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To: Charles Henrickson
Did Eckersley win both the same year for the A's?

Yep, and no way did he deserve it.

11 posted on 09/25/2005 8:43:25 PM PDT by SpringheelJack
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To: SpringheelJack
Yep, and no way did he deserve it.

I could not agree more. I don't care if a relief pitcher wins the MVP award, but I do have issues when it comes to a relief pitcher winning the Cy Young award. Relief pitchers are just that; pitchers who relieve the regular pitching staff because they are inferior to the starters and consequently be used for only 1-2 innings at a time.

The stat "save" was invented in order to make relievers feel more important, yet unlike, say, wins and losses, a save is based on arbitrary numbers; pitch one inning without giving up the lead when leading by three or less, get a save. Pitch three innings, regardless of the score, without giving up the lead, get a save.

Plus, the other major stat used to judge relief pitchers, ERA, cannot be compared to the ERA of a starter. Sure, a reliever may have an ERA of 1.50, or something like that, but does that necessarily make him more valuable than a starter who pitched more than twice as many innings and ended up with, say, an ERA of 3.00? Not only does the starter have to pitch many more innings, but he has to pitch a number of the in a row, while a reliever gets to pitch them one at a time usually, with at least 24 hours rest in between.

Starters and relievers cannot be compared as easily as some would like. Dennis Eckersley, Eric Gagne, and other relievers who have won the Cy Young award hardly deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as Cy Young, never mind receive an award named after him.

16 posted on 09/25/2005 9:10:17 PM PDT by Enterprise1788 ("We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord" - Theodore Roosevelt)
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