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Based solely on October, you might be shaking your head and rubbing your eyes in disbelief right about now as you're reading how Cleveland's C.C. Sabathia topped Boston's Josh Beckett for the AL Cy Young Award on Tuesday.
But based on the regular season ... and armed with the knowledge that ballots do not take into account the postseason ... the voting came out exactly as it should have.
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| Teammates credit C.C. Sabathia with putting the Indians on his back and carrying them to October. (Getty Images) |
Whether this cinches a contract extension for the Indians' ace lefty is the next step, whether this leads the Indians toward deeming him essential or whether it leads Sabathia's reps to price him even higher. Heading into the final year of his deal before he becomes eligible for free agency following the 2008 season, Sabathia and the club have discussed a deal that will keep him in place beyond '08, but you know how out of whack the money tends to get in this game once the winter winds blow in.
Does Sabathia see this affecting negotiations one way or the other, for the positive or for the negative?
"I don't think so," Sabathia, entering the final season of a two-year, $17.75 million deal, said on Tuesday's conference call. "Mark (Shapiro, Indians general manager) and the Dolans (Cleveland owners) are supposed to be getting together and sending something to my agent. I don't think it really will have any effect either way."
At a glance, some of the numbers between Sabathia and Beckett were a coin flip -- such as Sabathia's 3.21 ERA (fifth in the AL) and Beckett's 3.27 (sixth) -- but what rightly shifted this election toward the banks of Lake Erie were Sabathia's old-school, MLB-leading 241 innings pitched and his grittiness in the face of a sometimes colossal lack of run support.
Had the Indians' bats not often been in hibernation when Sabathia was on the mound, he could have easily finished with 24 or 25 victories instead of his career-high 19 (Beckett collected 20).
While Sabathia was going 19-7, the Indians scored two or fewer runs in each of his losses. Twice he lost 1-0 decisions.
Yet he never complained, and he resisted the urge to do any kind of public exorcism on his teammates' bats. He simply took the ball the next time out and turned in another seven or eight innings of high-quality work.
Which is another reason Sabathia is deserving of this award: Without verbalizing it, he essentially produced a classic "Climb on my back and I'll carry us to the finish line" type of season. The Indians won the AL Central title thanks in large part to Sabathia and co-ace Fausto Carmona, but talk to those inside the Cleveland clubhouse and they'll tell you it was Sabathia's leadership and steady presence that might have been the most important ingredient in the championship mix.
"I've definitely matured as a person this year, and I've matured more as a player," Sabathia told me in September. "I'm keeping my emotions under control, trying to separate each game, trying to control what I can control."
Across the board, his control was excellent in all departments. The thing that didn't get nearly enough play all summer long was this: While Sabathia was fanning 209 hitters, he walked a mere 37.
That 5.65-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio is stunning, historically so. It ranks as the second-best by a left-hander in baseball history.
There are many pitchers throughout the game who can crank a fastball up to 96, 97 mph, as Sabathia -- and Beckett -- can.
Those who can do it with that type of precision, though, are few and far between.
"The walks are probably the biggest part," Sabathia said when someone asked him on the conference call which of his numbers stands out the most. "I didn't really expect to strike out that many guys, but with my little slider/cutter I've begun to throw over the last year-and-a-half. ...
"Throwing strikes, having people put the ball in play early and being able to stay in games, I think, was the biggest thing in me winning this."
He won it the old-fashioned way, too: By wrestling the trophy away from the titleholder. Sabathia over the summer became the only pitcher to beat Minnesota ace Johan Santana three times. He also defeated Detroit ace Justin Verlander twice.
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"For me, going against Johan, you've got to try to keep it close," Sabathia said. "That's all you can do. Verlander, too. You've got to keep putting up zeroes. I think they feel the same way, too. If you do get in trouble, you've got to keep it to a minimum."
Of course, what Sabathia couldn't do was keep the damage to a minimum once the Indians reached the playoffs. Against Boston in the AL Championship Series, while Beckett's fortunes skyrocketed, Sabathia was 0-2 with a 10.45 ERA.
Because of that contrast, perhaps some folks will look at the Cy Young voting as a hollow victory for Sabathia. To a degree, in the short-term, perhaps maybe it is.
Though he says he has gotten over the worst of the sting of defeat, he did profess a degree of surprise when he learned of his award.
"I was surprised," he said. "Beckett had a great year and an even better postseason. I didn't know what to expect going in. But I was pleased to find out I won."
The question to which there still is no definitive answer is whether the innings pitched and stress of such little margin for error -- particularly when the Indians weren't scoring for him -- doomed him in the postseason. Was he fatigued? Cooked? Bone-weary? There simply is no way to gauge that without leaving lots of room for error.
He says no, and the radar guns of October agreed with him: His velocity did not drop. The only thing that went soft was his command.
"The first two games, I can definitely say I was trying to do too much," Sabathia said, including his first-round victory (albeit with shaky numbers) over the Yankees. "I'd go 0-2, 1-2 and try to make the perfect pitch instead of pitching like I did all year, trusting my stuff and letting the ball go."
But while they'll debate Sabathia's postseason fade for years in Cleveland, what trumps everything is the argument that if not for Sabathia, no way the Indians would have sniffed October. From July 24 through season's end, he went 6-3 with a 2.28 ERA in 13 starts. He was 4-0 with a 2.37 ERA in five September starts.
Meantime, as the Red Sox were lavishing Beckett with an average of 6.42 runs per game during his starts, Cleveland's total for Sabathia was more than one run per game less: 5.10.
Close, but while Beckett blew past Sabathia in October, from April through September, there is little question.
Cy C.C., clearly.