[BIG17EASY]

Originally Posted by Charlie Hough

When has a middle reliever EVER won the Cy Young Award in MLB? The 17 wins are impressive, but if he wasn't valuable enough to be a starter or a closer, can you really say that he was the best pitcher in the league for that season? If he was that good, he should have been the closer.

I don't think you can let the starters' win stats get in the way. Maybe it was a down year for 20-game winners, but that's a reflection of league-wide conditions and competition, not necessarily a lack of value or ability on the part of the starters.

If the starter went 6 or 7 innings in a game, pitched really well, and kept his team in the game, that's far more valuable than the inning that a middle reliever pitched to hold the opposition and pick up a win because his teammates finally took the lead during the next round of at-bats. Wins are too circumstantial to be used as a basis for evaluation.

I would give it to Santiago Lopez. He averaged nearly 7 IP per start, had 1.02 WHIP over 222.1 IP, 42 BB, and 247 K. That's incredibly impressive control and outstanding performance from a starter.

No, he didn't get 20 wins, but neither did Nolan Ryan for all but two seasons in his entire career.

I don't think there is any way that a middle reliever would get the votes.

And Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young Award.