Beckett Fails to Lock Up Cy Young

Coming into Thursday's start, it seemed like Josh Beckett had a pretty easy path to his first Cy Young award. He already had 20 wins, and getting his 21st would have put him two ahead of his next closest AL competitors (Carmona and Wang, neither of whom will be making another regular season start).

His opponent was the Twins, who aren't exactly known for their offensive firepower. They rank 12th of 14 AL teams in R/G, and are without catcher Joe Mauer.

It's not like Beckett had to pitch a shutout or anything- all he really needed to do was get win #21- that two win margin probably would have been enough for the voters.

Well, things didn't quite work out as Beckett and the Red Sox had probably envisioned. Beckett single runs in the first, second, third, fifth, and sixth innings. He was pulled after six innings and 99 pitches, with Boston down 5-3. Their rally in the ninth of closer Joe Nathan fell short, and, rather than adding to his win total, Beckett was tagged with his 7th loss of the year.

So how do things stand now? Here are the up to the minute standings, according to Cy Young Predictor:


Of these three, only Sabathia will be making another regular season start- he goes Friday night against Kyle Davies and the Royals. Now he seems to be in the drivers seat, and the same situation Beckett was in 24 hours ago- he just need to get a W, and keeping that ERA under 3.20 wouldn't hurt. If he does that, one would think that, even the BBWAA would see that Sabathia's extra FORTY innings outweigh Beckett's extra one win.

The wild card here is Carmona. He leads the AL in ERA, and is behind only Beckett with his 19 wins. But he lacks the name recognition of the other two guys- he was 1-10 last year, after all. He's also lagging behind in strikeouts, and trails Sabathia in innings (although that hardly makes him unique). I would imagine that Sabathia will get the nod over Carmona if he manages a win on Friday. If he doesn't? Then it's really up in the air, and could go to any of the three.

Photo: SawxBlog