baseball hall of fame inductions

I do need some mental Viagra. You're right.

IATS.

One day closer to football season....

 

Considering the AL Cy Young list that year (http://www.baseball-reference.com/awards/awards_1996.shtml), with Pat Hentgen winning and Rivera the set-up man finishing third, Smoltz and Brown should have walked off with awards and the AL shouldn't have gotten one.

 

Rivera was the best pitcher in baseball that year, bar none. Might have been his most valuable season.

 

Young Ellis Valentine was NOT a nice person to be around, media-wise. He was a surly prick and got even worse after that beaning.

 

Guy Lunatic-o

 

Actually... I don't recall you offering any performance data in backing up Smoltz.

What you posted above may not be true.

All we need is for you to admit that the run support stat was the ONLY stat taken into consideration that year.

 

Well, I did offer plenty of performance data to back up Smoltz, although I'm not going to repeat the whole discussion here. He had an edge in innings -- made three more starts than Brown that year -- and a huge edge in strikeouts (276-159). They were about even in CG (Smoltz) and SHO (Brown).

Suffice to say I don't deny that run support had a huge impact on the voting. Brown, of course, was a full run lower than Smoltz in ERA, and he didn't get enough credit for that. Smoltz surely didn't deserve a 26-2 margin in first-place votes over Brown.

But him winning wasn't the travesty you say it is. He had a strong, strong case for the award.

 

Let's put it this way: A season resembling Smoltz' will almost always be a clear CY winner.

 

Yeah, I tend to agree with Buck here. It's not like Smoltz's 1996 season was a miscarriage of justice along the lines of Bob Welch in 1990. Welch was the third-best pitcher on his own team that year (after Stewart and Eckersley) and was so out-pitched by Roger Clemens that season that it was comical.

 

With the same run support as Brown, he wins 11 games.

End of discussion.