Each year, Sean and I make an obscure bet- if one of us can correctly predict the third place finisher in the AL Cy Young race, the other has to write a 200 word post about the awesome-ness of the former. Well, despite the fact that year in and year out I come light years closer than Mr. Morash, this season, Sean was able to correctly state in February that Chris Sale would finish second runner up in the voting.
What made it worse was that, while in previous seasons I had picked guys like David Price who finished fourth, in two thousand and fourteen I selected Tigers right-hander Justin Verlander as my pick. I couldn’t really have been more wrong. (Yes, I’m only 79 words away now.) Verlander was not only not in the top 5 in this years voting, he was an absolute disaster. JV, only three years removed from being both the Cy Young Winner and MVP in the same season, allowed the most earned runs in the entire American League. (182)
Sale, by contrast, was dominant. He gave up around 40% of the runs Verlander did and posted a shockingly good 2.17 ERA. If it wasn’t for some missed time with an injury, he would have been the winner for sure. So at least Sean got lucky there.
Congratulations to Sean, this years vastly superior American League pitching predictor. (227 words, I must get bonus points for that. It was painful.)
(Come to the 2nd Baseball- Sandwich Club Saturday January 10th at the A&D bar in Washington DC. For more info, follow us at @blogoffthebench on twitter)
-Max Frankel
(See, I even signed my name)
