Roy Halladay continues to make a case for himself with his 21st win tonight.

He's finishing the season strongly, with 4 straight complete games (with only 1 ER in those 4 games). By comparison, Esteban Loaiza has given up 15 ERs in his past 4 games, and is now 3rd in ERA.

Roy Halladay's numbers:

21-6 (1st in wins), 3.18 ERA (6th), 252 IP (1st), 187 K (2nd), 31 BB, 8 CG (T-2nd), 2 SHO (T-1st)

Halladay has legitimized himself in my eyes by his last month of excellent pitching, Canmark ... but as of right now, Loaiza, Hudson and Pedro have all pitched somewhat better over the full season. The media hordes still pay too much attention to those individual win totals. (Pettitte, Moyer etc should not get top-vote Cy consideration.) If Halladay wins up with 2 more victories than Loaiza, or even one, I fear he's a lock, deserving or not.

I think you've got to give credit for the huge number of innings Halladay has pitched...252 IP compared to 207 for Loaiza and 176 for Martinez. Pedro Martinez has been the best pitcher when he's pitched, but that's a difference of more than 8 complete games. Loaiza's ERA is not that much more impressive than Halladay's anymore. Tim Hudson might merit consideration, too, although his ERA is helped by the park.

Got to be Halladay..Loiaza has been subpar the last outings when its counted the most.

Just don't get that ... One part of a season is just as important as another.

I agree Halladay's workload is a plus in his favor. I may wind up supporting him, but not yet.

It's hard to say who's the most deserving of the Cy Young award. But Halladay's last few performances has helped his cause with the voters, so I think he's the frontrunner. But the NL Cy Young was awarded to Rick Sutcliffe with only 150 innings pitched, so I wouldn't rule out Pedro Martinez. But Sutcliffe's 16-1 record probably helped him get the award.

Shocking! Roy Halladay, going for win #22, just got tossed from the game for hitting Rocco Baldelli--without a warning!!! Without any kind of provocation. In a 1-0 game, a beautiful pitchers duel (with Halladay on the losing end of that score) in the top of the 6th. Ridiculous!! :mad:

Umpire Phil Cuzzi. Booooooo!!!! :mad:

--------------

Same inning... Cuzzi has just thrown out the D-Rays' Toby Hall for arguing balls and strikes.

Neither team's manager has been thrown out...yet.

[ September 22, 2003, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: canmark ]

There they go again. Another Blue Jay pitcher (starter Josh Towers) gets tossed for throwing behind--but not hitting--a D-Ray batter (despite the fact that D-Ray pitcher Victor Zambrano hit two Blue Jays batters and was not ejected.)

Boo Larry Poncino! :mad:

I think I'm going to go to tomorrow night's game. I can't tolerate my team being disrespected by the umps like this. Just let them try to toss Kelvim Escobar... they'll have canmark to deal with. :mad: wink

Very weird couple of nights there. Is there bad blood between the teams and the umpires are trying to prevent a brawl?

Go get 'em, canmark!

The umpires created the bad blood... and they've just got what they wanted.

The benches have cleared (as I write this) after Aquilino Lopez threw behind Carl Crawford, but did not hit him (a few weeks ago Crawford dissed the Jays). No real fight, no brawl. The gloves came off... but no punches landed.

I hope they're happy.

Definitely I'm going to the game tomorrow. Let me at 'em! :mad: eek! wink

From Joe in Philly:

I happened to tune in to yesterday's game just before the Halladay incident. I didn't think there was any particular bad blood between the Jays and Rays, and apparently neither did Carlos Tosca. And yet a pre-game warning was issued (as if the umpires expected trouble?) for which Tosca is still seeking an explanation. The TV announcers were just as steamed as 'Doc' and the rest of the Jays, lambasting the umpire for a good ten minutes afterward. Later on the sports highlights, even Rocco Baldelli (the second Tampa player who Halladay hit) said he didn't think the hit-by-pitch was intentional.

[ September 23, 2003, 10:21 PM: Message edited by: Marc ]

Roy Halladay wins the AL Cy Young, the Blue Jays's fourth Cy Young in the past 8 years (Hentgen in '96, Clemens in '97 & '98).

