencik sent an open letter to Mariners’ fans this week, urging them to be patient and promising great things ahead.

As the team’s decision-makers note in the letter, the Mariners system is stocked with quality hitting prospects. I have seen, with my own eyes, the tremendous potential of Carlos Triunfel, the team’s enigmatic but very young and gifted shortstop. Other top-tier bats on the cusp of big-league readiness include Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak, and Greg Halman.

If the Mariners are serious about their commitment to long-term rebuilding, then, we ought not to see a hyper-aggressive effort to fill a pathetic lineup with second-rate stop-gaps in 2011. There is clearly a better approach to be had in effecting the sea change this squad of seafarers so badly needs. Here are 10 players the team should target this winter, in order to make a real run at the postseason in 2012 and beyond.

Begin Slideshow

Though it appears that the Mariners will go into the 2011 season with a static or decreased payroll compared to 2010, there has been a widely-accepted theory that their budgetary constraints are less strict when it comes to signing Japanese players.

Some of this may have changed when Hiroshi Yamauchi sold his shares of the Mariners in 2004, as the team hasn’t gone to extravagant lengths to sign a Japanese player since signing Ichiro in 2001, and hasn’t signed a Japanese player at all since signing Kenji Johjima in 2006.

However, Yu Darvish is a different kind of talent, and ultimately a different kind of opportunity than signing Johjima was.

It’s not often that Major League clubs have a crack at signing top-level talent from Japan in their early-20s. Last year we saw Junichi Tazawa pitch with the Red Sox, but he was eligible for free agency after asking for, and ultimately receiving a pass from all the teams in the NPB in their amateur draft. In late 2008, he signed a three-year, $3 million deal with the Red Sox.

Tazawa had pitched in the Industrial league in Japan, something akin to the independent leagues in America, and at 22 years old he started his American professional baseball career pitching in Double-A.

At 22 years old (almost 23) Kazuhito Tadano signed with the Cleveland Indians in 2003. Tadano entered the American scene under extremely different circumstances than Tazawa. Rather than requesting that no Japanese team drafted him Tadano went undrafted against his will, with his participation in a pornographic video during his college years as the main culprit for his being overlooked.

Tadano signed for $67,000, with a shoulder injury and the aforementioned sex tape as the driving force behind the bargain price. Tadano is playing in Japan now, though he’s posted two ugly seasons for the Nippon Ham Fighters.

Perhaps the best parallel for Darvish, unsurprisingly, is Daisuke Matsuzaka. Matsuzaka  left Japan after his age 25 season, and after an enormous $51.1 million posting fee that the Red Sox paid to the Seibu Lions, they then inked Matsuzaka to a six-year, $52-60 million contract (the latter is with full incentives reached).

Matsuzaka had been utterly dominant in the four seasons that led to his posting, with ERA’s under three and more than a strikeout per inning.

Matsuzaka also impressed in the 2006 World Baseball Classic, pitching against many big leaguers along the way.

However, Matsuzaka’s career in the bigs has been tumultuous to say the least. After not averaging more than three walks per nine innings in the five seasons that led to his transfer stateside, Matsuzaka hasn’t averaged less than three walks per nine innings in a single season in the majors.

Despite no apparent decrease in fastball velocity or command (compared to league average), Matsuzaka has seen his strikeout rate decrease every season since signing with the Red Sox.

One of the problems that Matsuzaka has faced is the apparent variance in strike zone in the majors compared to the Japanese game. The consensus is that the strike zone in Japan is bigger than it is stateside, and that while Matsuzaka made a living pitching on the “corners” in Japan, many of the pitches he’d thrown for called strikes in Japan were called balls in the Major Leagues.

Matsuzaka’s variety of offspeed pitches and corner nibbling style have led to inflated pitch counts, deflated innings counts, and an overall deflated performance in the majors.

Darvish possesses a similar skill set: A low-90s fastball that can reach the mid-90s, several offspeed pitches, and precision command. However, this plot may tell a different story.

It appears that Darvish is willing to challenge hitters with his fastball in the strike zone, and gets groundball outs doing so. However, quite frequently, Darvish threw offspeed pitches for balls in early counts, a main contributor to Matsuzaka’s limited success.

So with this in mind, is there any reason to believe that Darvish will have any more success in the bigs than Matsuzaka?

Age works in Darvish’s favor, as he’ll be entering his age 24 season if he enters MLB next season. Also, Matsuzaka’s enormous price tag may have worked to drive the total asking price for Darvish way down.

While a struggling economy has driven overall free agent dollars down in recent years, many Japan-America transitions have been billed almost completely on past precedent. If teams are worried about a Matsuzaka-like decline after a transition stateside, Darvish may not be as highly sought after Matsuzaka was.

