Felix Hernandez overcomes a 13-12 record to win the Cy Young Award

Felix Hernandez overcomes a 13-12 record to win the Cy Young Award.

I thought that baseball writers were not yet ready to choose a pitcher based on a complex evaluation of his circumstances. I was wrong. Despite his unimpressive won-lost record, King Felix was the best pitcher in the league last year.

And that shows you just how bad the Mariners are. They not only had Hernandez, with a 2.27 ERA, but they also had Cliff Lee at the start of the year, and his ERA for them was almost identical (2.34). And they still couldn't do jack. Cliff had a little better luck than Felix in the W-L department (he was 8-3 for the Mariners), but the team was 34-47 on July 4th, which was Lee's last start before being shipped to the Rangers. At that point the Mariners were 17-12 in games started by Lee and Hernandez, and 17-35 in their other games.

Back to the Cy Young Award:

The first stat I look at is "ERA on the road." You can't base an entire evaluation on that stat, but it's the right place to start. King Felix led the league in that category by a substantial margin over all the other guys with 100 road innings, despite a great year from Boston's Jon Lester, who finished fourth in the Cy Young balloting. Excluding Lester, Felix finished an enormous distance (2.46 to 3.34) ahead of the third place guy in road ERA, Sabathia, who also happened finish third in the Cy Young balloting. David Price, who finished second in the Cy Young balloting, had a less impressive road ERA of 3.64.