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Posts: 67935
11/17/2011 3:02 PM
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Los Angeles Dodgers lefthander Clayton Kershaw, a Triple Crown of pitching winner with league-best totals of victories (21), earned-run average (2.28) and strikeouts (248), won the National League Cy Young Award in balloting by the BBWAA.
Kershaw, at 23 the youngest Cy Young Award winner since 20-year-old Dwight Gooden of the New York Mets in 1985, was named first on 27 of the 32 ballots, cast by two writers in each NL city. Kershaw was second on three ballots and third on two, to score 207 points, based on a tabulation system that rewards seven points for first place, four for second, three for third, two for fourth and one for fifth. Kershaw, who ended the season with an eight-game winning streak, had five complete games and limited opponents to a league-low .207 batting average.
Philadelphia Phillies righthander Roy Halladay (19-6, 2.35 ERA, 8 CG, 220 K), the 2010 winner, was the runner-up with four first-place votes and 133 points. The other first-place vote went to Arizona Diamondbacks righthander Ian Kennedy (21-4, 2.88 ERA), who tied Kershaw for the NL lead in victories and finished fourth behind Phillies lefthander Cliff Lee (17-8, 2.40 ERA, 6 CG, 238 K). Another Phillies pitcher, righthander Cole Hamels (14-9, 2.79 ERA) rounded out the top five. Kershaw, Halladay and Lee were named on every ballot. In all, 12 pitchers gained mention.
Kershaw’s election marked the 10th time a Dodgers pitcher won the award. He joins three-time winner Sandy Koufax, Don Newcombe, Don Drysdale, Mike Marshall, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser and Eric Gagne.
Halladay is the sixth Cy Young Award winner and fourth in the NL to finish second the year after he won the award. The others were Warren Spahn in 1958, Tom Glavine in 1992 and Brandon Webb in 2007 in the NL and Jim “Catfish” Hunter in 1975 and Jim Palmer in 1977 in the American League.
Posts: 38576
11/21/2011 3:10 PM
NEW YORK -- Detroit's Justin Verlander has become the first starting pitcher in a quarter-century to win a Most Valuable Player award, adding it to his Cy Young Award last week.
Verlander earned the American League MVP honor Monday, receiving 13 of 28 first-place votes and 280 points in voting announced by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Boston center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury was second with 242 points, followed by Toronto right fielder Jose Bautista with 231 points.
Verlander went 24-5 with a 2.40 ERA and 250 strikeouts to take the AL pitching triple crown. He is the first pitcher to win MVP since Oakland's Dennis Eckerlsley in 1992 and the first starter since Boston's Roger Clemens in 1986.
Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press
11/21/2011 3:16 PM
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11/21/2011 3:55 PM
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11/21/2011 4:30 PM
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11/21/2011 4:45 PM
11/21/2011 5:24 PM
BiancaUL wrote:He deserved the Cy Young, had a great year, etc., but Verlander winning MVP is probably right down there with Morneau and Rollins for worst MVP picks of the last decade.
11/21/2011 6:37 PM
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11/21/2011 7:40 PM
11/21/2011 7:46 PM
11/21/2011 8:34 PM
• He has stopped 16 losing streaks. Yeah, 16. He's 16-3 after a Tigers loss, and that's just about unheard of on a team this good. Who is the last pitcher to stop 16 losing streaks on a first-place team? The Elias Sports Bureau reports that it's Sandy Koufax, who went 16-4 after a loss for the 1966 Dodgers. • Since the end of April, Justin Verlander has gone 22-2. Yeah, 22-2 (with a 2.00 ERA). And one of the losses came in a 1-0 game. He's 13-1 against the rest of his division in that span (14-1 overall). And, in his past 26 starts, since May 2, his team has gone 23-3 when he started. The Tigers were five games under .500 when that stretch began. They're 24 over now. So it has been those 4½ months that essentially have been their season. And when you're running a pitcher this unbeatable out there, it's like starting that season 20 games over .500. Think it's some fluky coincidence that their longest losing streak since Memorial Day is two games? We could quit right there and rest our case that this man has had a massive ripple effect on everyone around him. But consider everything he has done to take the heat off his bullpen: • Verlander has thrown more pitches (3,821) than any other pitcher in the major leagues. And only Jered Weaver (3,629) is even within 250 of him. • This guy has made 19 starts in which he got at least one out in the eighth inning (or beyond). No one in either league has made more -- and only James Shields has matched him. • And despite that marathon-man workload, Verlander has held opposing hitters to a ridiculous .190/.240/.308 stat line -- while facing 938 hitters. Know how many pitchers in the division-play era have beaten that stat line in a season when they had to deal with that many hitters? Exactly one -- Don Sutton in 1972. We could keep going here, but you get the picture. Then again, so do we. We understand that to make the argument that this man is qualified to win the MVP award, we don't just have to prove he's been a dominator. Heck, that's the easy part.
Posts: 18655
11/21/2011 8:48 PM
11/21/2011 8:51 PM
BiancaUL wrote:Clemens shouldn't have won that year either. Boggs probably should have, looking at the numbers. Once Pedro Martinez had the historically awesome season he had in 1999 -- a season that utterly destroys Verlander's 2011 in every single meaningful way -- and didn't win, the BBWA established that no pitcher is worthy by their modern-day standards (not that their standards have much merit, anyway, in terms of actual baseball analysis of value).Ellsbury, Bautista, Granderson, and Cabrera should have been the top four this year, with Ellsbury (gag) probably most deserving of that bunch.
11/21/2011 8:52 PM
Manda2119 wrote:I can only speak on how valuable Verlander is to the Tigers. No Justin Verlander and the Tigers aren't making the playoffs, no way, no how.
11/21/2011 9:22 PM
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