Despite No Run Support All Season, Roger Clemens Is Still The NL's Best

Who Will Win This Year's NL Cy Young Award?

By: John Fleming

Posted: 9/20/05

There is a lot of anticipation with the end of the baseball season coming up. Not only are both league playoff races coming down to the wire, but also the awards for MVP and the Cy Young. The NL Cy Young award is especially intriguing. Chris Carpenter, Roger Clemens and Dontrelle Willis are the three legitimate contenders, with Carpenter the early favorite. Each of these players has put up numbers that in any other season would almost lock them for the pitcher's top award. Those three pitchers are among the league leaders in most categories. Carpenter and Willis are tied for league lead in wins, Carpenter is leading the NL in strikeouts and Clemens has by far the lowest ERA in all of baseball. There are a lot of categories that go into deciding the award. Wins are the one that jumps out at most fans. With Clemens having only 12 wins, as opposed to Carpenter and Willis' 21, how is the Rocket a contender? Clemens' win-loss record is not going to win him his eighth Cy Young, it is every other statistic that will. For the common fan, it would make sense that the pitcher with the most wins gets the award, but the committee has to look deeper.

What Clemens has done this season is simply remarkable. At 43, Clemens has been the most dominant pitcher in MLB, and that is what the Cy Young is all about. It is not just about wins and strikeouts, its about night in and night out being the best pitcher in your league, which Clemens has been. Not only is he having a great year, it may be one of the best of his Hall of Fame career. Clemens leads the league with a 1.77 ERA. 1.77 - is flat out absurd, it is the lowest of his 21-year career. Carpenter and Willis both have ERAs at least a half a run more - 2.31 and 2.49 respectively. Since Bob Gibson had a 1.12 ERA in 1968, there have only been three pitchers who have had a lower ERA than Clemens has this year - Dwight Gooden's 1.53 in 1985, Greg Maddux's in 1995 and Pedro Martinez's 1.74 in 2000. Oh, and by the way, Clemens has been even better on the road, with a chance to shatter Gibson's road ERA mark - 0.52 to 0.81. A pitcher's ERA is a better gauge of how he is pitching than his win-loss total. One of the reasons why ERA is so important is because the pitcher has no control over how many runs his team will score on a given night. That has held especially true for the Astros this season.

In terms runs scored in the NL, the Astro's rank No. 13, while the Cardinals are No. 2, and the Marlins are No. 5. On top of having on of the weakest offensive teams in the NL on a night-to-night basis, Houston has been worse when Clemens takes the mound. Clemens' win total may be right around the Cardinals' and Marlins' aces had his team not been shutout in eight of his starts this year. Eight times! That is not only a lot for a team to be shutout in a season, but for one starter has not happened in over 30 years. Had the Astros got even two runs in five of his starts they would have won 2-1. As of Sept. 8 he received the fourth lowest run support in the league. Houston is still within reach of the wildcard, imagine if they showed up when Clemens pitched.

Win-loss records may be the most overrated statistic in baseball. Clemens is tied with 20 other pitchers at No. 33 in the league for most wins. Bronson Arroyo is one of those pitchers with 12 wins, but he also has an ERA of 4.42 - almost two and a half times greater than Clemens. If Clemens were pitching with an offense as potent as the Cardinals or even the Marlins, he would have at least eight more wins and win the Cy Young by a landslide.

Beyond Clemens' minuscule ERA and lack of run support, he has been as good or better than the contenders in many categories. Opponents are batting a league low against the Rocket at just .188, .31 less than Carpenter and .53 less than Willis. Clemens has also allowed the least amount of hits, fewest total bases and the lowest OPS (on base percentage and slugging percentage against) of the bunch. Carpenter and Clemens both are ahead of Willis in most categories and in the end, barring terrible breakdowns, they will battle for the award.

History is on Carpenter's side. Clemens would be the first pitcher to win the Cy Young with more than five wins less than the leader Clemens right now is down nine with potentially three or four more starts to go. That means the Cy Young award voters will have to be more than fans and see all the numbers, not just wins. It is not about who is the best pitcher on the best team; it is about who is the best pitcher in that season. Period. That is what Clemens has done seven times before, and he has done it again. History may not be on Clemens' side, but that is because Clemens is about to change it.