Well, technically the Cy Young award is supposed to go to the best pitcher in the league but since it's named after the one and only (and last) 500-game winner, Cy Young, then perhaps it is about which pitcher emulates the late, great Mr. Young.

So I looked up Young's career stats on B-R and found the ballpark range of what to weight more importantly. For instance, wins really matter and so do innings pitched, but strikeouts are worth about the same--Young struck out 200 only twice, and while he led the league twice he had about 150 each time (he pitched about 50 games, too, so it wasn't lack of oppurtunity). And so comparing everything, I weighted some of the statistics and put in my points system to check if I was wrong about the NL.

The verdict: biggest discrepancy was 11 points between Haren and Wainwright...and I'm not sure why. Wainwright had the innings and the CGs, he had the most wins. But Haren, who won the least games was 11 points higher? He did have an awfully good WHIP, but still...

I still haven't measured the discrepancy between the nominees in each category, because if I went back to 2007 Jake Peavy, who was loads better than everyone in both ERA and K, might not have won. So it isn't perfect. I'd give Wainwright a couple of extra points for getting 2 more wins than Carpenter.

But be that as it may, it would still not make him go into third place.

Carpenter was 3.5 points ahead of Lincecum, possibly because their statistics were similar in most things. Not W or K, but ERA and HBP, for example. THere are only 2 places where one gets 5 points and the other gets 1--and they're reversed and weighted the same.

But in emulation of Cy Young, Haren was 2 points behind Lincecum. Both are strikeout pitchers with similar WHIPs, but that's where it ends--Haren's SO/BB rate (not counted, though SO and BB are categories of their own) was a lot better than Lincecum's.

So, because curiosity killed the cat (or investigative computer nerd, your choice) I had to find out who the true winner of last year's Cy Young was. I couldn't really count Lidge because he was a reliever, and of course one has to take Sabathia's placement in the raw-numbers (ER, BB, etc) with a bit of salt, but I added up the vote-getters last year and it turned into pretty much the same situation: the first three were largely ahead of the other two.

Based on raw score alone, CC Sabathia (Mr. all-or-nothing got 1 or 5 points on everything) won, beating out Johan Santana by 5. Santana placed 3 points ahead of Lincecum, who was 13 points ahead of Brandon Webb. Webb was 6 points ahead of Ryan Dempster, who bottomed out the list. In the emulation-weighted test, Santana had 113 points and was ahead of Sabathia by 5. Sabathia beat out Lincecum by 10.5, and he beat out Webb by 5.5. Dempster fell far behind and only collected 56 points total.

Trying out weighted on the AL, Justin Verlander sweeps away with the victory, 10 points ahead of everyone else. His 108.5 points were hardly the most raw, but he got first or second in key categories such as wins. Greinke places second at 98.5, Halladay is 2 points behind. 4.5 points behind them is Hernadez, and Sabathia is also a bottom feeder, but his 74.0 points are certainly more respectable than Dempster's 56.

The verdict? If you successfully emulate Cy Young better than anyone in your league, your chances of winning don't neccessarily go up.

I decided to make an unbiased point system between the five recievers of votes based on a whole bunch of stats (ERA, IP, WHIP, SO, BB, HR, etc.) all of which weighted equally (though the sportswriters probably put a bit of extra weight on strikeouts and media hype, the latter of which was not included on my system) and ranked the players 1-5. 5 points went to 1st place, 4 to second, etc. After comparing the stats, I wrote a computer program defining each candidate as the sum of his ranks, the values of which were not automatically returned.

I tested who was greater than who, and then I subtracted the successive winners from one another.

The verdict?

By 2 points, Chris Carpenter was the best. Tim Lincecum, the actual winner, was in second place and 9 points ahead of Adam Wainwright. Wainwright was only 1 point ahead of Danny Haren, who was 2 points ahead of Javier Vasquez.

So the verdict? The disparity between the votes should not have been that huge. The difference between Haren and Wainwright was not 89 points, but 1. Switch the first 2 and switch the last 2 and you have the placing right. But the sportswriters got it wrong again. It was easy to decide this year because they were all starters...and surprisingly the disparity in the AL is much bigger.

