I admit, I am a Toronto Blue Jays fan, that's why you'll notice that the picture of Halladay is in a Blue Jays uniform rather than the Phillies uniform. I grew up watching him play and truly loved watching the best pitcher in baseball completely shut down opposing offenses. As such, my opinion is a bit biased so I tried to stick to the numbers only when deciding that Halladay deserves the NL Cy Young.
First, realize this is July 17, 2010 and this article is not going to take into account any games played on the 17th. Instead I am going to just analyze the numbers up until now and show you why I think Halladay deserves to win.
Clearly the only real competition Halladay has is Ubaldo Jimenez—you know the guy who is 15-1 and the ace of the Colorado Rockies? He has an ERA of 2.20, a WHIP of 1.05, 113 strikeouts and 46 walks, and he's already pitched 127 innings!
He also has three complete games, including two shutouts I also should point out that he plays in Coors Field, as such his numbers would be even lower if he played in a regular park. As such his numbers are definitely screaming CY Young, however the NL has Roy Halladay.
Roy Halladay has a record only of 10-7. That sounds terrible but he has already pitched 148 innings! He leads the league in innings which is all the more impressive because he plays in the NL (no DH). He has an ERA of 2.19, a WHIP of 1.05, 128 strikeouts, and only 19 walks!
To top it all off, he has already gotten seven complete games, including threes shutouts and a perfect game! Absolutely phenomenal stats, and would have definitely won the CY Young if Jimenez did not choose this year to crank it up a notch.
So with all these stats what makes Halladay better? Jimenez has slightly worse ERA, same WHIP, and not too far off on strikeouts, though way off on walks. However, Halladay has pitched a total of 21 more innings. The law in economics is called diminishing marginal performance, in this case.
What that means is as he plays more innings his performance should decline, but look the numbers are about the same—ERA, WHIP, predictably he's better on strikeouts, but the walks are so few. This takes out the Coors Field being a hitters' park variable.
Then we come to the true skill of Roy Halladay, a man who can give your bullpen a day off. He has seven complete games already, and it's just barely passed the halfway mark of the season, at this pace he will get 12 complete games!
Compare that with Jimenez's three and you see why Halladay is so dominant. It gets better though he already has three shutouts and one of them was a perfect game! Just tell me why you would not pick him for CY Young this year.
I can think of only one reason, his 10-7 record. I agree with the saying "you play to win the game" and if you don't win, the stats should not justify anything. However, in the case of Halladay we may have to look a bit beyond considering his stats are so outstanding, right on par with Jimenez.
However, here's another reason: although the Phillies have only scored nine runs less than the Rockies for the entire season, they give Roy Halladay a paltry 3.32 runs of support per game, whereas the Rockies give Jimenez an outstanding 5.33 runs of support per game.
That's quite a differential in run support considering the Phillies have scored only nine runs less the entire year. You have to admit it looks like their offense gets lazy when Halladay gets out there, whereas almost any pitcher can win a lot with that kind of run support. For that reason I say the wins mean almost nothing.
Please note I calculated run support by runs they scored after Halladay or Jimenez may have left the game because that gives them a chance for a no decision. So who is the better pitcher?
A lot of people should run away with it. I am not going to say Halladay should run away with it, but he does deserve more consideration than people give him. I think in the end, he will get the nod simply because as the season wears on the Doc gets better, while other pitchers start tiring out. However, if it were handed out today I would definitely give it to the Doctor.
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