Josh Beckett, Cy Young Winner
I remember when the Red Sox traded for Josh Beckett. On another blog, I wrote that he had the chance to be one of the “top three pitchers of the next five years.” After a disastrous first season, a commenter on that blog asked me whether I meant Justin Verlander or Francisco Liriano. Since that year, however, Beckett has been mostly lights out, and almost entirely better than those two. Verlander’s had something of a comeback year this year and is in the running for a Cy Young award. But he won’t win it. Beckett will.
It’s a bold statement that relies somewhat heavily on Roy Halladay getting traded out of the American League, which I still think is going to happen. But it could happen either way. He’s arguably been the third best-pitcher in the AL this year behind Halladay and Zack Greinke (in either order), and Greinke is going to be handicapped for his lack of wins, which is not his fault. After a rough start to the season, Beckett improved to 12-4 yesterday and now has the most wins in the AL to complement his 3.44 ERA — which, translated into “Non-AL East,” is even lower. He’s also on a roll at the right time.
That’s why I expect him to be holding the Cy Young Award in November. There’s also this: he’s accomplished literally everything else he could accomplish. He’s a World Series champion twice over and a World Series MVP. If he has that kind of cache when the voting happens, he might get the award based on reputation. Let’s be clear that I’m not making a value judgment on Greinke here — Greinke is incredible. But just as I wrote that the Royals had done everything right with Greinke and had nothing to show for it, the Red Sox have done everything right with Josh Beckett and should have a trophy at the end of the year. The rich get richer, I guess.
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Omar Minaya embarrassed himself and the Mets yesterday, something which isn’t hard to do. He called out Daily News writer Adam Rubin for asking around about a job in baseball, and connected that to Rubin’s stories that ultimately “forced” Minaya to can Rubin. First of all, Minaya would have had a better platform from which to criticize Rubin if he didn’t fire Tony Bernazard for alleged bizarre conduct; he could then say Rubin had basically made it all up. By firing Bernazard, he basically admitted Rubin’s stories were right. So what was the problem?
Well, Minaya hinted that Rubin had been angling for a job with the Mets. Now let’s follow his logic: Rubin writes stories sure to piss off the Mets so that a very senior guy will get fired, and then believes the Mets will be so indebted to him that they’ll hire him for a scouting position, which he’s casually asked about. Sounds right on the money! It doesn’t sound odd to me that a baseball writer would be curious about possibly working for a baseball team — actually, it seems quite natural — but it has nothing to do with his ability to do his job. If anything, Rubin sacrificed his chance to work for the Mets here, and he knew it. Again, had Minaya kept Bernazard on staff, he’d have a leg to stand on. But he didn’t. So he should apologize.
Beyond that, caught some highlights from last night but nothing too interesting. Josh Willingham hit two grand slams and SportsCenter tried to play it up, but I wasn’t buying it. Ho hum. Give me Fernando Tatis any day. (He hit one last night too).
Yawn.
