I meant the BIG LUCKY get the AL Cy Young

Why you hatin' on Clements? He had a great year. The Cy Young is always subjective, but to say you CAN'T make a case for Clements is ridiculous. Stats, schmats. Being the best pitcher can be more than ERA and wins. Sure, he had awesome run support, but maybe that's because the players feel so good about the outcome everytime he pitches. And maybe he's the 'best' pitcher because they see how hard the guy works, and what kind of effect he has on the rest of his staff (ala Pettite). The guy is a winner, and he was a rock for the sometimes shaky Yankees this year.

 

Clemens probably didn't deserve it. Garcia was a better pitcher this year.

In fact, the baseball writers' were ridiculous this time around. Garcia tallied THIRD in votes, finishing 3rd slightly behind Mulder.

Why? Because Garcia didn't win that magic #, 20 games. But he did have a 3.05 ERA. Do you realize HOW MUCH BETTER that is? Over the course of a career, a pitcher with a 3.05 ERA will be substantially more valuable than a pitcher with a 3.51 ERA, as Clemens had.

Think that perhaps Clemens just had some bad-luck? Well, let's find out. Clemens allowed 205 hits and 72 walks for a total of 277 base runners in 220.1 innings. That means he allowed approximately 1.26 runners per inning.

Garcia, conversely, pitched 238.2 innings, and allowed 199 hits (MORE INNINGS FEWER HITS!) and 69 walks (FEWER WALKS< MORE INNINGS!). This means Garcia allowed 268 men on base and 1.12 runners per inning. That's MASSIVELY better.

For the purpose of comparison, WADE MILLER gave up 183 hits in 212 innings and allowed 76 walks for a total of 259 baserunners. Per inning, that works out to be 1.22 baserunners per innings, BETTER THAN CLEMENS! And the disadvantage of pitching at Enron Field more than makes up for the DH.

Garcia also allowed only 16 homeruns, to Clemens 19... again, with Garcia pitching more innings. Miller allowed 31 in Enron.

Garcia had 4 complete games and 3 shutouts. Clemens had none of either.

What's the real difference? Wade Miller got 5.4 runs of support per game. Roger Clemens got 6.6. Garcia got 5.3

That's why Clemens won 20, and Garcia (and Miller) didn't.

For shame, baseball writers. You gave the award to a fraud. The Astros had a better pitcher than this clown.

 

Wow. Why do you have to go and call him a clown. And a fraud? How do you get to that? Clemens is totally professional. He takes his job extremely seriously. He consistently pays homage to his teammates and to baseball history. He consistenly expresses how fortunate he feels to play baseball for a class organization. I think calling him a clown is way out of bounds, and seems to indicate your personal taste in personality instead of an attempt at an objective argument. I expect better from you Haven.

If you want to compare careers you are losing this point quicker than you can say "I must be a Red Sox fan." When Garcia gets to his first MVP or his third, fourth, or fifth (or his first or second) Cy Young, or gets his team to its first World Series, then he might....might i say....be able to hold Clemens jock strap or polish his shoes in regards to his CAREER NUMBERS. Until then why don't you try to bend stats to make your point with a little less venom.

And yet Clemens won more games than Garcia. I guess those extra base runners didn't matter worth a damn, did they? As Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

And I know about the run support, I'll handle that down below.

Again, here is a good stat. Some might go so far as to say its the most important stat. Clemens won more than both of those guys. And if you were trying to win now there is no way you would take Wade Miller over Clemens. And picking one or two stats out to compare pitchers is really irritating. You could tear anyone you wanted down and build anyone you wanted up. As Aaron Levenstein once said "Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

Clements was not asked to fill that role. Torre preaches his guys getting through 6, and after that he likes to go to his bullpen. And again, if Garcia was so much more dominating, why didn't he win as many games? Was it the Seattle offense that was so horrible? I guess Garcia just had back luck?

"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted"-Albert Einstein. You, and all the other Clemens bashers never have a single explanation as to WHY Clemens gets that support that other pitchers, including Mussina and the rest of the Yankees don't get. WHY? Well, as I said in my first post, which you ignored, maybe its because he inspires his teammates. Maybe its because they are as pumped up by him as he is by the game. Maybe their focus is better. Or here's one you don't seem to have thought of: Maybe they can lean in on the plate, because they know that the opposing pitcher is going to think twice about taking their head off when Clemens is pitching! Closer to the plate = more runs. Period. Does Garcia give his OFFENSE a boost like that? Obviously not or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

So, maybe Garcia or Hudson or somebody else had better stats this year, but Clemens is a rock for his team. He won a ton of games and being 20-1 at one point in the season certainly entitles him to be in consideration for the award, instead of being called a 'clown.' And what does 'best' mean, anyway? Does it mean best stats? No. Or they wouldn't vote, they'd tally the award like the freakin BCS. Would that make anyone happy? LOL. I think the best is winning, and winning in a particular way, being professional, taking pride in your work, and making people around you better. Not sure how Garcia made his teammates better. There are certainly plenty of stories of how Clemens makes his Yankee teammates better...

Clemens, congrats on #6 baby. Not bad for the 'twilight' of your career...

 

LaMarr Hoyt, 1983, 3.66 (not in top 10)
Jack McDowell, 1993, 3.37 (not in top 10)
Pete Vuckovich, 1982, 3.34 (6th in AL)
Steve Stone, 1980, 3.23 (7th in AL)
Whitey Ford, 1961, 3.21 (10th in AL)
Early Wynn, 1959, 3.17 (9th in AL)
Jim Lonborg, 1967, 3.16 (not in top 10)

That's at least seven other Cy Young winners not in the Top 5 in ERA in their league, including two not even in the Top 10.

ERA is not the determining factor for the 'best' pitcher in baseball. Remember when Nolan lead the league in ERA and had a LOSING record? Baseball is more than stats, although I know you SimHeads don't think so.

 

Clemens is a no talent ass clown who likes to bean people in the head, and throw broken bats at batters.

****ing *******, I hate that guy.

 

Now that's an objective opinion from somebody named "Nomar" who owns the "Boston" franchise. You should have some love for Clemens since he brought three of those Cy Youngs and an MVP to Boston. Its Duquette you should hate.

 

Nomar-how can you say he has no talent? He has won 4 Cy Young awards after Duquette said he was washed up. I wish the Astros had a couple of washed up pitchers like Clemens.

 

Okay, when the jabroni went 20-1 this year was anybody surprised that this happened?? Plus he plays for a New York team. No one should be surprised by these results.

I'm not going to complain about him winning the Cy Young this year, but Hayes Street, your statement to Nomar that he should be happy for Clemens is ludicrous. Yes, it's true that Duquette has f***ed the Red Sox more than any ex-Red Sox players, but when the Red Sox needed Clemens to be dominant, he consistently choked for them. Look no further than Game 6 of the 1986 World Series when all he had to do was pitch like he did during the regular season (24-4, 20 Ks in a game). But, what happens..he gets staked to a lead and he can't hold it..Boston loses in extra innings and Game 7 and the series and the Rocket is 0-0 in the World Series. Or look at 1988 and 1990 against Oakland, he didn't win a single time in either of those playoff series, both sweeps. You can argue that he didn't have any run support, but if he was truly dominant like a healthy Pedro Martinez, then the Red Sox would have won some of those games and who knows, maybe the series. Am I saying that he sould never lose a game, no. All I'm saying is that he had this tendency to not show up in the postseason.

Clemens got lucky that the Yankees wanted him during this run of championships. Yes he pitched great when he was with Toronto, but I guarantee you that he would have never done anything in the playoffs with the Blue Jays, either. And he had a nice performance against Pedro and the Sox in the only game that the Yankees lost in the '99 ALCS.

The guy is going to be a hall of famer and he won't retire until he has won 300 games; however, he has no class whatsoever. That really became apparent with the Piazza incident. He's the biggest chickens*** for doing what he did to Piazza not once, but twice! And I really don't care much for Mike Piazza, either.

 

hayesstreet:

I dislike the Red Sox.

A don't dislike Roger Clemens. He's had a remarkable career, though I disagree with the currently popular assessment that he's been better than Maddux over the course of their careers.

I'm certainly not advocating Garcia's career value over Clemens. The Cy Young is an award for an individual season, not a career. What I'm saying, is that a pitcher with an ERA of 3.05 is enormously more valuable. If you looked at a pitcher who had that sort of ERA over the course of his career, then he's going to have a better win-loss record, even if he doesn't in any individual season.

I'm sorry, in baseball, you just about can guage value by statistics. It's not like basketball and football where certain things can't be measured. In baseball, EVERYTHING is measured. You can get comprehensive stats for any type of situation. Every pitch, ball, homer, double, swing of the bat is recorded for posterity. Once stats reach a critical mass, you can make extremely accurate judgements about value and production.

Don't believe me? Well, you can actually work out the value of statistics in reverse. Bill James has devised formulas for expected wins and runs created per 27 outs. If you work "backwards," teams normally perform in a manner that's anticipated by these formulas.

If you use James' RC/27 formula to try to determine how many runs a team "should" have, you find it's usually about accurate.

If you look at his expected wins, it's usually about right.

In fact, VERY few managers, over the course of their careers, deviate more than a few games from "expected wins." This would seem to indicate that luck has very little room, over the course of hundreds of games, in baseball.

Your other argument, which I forgot to mention earlier, is that his teammates somehow "played" harder for Clemens. This isn't realistic, because if true, one would expect his RS/9 innings to be consistently higher than his teammates. You don't find this, so therefore, it's an anomaly.

Clemens had an excellent year. But other pitchers had better years.

 

My argument that he gets higher run production because his teammates can fearlessly crowd the plate has still gone unanswered. And it was my impression that Clemens does get more run support than Mussina or the rest of the staff, which is why people say Clemens won 20 and Mussina didn't.

And you could use RICK JAMES's formula for RS/9 and you still haven't explained why Clemens got more support than Mussina or Garcia. I attribute that to Clemens himself. You burn the candle at both ends by saying baseball is played by managers on percentages, but Clemens run support is an anomaly.

BUT, Haven I totally respect your right to say Clemens did not deserve the Cy Young this year. And your arguments do make sense to me. I just didn't think it was necessary to call him a clown, or to portend that he should not have been in the race at all.

Manny, I believe Clemens left that Boston/Mets matchup with a lead. You can correct me if I'm wrong. And I've never heard anyone say Boston would have been in ANY of those playoffs without Clemens. And as you said, those were sweeps confronting a hugely talented Oakland team. As to Clemens "big game" stuff, he pitched very well against the Mets in '86, and awesome a pressure game against Seattle two years ago, and left having only given up one run in this World Series game 7 after already dominating and winning a must-win against Arizona this year. Red Sox fans need to grow up and stop hating him because he left. He's a great pitcher, always has been. And I never heard a Red Sox fan b**** about him pitching inside when he was in Boston.

 

But if this is true, then this would be consistent from year to year. This argument wouldn't apply "just this time around" and not next, or the year before. Yet it didn't take place. Therefore, it's an anomaly. There has yet to be any evidence that run support for any given pitcher is anything other than chance (and of course, his team!)

But you still have to prove that Clemens has gotten this kind of run support throughout his career, or else it's simply chance, not merit.

Yes, I shouldn't have called him a clown. I don't dislike Clemens, merely the media that looks at irrelevant statistics. Ichiro annoys me for the same reason. Do a search sometiem aobut that .

As for him being in the race... well, that's another pet peeve of mine. I dislike all the terms that get banded about in awards races like when fans say "he shouldn't win, but he should be a contender." What the hell does that mean? A contender, by definition, has a chance of winning. What they really mean is "my guy played really well, he should get some recognition." Fine! He played well! But if it's firmly established that someone else really did play better, he ain't a contender.

Red Sox fans are boooooring. Their dislike of the Yankees is based on the biggest case of penis envy on the planet.

 

LOL! How can you say that me, Nomar, and DEAN are boring??

I'm just glad that Clemens didn't win Game 7 of the World Series.

You're right about a lot of things, Hayes Street, but I still feel for the most part that Roger Clemens has been a bust in the playoffs. He never would have won a playoff game if it hadn't been for these Yankee teams that he was lucky to get on.

 

manny:

Oh, not individual fans per se, it's just annoying when you're at a game, the Red Sox are playing the Rangers, A-Rod hits a homer...

... and the fans start chanting "Yankees suck!"

True story in that case .