There is speculation that Darvish’s posting fee will be $25 million, and that he’ll seek a five-year deal in America.

More recently than Matsuzaka, Hiroki Kuroda was a top-level Japanese pitcher who brought his services stateside. He was a free agent after spending 10 seasons in Japan (nine seasons in Japan are required before outright free agency is granted). Kuroda signed a three-year, $35.3 million contract.

A $12 million salary over five years would put an expected total price tag of $85 million on Darvish. That would equal the $17 million per season, pre-incentive total for Matsuzaka. However, in some ways using Kuroda’s salary as a model for Darvish’s eventual price tag is a flawed endeavor.

Kuroda was a free agent, which meant that he could hold his own bidding war. While that likely drove his price up, he signed his contract with the Dodgers in 2007, a year before the major signs of economic recession set in.

Kuroda also never dominated NPB like Darvish has. Kuroda was a pitch-to-contact pitcher who had several productive seasons, but only one truly outstanding season (2006). And he was 32 years old when he entered the majors.

By contrast, Darvish is coming off his fourth straight season with an ERA under two, his third season in the last four where he struck out a batter per inning or more, and may be coming off his best season in NPB. He’ll be 24 years old for most of next season, and has been on prospect radar’s since he began his domination of the league in 2007, when he was 20 years old.

However, most heavily contrasting to Kuroda’s situation, Darvish will only be allowed to negotiate a contract with the team that wins the right by bidding highest on his posting.

The Mariners best shot at Darvish is if the bidding war for his posting becomes a battle of attrition. We recently saw Stephen Strasburg, perhaps the greatest pitching prospect of all time, see his contract expectations dip from an insane $50 million, and ultimately end up at a little over $15 million.

There’s no chance that the Mariners, or any other team for that matter, get Darvish for less than the $15 Million that Strasburg received. His posting fee alone, even if it comes in below the expected $25 million figure, will likely surpass Strasburg’s contract.

Also, Darvish made the equivalent to about $4 million in Japan this season, so in order to get Darvish into a Major League uniform, an MLB team would certainly have to give him a pretty hefty increase on that number.

But the increase comes with a sample set of over 1,000 innings of production against high-level competition to justify it.

In financially-cautious time for baseball, teams are even more likely to include the posting fee in total cost analysis of a player. So if we use $25 million as the posting fee, and an $8 million salary as a model, a five-year contract with the posting fee would come in at $65 million over five years.

In this scenario, the signing team would commit essentially $13 million per season to Darvish, and have an additional year of team control after the contract was completed, meaning they’d have a full year to negotiate a second contract or engineer a trade while Darvish played under his final year of arbitration. Darvish could hit free agency at age 30.

If we use Matsuzaka’s success in the majors as a midline, it’s pretty easy to justify $65 million for Darvish over five years. Despite his struggles, according to Fangraphs, Matsuzaka has been worth $42.9 million in four seasons in the big leagues. If we use his strike-throwing counterpart Kuroda as a moderate ceiling, things look even brighter, as Kuroda has been worth $42.4 million in three seasons.

If the price is right, Darvish is a special talent, and the second-best pitcher available this offseason (behind Cliff Lee, and excluding possible trades). However, if the price tag on Darvish reaches “Matsuzaka money,” the Mariners are better off spending their money elsewhere.

If the Mariners are truly a team that values long-term process over immediate results, then pursuing, and potentially signing Darvish is simply a matter of dollars and sense.

Other Fixing the 2011 Seattle Mariners profiles:

Ted Lilly, Ramon Hernandez, Michael Saunders, Colby Rasmus, Adam Dunn, Chone Figgins, Dustin Ackley, Felipe Lopez, Willy Aybar, Jack/Josh Wilson

Read more MLB news on BleacherReport.com

Also, the American League East is up for grabs. Both the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees are assured of making the postseason, but, as they are currently deadlocked, it’s just a matter of who wants to play the Texas Rangers or Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series (the division winner would play Texas, with the Wild Card playing Minnesota).

An exciting weekend awaits, but it is time to hand out the awards for baseball’s best. First in my multi-part series is…

American League Cy Young

I’ll start with perhaps the most intriguing. New York Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia has 21 wins and a 3.18 ERA over 237-and-two-thirds innings. He is deemed to be the front-runner. But he shouldn’t win. My choice, if indeed chosen, would defy most of the credentials needed to be considered. He’s not on a winning team; he’s on one of the worst. He doesn’t have anywhere near Sabathia’s win total. But, statistically, Felix Hernandez was the best pitcher in not only the American League but the entirety of baseball, dominating for the Seattle Mariners.