Who cares about the Cy Young or any other individual award? I sure as hell don't. Its all about winning as a TEAM. Individual awards don't matter. Go Yanks 2004.

[ November 11, 2003, 03:40 PM: Message edited by: Mattjock ]

Fully recognizing that a team's only goal ought to be winning a championship, winning an individual award still brings honor to your team and if a player or coach I like wins an award, I'm quite happy.

Roy Halliday was clearly the best choice. The sportswriters were right on target on this one!

Not as big an atrocity as the NL ROY for Willis ... but the dictatorship of the seasonal W-L record lives on. (Hence the two morons who put Andy Pettitte on their ballots.)

Loaiza and Hudson were better.

Bill, I'm a White Sox fan who admits Loaiza blew it. His now-fired manager Manuel aided Loaiza's collapse at the end, I'm sure, but when it came down to it, Halliday just had an overall better season, IMHO. I'm not upset he won. He earned it, even IF the rest of his team stunk.

[ November 12, 2003, 10:18 AM: Message edited by: MIB ]

Toronto stunk? How'd they win 86 games then? (and how many did the Chisox win?)

Look at the numbers -- no W-L records, please -- and TELL me how Roy H was the best. Not an easy argument. "Finishing strong" isn't worth extra, it's for the WHOLE year. As for Halladay's higher innings pitched, it's like he pitched 40 more innings of lousy baseball (ie, his ERA over those "extra" innings sucks).

ie, Pedro was better too.

[ November 12, 2003, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: Bill W ]

OK Bill W. I'm taking you up on your challenge. First, let's assume Halladay pitches the same number of innings with the same number of earned runs as the other contenders, then we compare his ERA in the extra innings beyond that

What we get is:

vs. Martinez 50 ER in 79.33 IP --ERA 5.67
vs. Loaiza 23 ER in 39.67 IP -- ERA 5.22
vs. Hudson 24 ER in 26 IP -- ERA 8.31

Now, what would a replacement pitcher have given Toronto? Well, if we look at the 6 most frequently used starters on each team (Seattle had only 5), the one with the highest ERA averaged 5.97--very close to the 5.94 posted by Tanyon Sturtze, who might very well have picked up some of those extra innings. You can argue that a fair number of those extra innings would be picked up by relievers (though not in Pedro's case, Halladay had 7 more starts). Maybe that would bring it down--or maybe not. Relief ERA's are often misleading because of inherited runners that scored, and I'm guessing most of these innings are going to be picked up by middle inning relievers not the closer. So it's by no means clear to me that Toronto would have replaced the extra 40-80 innings with anything better than a 5.67 ERA. If the ERA of the replacement pitchers is over 5.67, Halladay beats out both Loaiza and Martinez.

Hudson looks much more convincing, thanks to his larger number of innings pitched. But Hudson pitched in what is often the best pitchers park in the AL (2003 park factor 94), whereas Halladay pitches in a good hitters park (2003 park factor 105). If Hudson would have given up 7 more runs in Toronto over his 240 IP (giving him an ERA of 2.96 instead of 2.75), his advantage over Halladay evaporates.

It's not a clear cut decision, but Halladay is a defensible choice.

JC, I'm hugely impressed you went the whole nine yards there (and perhaps some of the anti-sabermetric wrath will be absorbed by you). I don't see how those extra ER could've been exceeded given the smarts of the Blue Jay braintrust, though.

I made it Hudson-Pedro-Loaiza in a tight bunch, Halladay 4th.

I have to disagree. Ten of the 14 teams in the AL had at least one pitcher absorbing significant innings with an ERA over 5.67--I really don't see why you think the Jays are going to find somebody who's much better than that to fill in for 7 starts. The Yanks won more games than any other team in the league, but gave 24 starts to a pitcher with a 5.99 ERA. Minnesota won their division despite 21 starts given to a pitcher with a 6.30 ERA. Do you really think the Jays have a larger pool of pitching talent to draw from than the Yankees?