Verlander Sick!!

[RL24]

My comments weren't directed at your eloquence on a message board, but rather the silliness of using that kind of a phrase. Yes anyone with a 23-5 record and in all likelyhood a shoo-in for the Cy Young award is simply a matter of Luck.

I used that phrase waaay back when I was young and didn't really have a legitimate arguement. Today I may use it from time to time just to be, oh I don't know, sarcastic. But being an Indians fan I can see where a bit of frustration has obviously set in.

Luckily, there's always next year.....

I'll have to admit, I read somewhere about how lucky Verlander has been this year. And that really his numbers would be identicle to previous years, if he hadn't been so lucky this year. This guy must have been reading the same articles...

Not sure if people in this thread look at advanced stats but as been mentioned before he has indeed been lucky this year.

BABIP (the average is around .300)

2008 .296
2009 .319
2010 .286
2011 .237

Besides W/L, which most of us understand shouldn't be used to evaluate the quality of a pitcher, his stats are very similar to his last two years. Here's a couple quotes I stole from 2 different fangraph articles regarding Verlander:

"All things considered, he’s having a phenomenal year. But it isn’t totally clear that Verlander is having the best season among all AL pitchers. Yes, he leads his league in pitcher WAR and innings pitched, has the second highest K/BB ratio, the third highest strikeout rate and — at 2.78 — the lowest SIERA. Yet the separation in wins above replacement — between he, CC Sabathia and Jered Weaver — is minute given the error bars surrounding the metric."

"Verlander joins the top tier, though he’s doing it with improved control, which I don’t think is sustainable. Same F-Strike% as last season and just a tick better than 2009. Everything else is nearly identical to last season and no one called him a top five pitcher in baseball back then."

I think he's having a phenomenal season and he deserves to at least be in the MVP discussion, but let's be real: he's not Roy Halladay who remains the best pitcher on the planet.

Every pitcher who becomes a great pitcher has that moment when it clicks, and they understand pitching as more than just throwing.

In all of history if you go back and look very few pitchers do well at first. It takes until around 6-8 years before they get their first CY.

And then the Yankees give them a billion dollars, and go back to just throwing again...

 

[Donutme]

He is sick alright !

Here is another pitcher who also had some lights out seasons ....