The BIG One - WTAM 1100

Sabathia beats out Beckett for Player's Choice award as AL pitcher of the year.

Which is amazing, because Sabathia wasn't even the clear choice as the best pitcher on his own team! Carmona won just as many games with a better ERA!

Peavy was obviously the man in the NL, but if you look closely at the AL candidates, you'll see a bunch of them dead even. Carmona, Beckett, Lackey, Sabathia, Verlander, Wang, and Escobar all have similar records and similar ERAs

For me, the item that tips the scale toward Beckett is his performance on a level playing field - road games. He was 11-2 with a 2.18 ERA, by far the best in the league. (While teammates Dice-K and Wakefield had losing records on the road.) Carmona held the ERA edge over Sabathia, 2.80 to 3.32, in road games, and their W-L records were equivalent (9-4 and 8-3).