All of the kind of arguments used to justify Felix Hernandez' award certainly weren't present when they were handing out the Gold Gloves, and from what I can tell from the commentariat, will be dismissed when voting for the AL MVP. Josh Hamilton is supposedly going to get the MVP because of BA (analogous to W), Texas went to the playoffs, and an inspiring story of recovery from drug addiction. Miguel Cabrera won't get MVP because 'peripherial' stats (like OPS, games started, intentional walks, etc.) don't matter as much, Tigers didn't go to the playoffs, and recovery from alcohol abuse isn't (as) inspiring. (Maybe Cabrera needed to become a born-again Christian in order for the story to become 'inspiring').
So the logic for Hamilton being MVP, if applied to pitchers, would have meant that Sabathia should've gotten the Cy Young. The logic applied to Cy Young, if it should be applied to MVP, will mean that Cabrera is the AL MVP.
Consistency is a foundation for both rationality and sanity.

Progress will be complete when the Cy Young Award becomes the Walter Johnson Reward.

Make that W. J. AWARD...typo. By the way, Josh Hamilton was pretty much out/hobbled the last month, by which time he had been the major reason why Texas had the division wrapped up. Texas would not have won (certainly wouldn't have run away with it) without Hamilton. Detroit could have been mediocre without Cabrera. The name of the award is Most Valuable Player. If it were for best player it could be called the Babe Ruth Award or something. The Cy Young Award is for pitching excellence; it doesn't mention how valuable he was to his team. They are two different awards, and have inherently different standards. If you want Cabrera to win it, then change the name of the award. It's ridiculous to give the MVP to a player on a non-contending team, with all due respect to Ernie Banks, Andre Dawson, et al.

What's in a name? Just about everything. If a person has something that's valuable, then without it he has less of a net value. When Ralph Kiner led the league in homers and asked for a raise, Branch Rickey told him that they could have finished last without him. A player is not valuable to his team in a given year if they are totally out of contention. Yes he might have potential future value for the team (or another team)....but in that given year he is NOT a candidate for most valuable player. This is especially true in the wild card era, where there are usually at least seven teams in contention in a league going into September. This is an instance where there SHOULD be a double standard, with numbers bein more important in the Cy Young race than in the MVP balloting.

With gold glove defense and probably the most impact on is team Robinson Cano should get the MVP. Cabrera's was out of it and the Rangers could still have won that division with an average outfielder instead of Hamilton. The Yankees would not have been in the division race and may have been passed by the Red Sox had Cano not been so good.

Up until the mid-80s, the Cy Young plaque read "Awarded to the Most Valuable Pitcher", it was then changed to "Most Outstanding" which may well have helped Felix.
Beyond that, Felix was helped by an oddity in that it was hard to tell who his real competition was. When I thought about it, as important as David Price was to the TB pitching staff, he had fewer wins and IP than Sabathia, who provided the same glue to the Yankees staff. So in the end, Hernandez was the default choice, based on all sorts of metrics, as well as IP and K. This might have been different had Sabathia won 18 instead of 21 -- there is a difference in the pressure of pitching in a pennant race (no matter how irrelevant the ultimate outcome has been made by the playoff system). And Christina, it's interesting that you mentioned Jon Lester instead of Clay Buchholz, whose numbers certainly had an impact on Lester's support -- and vice versa.

Sabathia 6th? Nay, at worse 4th after Felix, Price, and Weaver. I would have Sabathia unhesitantly above Buchholz and Lestor on my ballot - with absolutely no animosity towards the Red Sox nation on that - an organization I highly admire.

Sabathia's high inning total is, indeed, very significant. That is a lot more batters he was able to get out. Most pitchers would have far worse rate stats if they were left in the game as long as Sabathia was - and Sabathia's rate stats might have been much better if the Yankees had better options getting to Mariano. Sabathia's lower LOB% is evidence of this. The inning total is why Sabathia's VORP is rightly much greater than Lester's.

It is even with Buchholz, but let's look closer: Sabathia had a better strikeout rate and a better walk rate. Buchholz had a better hit rate which can be easily attributable to his luckier BABiP rate. Buchholz gave up far fewer home runs, but, again, I think there was probably some luck in that. Home runs are a small sample item and Sabathia's GB/FB was almost as good as Buchholz's. So, the more reliable skill related stats point strongly to Sabathia. Finally, there is the reliability factor. This was Buchholz's breakthrough year. Which pitcher would you bet on repeating their performance next year? Sabathia is the better pitcher.

P.S. Same goes for Cahill and Lee as Lestor - I think surely VORP is the primary pertinent BP stat here, not a rate stat like SNLVAR.

I think the pendulum has swung a little to far with regard to wins. It used to be that they were overvalued, I think now they are under valued.