 

Then it would seem you only believe there is one contender to any title. I didn't say Clemens shouldn't have won, I just said I respect your right to say that you think Garcia should have won. And I think when someone says "he deserved to be on the list, or in the race" they mean that when you draw up your list, before you crunch your numbers, there are probably several candidates that deserve consideration. Otherwise you would crunch numbers for every pitcher to be scientifically precise, although I'm willing to bet you can narrow it down based on a quick rundown of the season . So you can say Garcia and Hudson and Clemens were contenders for the Cy Young because each has supporters and each has some good points in their why they should have won.

 

Actually, you're not understanding my point.

There isn't just one contender for each award. There are often, but not always, several people you can make a pretty damned good case for. For the AL Cy Young, I happen to believe Garcia was the only really good candidate this time. Clemens got it because the media is impressed by largely meaningless but numerically impressive statistics (w/l record).

The AL MVP this year, however was a VERY close race. There were many guys that you could have realistically won it, that I wouldn't have objected to.

The biggest example of the "contender" thing that annoys me is Albert Pujols this year. A lot of people kept saying stuff like "he doesn't deserve to win, but this guy's has a legitimate MVP candidacy."

That's, quite frankly, stupid. If you can't truly make a good argument that he's having the best season, he's not an MVP contender. This year, in the NL, it was absolutely ludicrous to suggest anybody but Bonds deserved the trophy. Bonds was busy having the 3rd best offensive season in history while Pujols was having a "good year." Could any rational human being vote for Pujols over Bonds? Not as I see it.

That's my ultimate criteria. Could a rational human being look at the data and say "this guy was the best." If so, then he's a legitimate candidate. If not, it's pointless to say he is.

 

Question:

How can a pitcher with a 3.05 ERA, playing on a team with the most wins in AL history, NOT win 20 games?

 

No, I think I understand your point. And I understand you had to change your example to prove it. Bonds was hands down the best choice for MVP. So I agree you could say he was the only candidate. Garcia was not. He did not have the 3rd best pitching season in history. And I think it is funny to say that a pitcher's won/loss record is meaningless??? Uh, I think winning games is the point of being a starting pitcher. And I'll defer back to my N Ryan example. He lead the league in ERA but had a losing record because of, you guessed it, lack of run support. Was he the 'best' pitcher that year? I don't think so. And neither did too many other people. Why? Because they are paid to win. If your ERA is 3 but you lose every game 3-2, you aren't doing what you are paid to do. Run support is nice, but in the end you are supposed to win. And I think the point BGM made only solidifies the point. If he played on one of the greatest offensive teams of all time, the team with the most wins of all time, doesn't that say something that he DIDN'T win 20 games?

 

Holy Jesus, you like logical fallacies. Bonds is a case of being the only candidate. Garcia, in my mind, is a case in which he should have been the only case. There's a huge difference between a hypothetical universe in which all voters are completely rational and a universe in which they're often swayed by emotions and fallacial thinking.

You know, if Bonds hadn't broken the HR record, I think Sosa probably would have won. And that would have been a shame, since Bonds' domination was based on so much more than the long-ball. His slugging %, OPS, and OBP were really amazing... and they got less attention than a spectacle #. The HR is dramatic, so Bonds got the trophy. Right guy, but perhaps the wrong reaosn.

Likewise, the 20 win # is largely irrelevant.

Dude, you blame Garcia for not having won 20. That's assinine. You know how many times Greg Maddux has won 20 games? Twice. And he's the best or second best pitcher of era.

Or we can use the most famous example, if you want. Nolan Ryan once led the league in ERA at 2.76 but went 8-16. Was there something wrong with him? Nope. It was a combination of bad luck and the Astros being very, very bad.

Garcia didn't win 20. Big whoop. W/L record isn't a very good # to evaluate pitchers. Unless you really think John "20 game Winner" Lieber really had a better season than Greg Maddux, Daryl Kile, Wade Miller, Javier Vasquez, Chan Ho Park, and Tom Glavine. He pitched more poorly than any of those guys. But he reached a magic #, and they didn't.

Look at ERA, CERA, runners per 9 innings, opponents OPS, slugging, and OBP. Then tell me who the Cy Young winner should be. But don't find some garbage # that's as much determined by luck and run support and use that to hand out awards.