Cleveland Indians starting pitcher C.C. Sabathia has been awarded the AL Cy Young award by the BBWAA with 119 points. Josh Beckett from the Boston Red Sox was second in the voting with 86 points. Sabathia is the first Indian to win the award since Gaylord Perry back in 1972.
Sabathia received 19 of the 28 first place votes while Beckett picked up 8 first place votes. John Lackey from the Angels picked up the other first place vote.
| Player | Club | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Points |
| C.C. Sabathia | Indians | 19 | 8 | — | 119 |
| Josh Beckett | Red Sox | 8 | 14 | 4 | 86 |
| John Lackey | Angels | 1 | 5 | 16 | 36 |
| Fausto Carmona | Indians | — | 1 | 4 | 7 |
| Eric Bedard | Orioles | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Roy Halladay | Blue Jays | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Johan Santana | Twins | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Justin Verlander | Tigers | — | — | 1 | 1 |
| Based on a 5-3-1 points system. | |||||
| 5 for a 1st place vote, 3 for a 2nd place vote and 1 for a 3rd place vote | |||||
Sabathia was 19-7 with a 3.21 ERA and 209 strikeouts. He threw a major league leading 241 innings. Beckett was the first twenty-game winner since the 2005 season. He had a 3.27 ERA in 200 2-3 innings while Lackey led the AL in ERA at 3.01, with a 19-9 and throwing 224 innings.
i see josh beckett out on his ranch holding up his ring finger … saying i’d rather have this c.c. than the cy young any day….lol insert f-bomb where aplicable
I was thinking the same thing like if he was contacted to ask his thoughts, well i won the F-ing world series and that’s what matters. Of course there would be the normal Josh-ism’s of executing pitches in there as well.
applicable…can’t spell those big words today…lol lets hope we hear some good news on lowell..maybe beckett should call theo and say like dougie is for wake, lowell is my goodluck charm…
Look, CC said that he would rather win the World Series than the Cy Young award anyway. You dumb Boston fans just dont get it, it isnt your birthright to win DEAL WITH IT
Hey, besides being the most dominant pitcher in the league, not taking a loss in a playoff game, what more does Beckett need to do? The voters just did not want to give all the awards to the Sox.
We only want what we have earned and to me, Beckett earned it!
The one thing we all have to remember is that these awards are voted on before the postseason starts. Had they been voted after the playoffs, Beckett would have surely won.
The only thing that was surprising to me was the margin in the final tally. I thought it would have been a lot closer.
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Maybe if CC hadn’t of choked on the donut he would have won the World Series.
I am not taking away from Sabathia’s regular season at all. He had a great regular season and that’s why he won the Cy Young. It is based on the regular season and not the postseason.
When you look at all the numbers, they are all pretty close until you get to the innings pitched and strikeouts. Beckett missed two starts but those two starts wouldn’t have gotten him close to the innings that Sabathia pitched. So when you look at the ERA, Sabathia’s was lower with more innings pitched. That’s what won him the award.
It should really help him out in his contract extension talks with the Tribe as well.
C.C. isn’t even the best pitcher on the Indians staff. I thought there was a chance that Carmona would take votes away from C.C. and that’s why Beckett would win. The fact that Carmona didn’t get a single first place vote is probably a bigger slight than Beckett coming in second.
I am not bitter about this at all. I didn’t think Beckett would win because it is based on regular season. As far as Carmona goes, I would think that’s because Sabathia is more established than Carmona. Sabathia’s been doing this while this was Carmona’s first year as a starter with the Indians. I think we all remember his closing experiment last year.
Hey, besides being the most dominant pitcher in the league, not taking a loss in a playoff game, what more does Beckett need to do?
Playoffs do not count in the post season award voting all votes have to be in the MLB offices by midnight on te last Sunday of the regular season.
I think in the regular season that Beckett and Sabathia were pretty even. I hae no qualms with CC winning. I think where it may hurt Josh if he has Hall worthy numbers. A lot of these voters want to know how many Cy Youngs you have.
I’m also pretty sure Sabathia would sell that award and his soul for what Beckett has. maybe Chocolate Cake should work out this off season with Schilling.
If you didnt see the official press release from BBWAA they listed Beckett as “Jose Beckett”. I guess writers dont need to know the players names.
And to quote Jim Schoenfeld and his canadian accent “Go have another donut! Go have another donut you fat pig!”
20 years later and I dont care who you are that’s still funny.
alright well basically i think that although cc did have a great year he didn’t really do anything with it..i mean that he only ALCS and i don’t think that he deserved. He didn’t even make it to the world seiries.
Sabathia is a great pitcher, no doubt about it. But when it came down to it, Beckett is definetely better. Sabathia may have played more games but when it came down to crunch time, Sabathia cracked and couldn’t come up for the Indians. His ERA was 8.80 in the postseason while Beckett’s was 1.20 with a record of 4-0. No comparison, Beckett should’ve been the Cy Young winner.
Andrew and Dewey:
Had the award voting been done after the POSTSEASON, then hands down Beckett would have won. With the voting taking place after the regular season and before the start of the playoffs, the voters thought Sabathia was more deserving.
We all might not agree with it but if you look at the numbers they are even but I think it came down to innings pitched with the lower ERA.
And in the end as I have said, what matters is that the Red Sox won the World Series.
Andrew and dewey you guys need to read Jackie MacMullan’s article . It explains why he didn’t win.
Ian, i agree with that all that matters is the sox won the series, i just disagree that the award comes out after the playoffs when we see what a good pitcher can do. I think the award should come out after the regular season.
the article does make sense, i just disagree that the award comes out after the postseason when the performances of the pitchers during the postseason is still on everyone’s mind
Dewey i am with you on that as well. This was something we talked about on our radio show last night and the consensus was to leave it as is. What should be done is to really make people understand that it’s based on regular season performance. It didn’t seem like that was done this year. MLB can’t just assume that everyone knows that. It’s a long season.
You don’t want to take away from the playoffs with the announcements of all the awards.
I think they could do it and not take away from the playoffs. Hell they werent all that concerned over ARod opting out when the Sox were 9 outs away from winning the World Series so what harm would it do.
With computers you could have all the ballots submitted via electronically by end of the last weekend. The computer counts and tallies the votes and they get announced on the last off day before the LDS starts.