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10:42 PM ET 11.15 | David Price did not deserve this award based on stats. Price did lead AL starters in wins with 20 and ERA at 2.56, so he comes out on top in what we think of as the "old-fashioned" categories used to determine who had the better season. He did it with a good BABIP allowed and a very high strand rate, which explains part of why he lagged guys like Verlander and Felix Hernandez in varieties of WAR. I don't hold that against him and I would never advocate giving the Cy Young to a guy who lost games, let runners score and saw ball after ball drilled up the gaps. It may be hard for any great pitcher to repeat that low BABIP and great clutch pitching combo but he did do it, luck or not luck. That isn't all, though, the bigger reason that Price's WAR trailed Verlander and Hernandez by such a margin is that he did not make as many starts or pitch as deep into games -- finishing with 21 fewer innings under his belt than Hernandez and 27 1/3 fewer than Verlander. If somebody else is 99 percent as good as Price 110 percent of the time, doesn't he provide more value than Price?

David Price, AP Photo/Mike Carlson

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November 16, 2012 07:08 AM ET

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Verlander was the best pitcher in either league last season.

Hatrunner

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November 16, 2012 07:54 AM ET

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Price was great last year, and so was Verlander. Think about this, though. Verlander got to face the Royals, Indians and Twins (plus the White Sox) in division games...while Price went through the playoff-bound Orioles, the division-winning Yankees, the Bautista-Encarnacion Jays, and the Ortiz-led Red Sox, who although they had a down year, still scored a lot of runs.

I have no problem with the voters picking Price.

...the best policy

Harrodsburg, KY

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November 16, 2012 08:13 AM ET

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Sour grapes?

Otis B. Driftwood

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November 16, 2012 11:13 AM ET

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This is such a shame. WAR for a starter??? What about ACTUAL WINS! That says it all.

Lclar13

London, OH

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November 16, 2012 12:01 PM ET

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They didn't want to give Trout both the ROY and MVP. They didn't want to give Detroit both the MVP and Cy Young. So they gave Trout ROY, Cabrera MVP, and Price the Cy Young. Spread out the hardware a bit.

Traded to Seattle

Salem , OR

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November 16, 2012 12:17 PM ET

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Lets see now, winning by outscoring your opponent is the overall objective. Rewarding a guy that delivers more of those victories by keeping the opponent form scoring frequently makes perfect sense to me. He absolutely deserves the award.

Yogi-Zen

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November 16, 2012 09:51 PM ET

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QUOTE(#10):

Originally posted 12:48 PM ET 11.16 by /

They could call that one the Randy Johnson Award...bonus points for contenders with scraggly mullets and bizarrely prominent adam's apples.

That would be a good award. Add in a somewhat unpredictable personality, and you would have a pretty interesting group of winners.