Being the best hitter doesn’t necessarily mean you are the Most Valuable Player. That has never really been understood by those who officially cast ballots. It’s who is most valuable, and in my mind “best” and “valuable” can have entirely different meanings when it comes to the offensive aspect of the game. But as far as pitchers are concerned, whomever puts up the best statistics should win their league’s Cy Young award.

Hernandez certainly accomplished what is necessary to take home the hardware. Throw his 13-12 record out of the window because he had the game’s worst offense behind him. The Mariners, as ESPN’s Jayson Stark mentions in his awards article, have scored less than three runs 98 times this season. Ninety-eight. For him, they scored just over three runs per game, by far the worst this year. But, according to Stark, it “isn’t merely the worst in baseball this year. It’s the worst in this millennium. And according to Elias (Sports Bureau), it’s the second-worst support in the entire DH era for an AL pitcher with an ERA under 2.50.”

And his ERA is well under the necessary 2.50 to qualify for this horrid statistic that will haunt the Mariners until they find some players who can hit. It’s 2.27, the best mark in baseball. He only allowed four earned runs twice in 34 starts, and relinquished just 194 hits in 249-and-two-thirds innings. Yet, due to his putrid offense, he has only 13 wins and, presumably, a second-place finish to Sabathia to show for such excellence.

To reiterate, racking up the victories should not be the main reason why a pitcher wins the CY Young. Sabathia has been terrific, but he has nine very good hitters backing him. Knowing your offense is going to have a great shot at supporting you has to ease the pressure heading into outings. This is why, with such a horrid offense, Fernandez’s candidacy should in no way be affected by what his offense does at the plate. To further explain why, I leave my argument for Hernandez with this, once again from Stark:

And here’s the amazing part: The Mariners are doing all this even though one of their lineup spots is occupied by a fellow who leads the league in hits (the one, the only Ichiro). At least that helps explain how the guy who leads the American League in hits has somehow scored fewer runs (72) than the man who is last in the National League in hits (that .198-hitting Mark Reynolds, who has scored 79), among qualifiers for the batting title.

Honorable Mention: Sabathia, Jon Lester, David Price, and Clay Buchholz

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Seattle Mariners manager Jack Zduriencik announced today that they are shutting down star pitcher Felix Hernandez for the rest of the season.

He’s only missing one start, but come on, Mariners—you can’t be serious.

I understand being cautious with your franchise cornerstone, but Hernandez is in the midst of a tight Cy Young race, and one more win could certainly push him into the lead.

In a season filled with such disappointment for the Mariners, you would think they would let Hernandez make one more statement to Cy Young voters, giving him a chance to finally give Mariners fans something to smile about.

Unfortunately, writers will have a lot of difficulty voting for a pitcher with a 13-12 record, regardless of the fact that he has pitched 30 quality starts out of a possible 34.

Hernandez also leads AL starters in innings pitched (249.2), strikeouts (232), ERA (2.27), and WHIP (1.06).

In past years, King Felix wouldn’t have a chance of capturing the award, but in today’s modern game, dominated by sabermetrics and analytical stats, all of which favor Hernandez, maybe he can pull it off.

I certainly think he deserves it.

One more start would certainly help his case, though.

What do you think, did the Mariners make the right decision, and will he win the Cy Young anyway?

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In his last 10 starts Felix Hernandez has been nothing short of brilliant, giving up no earned runs in five of those outings and one earned run in four other games during that stretch.

He went eight innings in half of the starts, and if the Mariners didn’t hit like the Bad News Bears, Hernandez would win the AL Cy Young award this year by a landslide.

Blame it on bad luck, mismanagement by the front office, or unfortunate timing, but Felix deserves better. He is the best pitcher in baseball right now, and all the attention has been focused on CC Sabathia and David Price.

Perhaps this is because the Yankees and the Rays are in a slugfest for the best record in baseball. Perhaps this is because Felix plays for a miserable Mariners team.

In my opinion this is just another case of the East Coast bias rearing its ugly head.

Felix pitches in Seattle, which is geographically isolated. There are no major markets between Seattle and San Francisco (these two cities are 800 miles apart), so the Mariners get very little exposure and media coverage.

CC Sabathia pitches for the most storied franchise in professional sports and the media capital of the world, while David Price plays for a team that is considered a fly in the ointment and a source of irritation for the Bronx Bombers.

Seattle will never compare to New York in the amount of attention it receives, nor should it. New York is 18 times bigger with transplants all over the country and an unrivaled fanbase. However, those facts shouldn’t overshadow the season Felix has put together. Felix should be acknowledged for his pitching dominance without bias.

In the end I think his body of work speaks for itself, and he’s made a stronger case for the Cy Young Award than anyone else, but he does pitch in Seattle, WA. We’ll see if the sports writers overlook that fact and do the right thing. Good luck Felix.

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