BBA AL Cy Young Award

Two down, two to go.

After voting for Manager of the Year and Rookie of the Year, here comes the big guns.

In the third award for the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, it is now time to select a AL Cy Young Award winner.

Mike Scioscia won manager of the year and now Andrew Bailey was named Rookie of the Year. Bailey came in third on my ballot.

Andrus was my pick, and the top three was my ballot basically, just in reverse.

Now comes the hard stuff.

Well I guess this isn't hard.

There are three-five people I'm only considering for votes. Which I guess makes it easy.

Here we are though, Indians fans without a Cy Young contender for the first time in a few years. We were kind of spoiled winning the last two and now not even having a horse in the race. We'll we did, but we traded him.

Pitching was horrid this year. Starting pitching especially. Some crazy people, in other words, ME, thought that Fausto Carmona could bounce back and be all crazy and make it three in a row.

Slight chance.. Slight... Like I said, I'm a crazy person.

But of course, that was not the case. In fact, Fausto Carmona is probably the last person who would win the award. If you gave the award to the person who sucked the most, it would probably be Carmona's hands down.

What if Cliff Lee stuck around and put up those fantastic numbers (the NL switch probably helped and the Indians sucked, so I'm guessing he wouldn't have, but hang with me here) for the Indians in the AL?

His record ended up being 14-13, with a 3.22 ERA. The record sucks, but look at one of the main contenders now, he plays for the Royals!

Ahh like I said though, he wouldn't have had the same numbers, probably would have had a record beneath .500 given how much we sucked.

Also wouldn't have pitched all those awesome complete games.

How cool is it to see Cliff Lee studding it up for the Phillies in the postseason though? I know in a way it hurts, but to know that had we made it with him in our rotation, we could count on him to continue to be awesome is good. If only the whole rebirth thing happened before 2008. :sigh:

Enough didly daddle, let's talk AL Cy Young.

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3. Roy Halladay, TOR

It's great to see Roy Halladay healthy and in this battle year after year. He's such a stud. If you put like two runs on the board on any given night, he can go the distance and make sure the Blue Jays win.

Guaranteed, bank on it, chance for a win 33 times out of 162 games a year if he's healthy. Just find four more guys that can give you a combined 60 more and you are golden, things will even itself out.

Oh and despite missing games, Doc still manages to lead the league in innings pitched. How badass is that?

In an era that protects arms and has pitch counts, Halladay is old school. He gets hurt sometimes, but he still goes out and throws till his arm falls off.

Man I'd love to have him on my team.

2. Felix Hernandez, SEA

I thought about it given his 19 wins, but I'll explain why he didn't get my first place vote in a second.

The King has finally grown up though. King Feliz is a monster and every time we face him, I fear for my life and I'm not even playing.

Seattle better just hold on to this dude because he's going to be stud-like for the next eight years or so.

1. Zack Greinke, KC

Even the Royals deserve some love every once and awhile.

And seriously, how does this kid not deserve it?

A 2.16 ERA is just unreal. Cliff Lee's season was insane last year and not even he was in the 2's with his ERA.

As good as Felix and Doc were, and any other year, they'd probably win the damn thing, Greinke was THAT much better.

He gave up 17 and 18 less runs than the other two. His run support sucked or else he'd have won 900 games. He had very few clunkers thrown in this year.

Not only did he place second in the AL in strikeouts, out of all the pitchers that pitched 30 games in the top 30 in ERA, only a few, Scott Baker, Mark Buehrle, Roy Halladay and Carl Pavano had fewer walks.

And those guys are control pitchers (Doc is legendary though), who predicate their game off being in control and not walking hitters.

Greinke is a guy who cans strike you out and not walk a ton of people.

He's a magician with the baseball and when he's focused and puts his mind to it, there are games when he's untouchable.

MAN this kid is good. How could he not be the AL Cy Young? Wins? Come on, forget it, he owned people and it isn't even close. Even though King Felix and Doc Halladay had fantastic years and were kind of close, it still isn't even close. Greinke is the man.

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Man how about that stupid Yankees game... I'm pulling so hard for the Angels because of that Nick Adenhart story. Okay the Yankees also play a role in this.

But that stupid A-Rod. Since when did someone allow him to be clutch like this? It's just not fair to all of us who get enjoyment out of the struggle.

Anyway...

The manager search added a new candidate. Terry Pluto's been confirming people. He's got the list that I've laid out from all the other sources I've read (his being one of them). Fryman, Lovullo, Valentine, Acta have all had phone interviews. It's believed Clint Hurdle had one as well and Dave Clark was at least on their radar. Whether he interview or not is unknown.

A new name appeared though. Don Mattingly. Over at Bleacher Report, someone brought up his name in response to my candidates article and it sort of intrigued me. However I didn't think it was a possibility at this juncture. Well good old Terry Pluto said the Indians have interest, but it would have to wait until the Dodgers are eliminated.

Pluto did confirm the ruling out of Tony Pena, Yankee coach and former Royals manger and Indians hero. Mike Hargrove DID speak with Mark Shapiro, but since nothing came out of that as far as it being an interview, I'm almost positive it was more of an "advice" thing. I don't think the Indians are interested in Grover and Pluto said he is not on their list.

Pluto did say however Grover could be a bench coach if the Indians go the young route. Would he really do that?

I'm warming up to the idea of Manny Acta, but I'm even warmer to the idea of him just being a coach instead. As Terry mentioned, it would be great to have more of the Latin flavor on the staff. One reason I wanted us to keep Luis Rivera.

Tomorrow I post the end of the year feathers, they are just about complete minus one particular fellow. At that point I'll post a link to the offseason board. We'll do the first ever All-Daily team on Tuesday and on Wednesday, start diving into this year's board as the manager search is expected to heat up.