AJC > Sports > Braves > Blog > Archives > 2007 > August > 20
Monday, August 20, 2007
Huddy up for some Cy talk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I must be thinking right along with the editors at the AJC today because I had planned all along to get bloginacious today about Tim Hudson and his Cy Young chances. Then I opened the paper this morning to see an another centerpiece on the subject.
But hey, I still say there’s room to discuss. I didn’t see any Lew comments there, or BravesDave. So let’s toss it around here today. And with a little bit of seriousness.
I want to know what you think, who’d vote for if you had to today and if you weren’t a gigantuan Braves fan. Look at it objectively, if that’s possible, and tell me how you would cast your vote.
And just to simplify, let’s say you’re voting based on what you know right this very minute - not projecting how they might all do the last month of the season. Because a lot can happen from here on out - starting tonight for Tim Hudson in Cincinnati - and a lot will. The voting will get easier. But for the denizens, let’s make it hard.
Right now, you’ve got guys all bunched together, and that makes it interesting.
Coming into the series opener in Cincinnati tonight, here are the guys you’ve got bunched at the top with 14 wins to lead the National League - Hudson, Brad Penny, Carlos Zambrano, and Cole Hamels. We could toss Zambrano out because of his 3.86 ERA, which ranks only 21st among National League starters.
Then if you look purely at ERA, you’ve got Chris Young (1.93), Jake Peavy (2.19), Penny (2.59) and Brandon Webb (2.63). Hudson is fifth with 3.02. Not bad at all.
What’s killing Young is he’s pitched only 130 2/3 innings, behind the pace of the top starters, and he’s only 9-4. A terrible offense is San Diego is robbing him because the guy’s got a 0.66 ERA at Petco Park. He’s had 10 scoreless outings of his 22 starts. And we thought Hudson’s bad breaks were excruciating.
Anyway, he just can’t be considered yet. So if I were voting now, it wouldn’t be him.
Hudson at the moment is a bang-your-head-against-the-wall vote. If life was fair at all, he would have 17 wins, way ahead of everybody else. Remember the blown saves in Florida, Minnesota, and San Francisco? Am I forgetting any? And his ERA is right there, so you could totally justify a vote there.
Penny is right there with him with 14 wins and he’s third in ERA (second among those with 160 innings) at 2.59. He was 10-1 to start the season. If something has taken a little of his edge off, it’s the Dodgers’ 15-20 record since the All-Star break. And Penny has actually lost two games since the break. He’s now 14-3.
For Cole Hamels, the more important the games are for the Phillies it seems, the better he’s playing. He’s 5-1 with a 2.75 ERA in his last eight starts as the pennant races heat up. He’s got 14 wins too.
Then there’s Brandon Webb. Just saw him Friday night for the Diamondbacks. He’s the reigning NL Cy Young MVP. I haven’t seen as dominating a pitching performance - me with my own eyes - since maybe Randy Johnson’s perfect game a couple years back. And I’m talking about the kind of game where you knew nobody was going to score and you knew he was going to pitch the whole game. What more can you ask of a pitcher? The guy’s got 42 consecutive shutout innings.
So what do you do? Pick your poison. Me, I’d like to have the next five weeks to make up my mind. But for now, I take Jake Peavy. He’s 13-5 with a 2.19 ERA, second-best in the National League (first among pitchers with 160-plus innings). He’s leading the league in strikeouts. His ERA is almost half a run better than Penny.
I don’t know. I like him.
I believe in ERA as an indicator of starting pitching. I know a lot of folks will get into WHIP and such, but for me, who cares how many guys get on base so much as how many score. At least in this kind of analysis. (I’d rather have a closer with a low WHIP, so there wouldn’t be a chance of anything. But for a starter, I think of it differently.)
Anyway, let’s talk about this. What do you think? And are there others we at the AJC have totally ignored that need consideration? You guys could pick apart my thinking here, and that’s cool. Teach me something.
Oh by the way, it’s Carroll again - if you skipped the byline at the top - and I’m on the clock for the first two cities of this roadtrip - Cincinnati and St. Louis. So like it or not, you’ve got me, me, me for a couple days. (Actually a few more than that, I figured I’d just break it to you gently.)
I have Saudia Arabia and Canada playing a little Little League behind me on my hotel room TV in Cincinnati. It reminds me of something I wanted to tell you guys from the other day. You might know this already but the Braves watch this stuff. They must be just like us, and get a kick out of seeing the little dudes playing the kids’ game on TV. As the game was originally intended, you know?
Anyway, the other afternoon in the Braves clubhouse, we heard this loud roar coming from the players’ lounge, where they have a big screen TV and watch college football, golf, whatever it might be. Those of us in the clubhouse - which is adjacent - looked around at each other like huh? Are the Mets on? What happened? Turns out it was a kid from Massachusetts making a home-run saving catch on the last play of the game.
See?
Oh and apparently they’re only showing this game because there’s a rain delay. I’m right on top of things.
And speaking of young kids playing baseball….Julio….Ha….Julio Franco played his four first games with Class A Rome over the weekend, going 4-for-13 (.308) with two RBIs. All four hits were singles. He struck out twice, which is no big deal, unless you’re the opposing Class A pitcher, who gets to tell people, “Hey, I struck out Julio Franco!”
Julio is apparently going to rejoin the Rome Braves on their next homestand beginning Friday. In the meantime, he’ll celebrate his 49th birthday on Thursday.
Just read this on the Rome website, a recap of Sunday’s game: “Rome got on the board early in the first inning when Travis Jones led off the inning with a walk, moved to third on a double by Phillip Britton, and scored on a Julio Franco single for the early 1-0 lead….”
Hey, wait a minute. Sounds a little funny, doesn’t it?
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