Why C.C. Sabathia Deserves the AL Cy Young

C.C. Sabathia recently won the American League Cy Young award. He played for the Cleveland Indians and is a left handed pitcher. He held a record this year of 19-7 with a 3.21 ERA in only 34 starts. These were all career records for the pitcher. As did his strike out total of 209 while playing 214 innings in all this season.

All though the team did not win the American League Championship Series, which Sabathia took full blame for. He did win this award. He was an early choice also to win the award. He just shrugged this off he was concerned more about the teams glory instead of his own. He is only the second Indians pitcher in the leagues history to win the award. The first being Gaylord Perry in 1972. He is also the first black pitcher to win the award since Dwight Gooden in 1985.

I believe that this pitcher is very deserving of this award. He not only played well through out the whole season but did so as well in the Championship Series. He beat out Boston's, Josh Beckett for this award. He had faced this player in the the Championship Series and lost both times. Sabbathia, however had 40 1/3 more innings on him. He won 19 out of the 28 ballots cast for the Cy Young Award. The score was C.C. Sabathia 119, Josh Beckett 86, John Lackey 36, Fausto Carmona 7, Eric Bedard 1, Roy Halladay 1, Johan Santana 1, and Justin Verlander 1. So, this shows that he beat out the competition by 33 total votes.

This player definitely deserved this award in my opinion. He out did the opponents throughout the season. With his pitching skills and his strikeouts. He never thought about himself while interviewed and was always talking about the teams glory instead of his own. Not saying that the other players were only worried about themselves just that throughout the season reporters saw over and over how he worried about the team.

Some may say that it may be because the voting was done before the post season. I think that it is just because the pitcher had such an awesome season. No matter what the post season held for him and his team. He had also just come back from a past season of injuries and started 34 games. This is also a fact that probably set him apart from the competition. This just goes to show that you don't need steroids or anything else to win games. Hard work, practice, and team work will help most players to succeed.

SOURCE:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jspymd=20071113&content_id=2299400&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/13/AR2007111301086.html?nav=rss_sports