Well, I was looking for places where us SBNation bloggers made our award selections more astutely than the newspaper dudes, and--Jeter second in our AL MVP race standing aside--I may have found it.
Nothing against Trevor Hoffman, but please tell me how the hell you gonna give any pitcher's award to a guy who doesn't even qualify for the ERA title?
The Baseball Writers of America didn't give the Cy Young to Trevor Hoffman, but they did vote him second, which is just as bad.
Let me see if I can figure this out. Hoffman throws 63 innings and picks up 77 Cy Young points. That's ridiculous; that's like, .82 Cy Young points per inning.
Which, I dunno, seems like way too much.
I was about as OK with it as I was gonna get the year they gave the Cy to Gagne just in recognition of how freaky it was for a dude--in funny looking glasses no less--to go a whole season without blowing a save.
But Hoffman was quite normal in that respect for 2006, thank you. He blew five saves, which is what? One less than Brad Lidge.
Think about that for a second. It should be a rule: if you're gonna vote anybody for Cy Young, you have to make sure that Brad Lidge v. 2006 is in no respect similar. Otherwise, your case is blown.
Like the case for Hoffman is.
Again, nothing against the guy; he probably was the best reliever in the NL and I actually think our man Trevor should eventually get elected to the Hall of Fame for doing all that reliever stuff that he does. But let's keep things straight: the things that he does are not Cy Young things.
If it is difficult to make the case that any starting pitcher who starts 35 times can affect the outcome of a season enough to be voted MVP, it is doubly so to present any reliever such that his 60 or 70 innings are more influential than some stud who threw 3 or 3-1/2 times as much.
If I sound biased, I am. I'll readily admit it.
I blame it on the 1989 Cy Young voting, handily presented for your consideration here.
Hope you checked that out, 'cause what the fuck is up with that? Mike Scott carries a 1.06 WHIP over 229 innings, leads the league in winning 20 games, finishes second with nine complete games, finishes third in the league in WHIP and strikeout to walk ratio, and then gets jobbed by the writers glorifying a one-year wonder whose biggest contribution is basically presaging the coming Era of the Reliever.
Mike Scott got freaking *robbed* in 1989, and maybe you can make a case that, like, Willie Hernandez deserved it in 1984, but I will NEVER be comfortable with giving a reliever the Cy Young, ever ever again.
Or even voting him second, no offense intended, of course.