AL Cy Young

Who should win the AL Cy Young award. I know everyone loves Cliff Lee and his 22 wins and ML-leading ERA and it'll probably be unanimous. Halladay looks to be second. Who should win?


Call me insane, but after closer inspection I would give the award to.....Roy Halladay.

Here's why....
While his ERA (2.78) is worse than Lee's (2.54), it's reasonably close. While he has fewer wins (20) than Lee (22) he is still a 20-game winner and that's pretty impressive. Here's what makes Halladay (in my opinion) better....

He has the best WHIP in the AL (Lee is 2nd)
He allows fewer hits/9IP (Lee doesn't make the top-10 in the AL)
He has 36 more K's
His K:BB ratio is better
...and the clinchers for me - he has 22.7 more innings pitched and 5 more complete games.


Lee is still a fine choice and when he wins unanimously I won't really complain, but 22.7 innings more is a ton and even if Halladay doesn't pitch quite as well, those extra 22 innings are equivalent to about 3 games worth of pretty good pitching. The more your ace pitches, the less everyone else who is worse has to.

Lee didn't start today like he was scheduled to. He had some sort of injury/soreness/something. He could have closed the gap a little if he did start.

I give it to Lee because of the greater ERA+. Lee's is 175, Halladay's is only 155.