The race for the Cy Young Award in the National League has not been as close as the American League this year, but there is still no decisive winner. The top candidates have continuously changed throughout the season.
At the start of the year, I had no doubt that Ubaldo Jimenez was the sure-shot winner in the N.L. He struggled down the stretch, though, and allowed for other candidates to come about.
Therefore, the top three candidates in the N.L. are Roy Halladay, Adam Wainwright and Jimenez.
As previously mentioned, Jimenez struggled late in the season, and those struggles are the reasons why I would put him third on this list. Through the first two months of the season, he had a 10-1 record with a 0.78 ERA.
If he could have kept his ERA under one, he would have been only the second player ever to do so, and the first since 1880.
I knew that it would be nearly impossible for him to maintain those impressive statistics, and in June and July, he had a 4.41 and 6.04 ERA. respectively.
He still went into August with a 16-2 record, and it looked as if he still had a shot at winning the Cy Young. He then finished out the season going 3-6, and in my eyes, ruined his chances of being named the National League’s best pitcher in 2010.
As with the A.L., I am left with two deserving candidates, Halladay and Wainwright. Both of their numbers are very similar, making it very difficult to choose between the two pitchers.
Both started a total of 33 games this season. Halladay had a record of 21-10 and pitched 20.1 more innings than Wainwright.The difference in innings pitched became a flaw in Wainwright’s chances at winning the Cy Young.
Wainwright had a record of 20-11 and his 2.42 ERA led Halladay’s 2.44. Halladay had six more strikeouts than Wainwright’s 213, and he also threw nine complete games, one of them being a perfect game against the Marlins. Wainwright threw four less complete games.
Wainwright lost a total of 11 games this season, which is respectable considering he played for a sub-par Cardinals team.
Halladay had 10 losses, which seems a high total because of how good the Phillies were this season. Even though Wainwright played on a worse team in 2010, his ball club produced almost one more run per game in his starts than in Halladay’s, who received an average run support of 5.24.
Halladay had a .245 batting average against, which is much higher than Wainwright’s 2.24.
Halladay also gave up 24 homeruns, the second highest amount of in his 13 season career as well as the most he has allowed since 2003. Wainwright only gave up 13 homeruns this season.
Although that hurts Halladay’s stats, I have to pick him as the winner because Wainwright did not perform in the last two months of the season.
He had a combined record of 1-5 in his last three starts of August and the first three of September, with a 5.40 ERA.
This is important because the Cardinals still had a chance of making the playoffs at that time.
In addition, one of the those losses was against the Reds, the team who beat them out for a playoff spot.
Halladay won big games, leading his team to the playoffs, something Wainwright could not do.
He also threw a no hitter in the first playoff start of his career. That is the last deciding factor why I would choose Roy Halladay as the 2010 N.L. Cy Young winner.
For A.L. Cy Young predictions, visit minaretblog.com.
Joe Beaudoin can be reached at jbeaudoin@spartans.ut.edu.