Tampa Bay Rays news and links: Local writers spurn Justin Verlander

So Tampa Bay is at the middle of a bit of a voting controversy. Kate Upton will explain.

The “he” there is Justin Verlander, who finished behind Rick Porcello in the Cy Young award voting, and the two writers who didn’t have him on their ballots are the Tampa Bay delegation of Bill Chastain (MLB.com) and Fred Goodall (Associated Press).

The chairman of the Tampa Bay chapter of the BWAA, Mark Topkin, took to his blog to defend Chastain and Goodall’s right to make an odd choice. You can see theirs and everyone else’s ballots here.

It’s not actually so ridiculous for Porcello to win the Cy Young. He had a fantastic year, and he and Verlander finished with the same fWAR. But it is kind of hard to figure out what logic those two writers had for not having him on the ballot at all.

On the face of it, I’d say that they care about pitcher wins too much. But they each included one pitcher (Masahiro Tanaka and Aaron Sanchez) who finished with fewer wins than Verlander.

So I guess it’s that they (a) care about pitcher wins and (b) don’t like pitchers who strike people out.

Just look at Verlander, pitching all of those innings with that good ERA and not winning all those games while striking out 28% of the batters he faces. So selfish. I bet if he pitched to contact more he’d have won 20.

Chris Archer weighed in.

Also:

I imagine it as largely-privately-funded. Don’t see that one on the pie chart, though. ;-)

Links

• In a mailbag, