I still don't think Greinke would have won if he pitched for the Pirates or Cardinals instead with the same numbers.

I think if the roles were reversed and Greinke pitched for the Cubs and Arietta pitched for the Dodgers, Greinke wins the award. That said, I have a hard time arguing Arietta. I would have had a hard time with Clayton winning it.

When Steve Stone explained why he would probably win a few months ago it made sense. If anyone had any sort of bias towards LA, Greinke and Kershaw would likely split the votes.

He never gets much credit, but Stone knows what he's talking about when it comes to baseball.

 

I'm surprised he never wanted to be a manager/front office guy.

It's hard to argue against Arrieta, he was the middle ground between Kershaw and Greinke.

 

Kershaw had the best peripherals, but his first half "struggles" (for him at least) really skewed his ERA. He was almost just a dominant as Arrieta down the stretch. He had an FIP of 1.47 an ERA of 1.31 in the second half. Even though Arrieta had a 0.75 ERA in the second half, his FIP was a half run higher than Kershaw's. Arrieta's BABIP dropped from .279 in the first half to .205 in the second half. Kershaw had his drop from .305 to .251, but there's still nearly a 50 point BABIP difference between the two.

 

Greinke had the best ERA and was probably the luckiest. IMO, he might have been the least talented pitcher of the 3, but in reality, he was probably more effective than any of them this past year. Pitching's about run prevention and Greinke did that the best between these 3. His incredibly low BABIP might be lucky, but you have to realize he pitched in front of almost the same defense as Kershaw. Of course, different pitchers have different tendencies and may or may not play to the strength of the weaknesses of the defense. It's hard to measure all of these things, but I think I can say that I have no issues with Greinke losing out.

 

I personally think Kershaw was the best pitcher, but I have no issue with Arrieta winning given how dominant he was in the second half. The weird thing is is that Kershaw, in some aspects, was better than Arietta in the same time frame, yet we didn't hear nearly as much about him. If anything, this just means the Cubs will have to pay more for Arrieta during arbitration and when he reaches free agency in 2018.

 

 

http://espn.go.com/blog/chicago/cubs/post/...gue-in-playoffs

 

Arrieta says he had dead arm during the playoffs. Surprised Maddon doesn't take more heat for riding him so hard in August and September, especially since it was clear he was going to blow past his previous career high in IP.

I think the Arrieta/dead arm thing is way overblown. He went 2-1 in the playoffs and in all honestly even if he was lights out vs. the Mets in that series, the Mets pitching was still too good and it wouldn't have made much of a difference.

 

I thought both the Cy Young winners were deserving but I also think that Kershaw, Price and Scherzer are still the top 3 SP's in MLB.