The goal of the team is to win games. Players know this. I am sure Sabathia or Price, etc, had a few games where they had a big lead... say 5,6-0 and the team allowed a runner on 3rd to score in order to get an out, and that the pitchers probably were pitching to the score, not trying to be perfect with every pitch, etc.

I don't know how much of a difference it would've made, but I bet if Sabathia was constantly in games where he had 0,1,2 runs of support, he probably would've given up less runs. And the opposite with Felix.

Overall, all these skill based stats like SIERA which are derived from things like K/9 bb/9, etc, are better at telling you who's skills are more sustainable going forward, then they are at judging how good a player actually was. E.G. I fully expect Buchholz, Price, and Cahill to have era's closer to 4 next year then to 3 based on their skills, but that shouldn't take away from what they actually did during the 2010 season.

Anyway, Felix deserved the Cy Young, but wins shouldn't be as devalued as they seem to be these days, nor should they have the value they had even 5-10 years ago. We need to slide to a happy medium.

not that this is a bad thing at all, but voters tend to be more accepting of new ideas when it's done for an underdog kind of guy like felix. traditional narratives about winning suddenly don't look so hot when they are in support of a yankees pitcher.

This argument was made on the MLB Network, wherein Sabbathia and Price were pitching to the score and therefore didn't have to make "perfect" pitches and so willingly gave up runs. How come when Pedro Martinez and Greg Maddux had phenomenal ERAs that they were not pitching to the score? Certainly the Bosox must have given Pedro some big leads. Furthermore, in their no-decisions, which were more than five games for each, Hernandez has an ERA under 2 and Sabbathia was over 4. Surely in these games runs were important.
This concept of "pitching to the score" is about as mythical as saying that a pitcher with a good won-loss record just "knows how to win."

There seems a rather large consensus that Hernandez was a clear winner. While I think he was deserving, I am not (despite not having thoroughly studied the issue) sure it wasn't a lot closer than people think. Two separate issues: (1) Many of the stats that people relied upon to anoint Hernandez are not adjusted for park effect or defense. Hernandez pitched in the best pitchers park in the league, in front of the best outfield defense and a good infield defense. His home performance was significantly better than his road performance. Relatively speaking, Price and Sabathis pitched in far worse parks, and while they both had good defense (do you think Felix's numbers might have been different had Posada caught every one of his games?), my sense is that it was not quite as good as Seattle's. If you adjust for those factors, I think Hernandez' 22 SNW gets closer to Sabathia's 19.6 or Weaver's 19.9. (2) Roy Halladay weighed in on the "wins matter" question, and I think there is a sabermetric point here, too. I am not saying King Felix is not a winner, he consistently keeps his team in the game. But because you pitch to win the game, if your team does give you some runs, you pitch differently. With a team that scores runs, you can ignore the leadoff double (unless you are behind in the late innings) and just go after the next batters. If your team doesn't score a lot, you're going to try cut off that run. The quality pitcher on the quality team is going to give up more runs and hits, and have fewer strikeouts, than a comparable pitcher on a weaker team. The context of King Felix's games this year was always the same; one run could decide it. I'm not saying it was fun, or that Price, Sabathia or any pitcher in the league could have matched the performance under the same trying circumstances. But it does have some impact on the metrics that have been pointed to as justifying awarding the Cy Young to Hernandez.

The combination of park factor, defense, and consistently pitching to maximize zero run results is probably not a difference that would completely close the gap between Hernandez and the rest in stats like VORP and SNW. But if one is going to argue the merits of newer stats, one must understand their limitations, too. I think this was a closer contest than most people are saying, close enough that I wouldn't have been particularly disappointed if Price or Sabathia had won.

With a big lead, guy on third and one out, infield plays back..which helps the pitcher. In a one-run game, same situation, infield plays in...which helps the hitter signicantly. I would guess Felix had a lot more of those situations than Sabbathia.

I do agree that pitchers are taught to pitch differently with a large lead. As dodgerken222 pointed out, the infield plays back with a man on third and less than two outs. Also, pitchers are more likely to throw a fastball down the middle to get a strike when they are behind in the count if a home run won't have a major effect on the score.

But that being said, its not enough to just say that this is the case. I have no idea how often these situations come up, and before we assume that a pitcher on a high-scoring team allowed more runs because they were "pitching to the score," I'd have to see some evidence that these situations came up enough to have a real effect. I seriously doubt that it makes a large difference over the course of a season, certainly not enough to explain the difference between CC Sabathia's numbers and Felix Hernandez's.

The big four should be Halladay, Felix, Pujols, and Hamilton. The big four will be Halladay, Felix, Votto, and Hamilton.

Pujols was an entire win over replacement better than Votto, but Votto was close enough that his being on a winning team will convince the voters to vote for him.