That out of the way, do you have any rational way (I would have given Vasquez a million points for pitching pretty) of figuring out the Cy Young? Do you agree? Disagree? Should Haren, Vasquez, and Carpenter have gotten more votes? Should it have been more evenly spread? Should I weight one statistic more than another and multiply that by a certain number?

Feel free to comment here or in my Flooble Chatterbox all the way on the bottom of all my link lists!

I knew I should have held my breath and waited for this day. I knew it was staring me in the eyes like giant goldfish, but I thought it wouldn't happen. I hoped it wouldn't happen.

But then it did happen.

I can't believe it. I really can't believe it. It happened last year, too, and last year I had some hope that it would be okay and that he'd be fine and that we'd all be fine and win the wild card or something.

How delusional am I?

But then again, wouldn't you think they'd learn from their mistakes?

But then again...

Aaron Heilman?

Really?

What's this about the twins' "new" logos and uniforms? To me, they look exactly the same. They didn't change the color, nor did they decide to have jerseys with the interlocking TCs on a background print. Which would have looked like pajamas.

Which is very confusing.

I would have made this a longer entry, but I don't feel my thoughts are very relevant. Someone else, doubtless, has said what I think about other things, which makes my thoughts irrelevant. But most people agree on the other side of the coin, which makes my thoughts wrong.

In any case, the Diamondbacks have guaranteed that they have about 13 or 14 million dollars to spend on the market.

Oh, goody! We're rich! Set off the fireworks!

What's that? We spent our entire budget on the roman candles? Oh, well, I guess we'll have to field a team of minor-leaugers and space cadets.

Oh, too late, we already did that.

So much for variety.

Have you seen the Cy Young Candidate video for Vasquez?

Is his 12-6 not gorgeously amazing? Does it not move beautifully? Does he not have other pretty pitches, too?

I could just watch him pitch forever, and watch the little white balls snap off his fingers and travel their crazy, epic paths, one after another. And into McCann's glove...another reason not to hate him.

But no, I do hate him, he gets to watch those pitches, gets paid to watch those pitches every fifth day. He has the power to ask for what pitch he think will work. He pays superclose attention to 100 or so of those, and he catches a lot of them in his glove, takes a part in the magic.

And then (because I watch the video over and over) he strikes out Miguel...again and again, and Miguel looks baffled, like how'd he do that?

Ah, that's life, I suppose.

King Felix's video is pretty epic, but I already knew how good he was. His catchers aren't as good, though, that's somewhat obvious. He's got a couple of nasty pitches, and they're very...I don't know, sexy? I guess you could say a fastball is the sexiest pitch, but King Felix's teammate Ichiro said that in-the-park hits are sexier than homers (which I kind of agree with) so maybe the Mariners have their own definition of sexy? Like a beyond-the-normal definition?

I saw the Mariners in New York once. They played the Mets at Shea and I went with my friend, his dad, his brother, and his brother's friend. It was most awesome and we got there just in time to see some guy with a .000 average come up for the Mariners and proceed to knock a Johan Santana pitch over the wall. Perhaps he's up from the minors? I thought. But no; he was just King Felix.

Scott Rolen, juggler and third baseman for the somewhat obscure, noncompetitive, NL East Misspelled Division's Philadelphia Pillies.

Our lineup is not a minefield, but it's pretty close.

We have Montero and Upton who can hit. And we have Haren who plays every five days so he doesn't really count.

Reynolds is a slugger but he strikes out more often than he gets a hit. Which is unfortunate but it is what it is. He gets hits with men on base.

But besides that...

we lack a true leadoff guy. Stephen Drew just doesn't pass muster at this point. Maybe it's beacuse he had a bad year last year, but he's really a number-two guy. Felipe Lopez was a great leadoff hitter but we traded him (Thank you, Josh Byrnes). For what exactly?

I'm not sure.

I don't think we got much of anything from Milwaukee.

Except to end a third straight season without a regular second-baseman.

And who's out there? O-Dog. Felipe again. But I doubt they'd come back with open arms. Yes, Byrnes has managed to alienate the two best free-agent second basemen out there. How bout a round of sarcastic applause for him?

Oh, I should stop blaming things on old Greedo, shouldn't I?

