Hell of a Shame

I would make a long post explaining my disappointment and frustration with the announcement today that the Angels' Bartolo Colon won the AL Cy Young award over Johan Santana, but ESPN.com analyst Jayson Stark has already stolen the words right out of my mouth.

The hardest I try, I still can't come up with any idea as to why a knowledgable baseball fan would give Colon a first place vote considering that two American League pitchers were CLEARLY better than him, without any shred of a doubt. But what really boils my blood is that Johan Santana, who was deserving of the award for reasons I have already exhaustively discussed, received only THREE first-place votes is absolutely appauling. The fact that he is on a small-market team like the Twins prevented the nation from really being able to grasp just what a phenomenal season he had, and that is one of the main problems with Major League Baseball. You would never see something like this happen in the NBA or NFL. If Randy Johnson had put up the same stats this year, he would have won the award, no question.

The Cy Young award has lost a great deal of its prestige, at least in my mind.