EL MAQUINO

> The Cards fired Kyle McClellan and picked up former Mets catcher Rob Johnson to replace him on the 40-man and Bryan Anderson, whose family says he’s now with the White Sox.  (Though the media is yet to report it for some reason.)

> Jaime Garcia is throwing just fine and it appears he’ll be good to go by Spring Training.

> The brilliant Maury Brown ranks the best Major League relocation sites.  The Jersey A’s, anybody?

> This seems pretty appropriate today.

> Today EM continues its series on the chastisement of the awards process with the Cy Youngs, which will be announced tomorrow.  (Davey Johnson and Bob Melvin won the MOTYs.  Buck Schowalter was unbelievably screwed over.)

Justin Verlander should take the AL easily, though David Price leads him in wins and ERA, so you never know.

The part I’m concerned with is on the NL side.  If you haven’t looked at the numbers and have only gone off of media impression, you’d say R.A. Dickey will win in a landslide with no serious competition from anyone else.  And since the media are the ones voting on this, you’d be right.  But they’re wrong.  Dickey wasn’t the best pitcher this year.

R.A. Dickey: 233 IP, 20-6, 2.73 ERA, 230 K, 54 BB, .226 BAA, 4.6 WAR
Clayton Kershaw: 227 IP, 14-9, 2.53 ERA, 229 K, 63 BB, .210 BAA, 5.5 WAR

Forget the media hype, 20 wins, Dickey’s “story” and the bizarre fascination with the knuckleball: Kershaw was the best pitcher in the NL this year and deserves to be recognized, even though he won’t.

This entry was posted on November 13, 2012 at 7:09 PM and is filed under Stack Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.