But it's too much fun...if Gerardo really disposed of him cleanly, then who would I blame my sorrows on? Eric Byrnes? There's got to be something funky with that last name and the Diamondbacks. The first year Eric was here and the first year Josh was here, everything seemed okay. But then it kinda burned like a grease fire in McDonalds and now we have no money because we're paying the brilliant Byrnes duo.

Says the girl wearing the Byrnes t-shirt.

Maybe I should blame it all, including the nonfire of Byrnes (and AJ Hinch) on Kendrick, the owner.

That's what my parents do. Not that they know the names of any D-Back executives. But whenever something's wrong, they blame the Wilpons. Castillo dropped the pop-up? The Wilpons shouldn't have approved the signing. They should have fired Minaya for signing guys like that for more than they're worth. Oliver Perez is pitching? That was another bad move by the Wilpons. They shouldn't have let Omar have that much money. They raised prices at Starbucks? Blame the Wilpons for not having a benevolent influence on the economy.

So maybe I'm kidding about that last part, but really. In a way the Wilpons and their real estate stuff can have something to do with the economy. What do I know? Even my history teacher knows I know nothing about economics.

From a psychological standpoint, I'm probably placing the blame for everything on Byrnes because I have mental problems and can't deal with blaming stuff on myself. Or something. But then again, the Melvin firing came as a surprise to me.

Whatever. Back to what we need.

Hitting that Byrnes is too cheap to pay for. Because what is he willing to trade for a first baseman who can hit? A catcher with a bad back. We will also be willing to trade him for a second baseman who can hit. Actually, Minaya might do that. When you're a bad GM, deal with other bad GMs is the moral of that story. But we are willing to trade our shortstop for: a pitcher. Who is from the AL, so presumably can't hit.

Our top pinch-hitter last year was Jon Garland (he was AJ's first choice, anyway). Jon Garland's lifetime BA is about .100. This is why we need decent hitting, so we don't have to do cringeworthy things like that.

Drew can hit sometimes. So can Parra. So, honestly, what do we need? We need one of the other OFs to be able to hit. We need a hitter at first base. We need a real second baseman (and I don't want to get Luis Castillo because he can't field and no one else on the team can). We need some decent hitters on the bench.

Easier said than done.

I've got a Flooble Chatterbox here now, as I was reminded of those things from way back when by the recent blog-features debate. But, if it's doing this to you, too, and it's not just my parents' cranky computer, in the actual module it says that the chatterbox is currently unavailable.

Ignore that, just scroll down until there it is, under the link list.

So talk about stuff...your team, hot stove, tell a joke, just say hi. I had to change my background because the text didn't show up on the other one. Well, it did, but it blended in so it was annoying to read. Anyway...it's there. Talk, please.

A lot. However, Byrnes, Kendrik, Hinch, &co. are not exactly excellent decision makers. What could we do? What should we do? What will we do?

We could do a lot, we could do a little. We don't have a terrible amount of money (Omar Minaya may make bad decisions but at least he's willing to spend and at least the Wilpons weren't as hoodwinked by the Ponzi Scheme people as we thought) and judging from our past offseasons we don't like to do that much.

What do we need?
1. The obvious choice is a first baseman. We might get Overbay, but if we don't we can convert Montero or Upton into a first-baseman. Why? Snyder is a better defensive catcher, but putting Montero at first will allow us to utilize his good bat on a regular basis. Upton, despite what certain fangraphs might say, is not a great right-fielder. He's already been moved around, and we can't move him back to center (Young and Parra are already duking it out) or third (because we all know what happens when Reynolds plays first). We have too many outfielders as is, so we have to do something about them. Of course, a healthy CoJack would be fine, but we don't know if that's an option. Worst-case, we do as we've done and platoon Ryal, Allen, etc.
2. Starting pitching. We've got four capable starters plus Kevin Mulvey. If AJ puts Mulvey in there, we're doomed one out of five days, but we can't do a four-man rotation, at least not at first, because of Scherzer's lack of pitch-efficiency and the questions about Webb after his surgery. An ideal guy would be someone like Livan Hernandez who isn't going to cost us too much and will eat up innings, be efficient, and hit well enough. Of course, we could also get RJ and pay him what he's worth, but...I'll get to that later. We clearly can't trade for a Matt Cain or even a Ricky Romero, and I'd laugh if someone said we were in contention for Lackey. But a low-to-mid-market starter (please not Jamie Moyer) like Hernandez would do the job nicely.
3. A bullpen. Chad Qualls is an excellent setup man, but our stupidity in not having a real closer is just annoying. It makes me wish we still had Mantei (even though he was always injured)! Or, you know, Valverde. We could sign JJ Putz, as his value's gone down with his playing time. Or we could sign RJ and have him close, if we pay him what he's worth. We need just a few more guys, because with Vasquez, Schlereth, Zavada, and Qualls, we're halfway there. We need a longman, though, and that won't be easy. Maybe we can get someone from a fire-sale team like the Marlins or the Pirates.
4. Get a second baseman who we will agree will play the whole damn season for once! Ojeda can't do it, Roberts can't do it, Whitesell can't, Ryal can't--these guys are utility guys. We could get O-Dog back, but luck being what it is he would probably injure his wrist in August again. Is Craig Counsell a free agent? He always looked good in a D-Backs uniform.
5. Find a way to make our guys more alert both in the batter's box and in the field. I don't care what you have to do, just do it. Our spaciness is embarassing sometimes, isn't it, Mark and Stephen?
6. Even though he's a space cadet, we can't send Stephen Drew to New England! We can't! They would outsmart us and give us nothing for a guy who at least goes out there, plays, and does better than most of the rest of the mediocre team.

What will we do? We may get a frst baseman, but my guess is that Roberts will stay at first, Mulvey will be our fifth starter, we'll get some crap relief from Kansas City or somewhere, and we'll finish at the bottom again. But they might do something right for once...who knows?

Really? Really, Mr. Byrnes? Will you supply us (finally) with an adequate non-platoon player who can hit at or above team average and who can field first base? He's never played a game anywhere else other than DH. Oh, this can't be true!

See, for the past few years we've had a platoon of guys getting smacked at the window that is first base and not quite fitting through, bouncing off the panes for some or another reason. Who?

Chad Tracy. Third base with shot knees who had to do something for the money we were paying him.
Tony Clark. Somewhat non-clutch and also somewhat old. He got released.
Conor Jackson. He had to be an outfielder and then he got Valley Fever.
Mark Reynolds. Hard as it was to fail at fielding something more than his 2008 tenure at third, Mark outdid himself at first and was moved back to his slightly better position.
Chris Snyder. Why? He's tall, I suppose. Or we put the other catcher in but we still wanted him available in case the other catcher got injured.
Adam Dunn. He was horrible in the outfield, why not see if he's any better at first?
Rusty Ryal. We kinda had no one else to put there.
Brandon Allen. Is supposedly the 1B of the future, but is clearly not the 1B of right now.

And bear in mind that these are the guys I can name off the top of my head. How many of these guys are with the team now? Reynolds, Jackson, Ryal, Allen...and Snyder. Snyder is a better defensive catcher than Montero and Hester, no question. But that is most likely because Snyder is used to these pitchers and he has more experience. But with the experience he gained while Snyder was injured, Montero improved at calling games and whatnot. Hester is still young, so there's still a lot we can do with him. So why not trade Snyder? He batted well (by his standards) last year but Montero's got more pop on the bat, which AJ the all-knowing has deemed thumbs-up worthy.

So if we trade Snyder for a first baseman while we figure out something long-term, that might not be so bad. It might even...(dare I say it?) make sense! Of course if Anthopoulos and Byrnes can't agree on anything, they can't. Both GMs, I believe, have not negotiated with one another's team--though several players have done work for both organizations. Of course, Byrnes having AL east background may mean he's done something with the Jays, and if Anthopoulos has been around long enough he'll have dealt with the D-Backs.

But, nonetheless, having Overbay back in a D-Backs uniform would be nice. Say what you will about other Snakes-Jays players (Lopez, Sexson, Barajas, Roberts, Stottlemyre, Schoenweis, Davis, Batista, etc.), a significant amount of whom played for Milwaukee as well. Sure, Overbay had about as much playing time with us as Lopez, but that means we can more quickly give him a fresh start.

Or something.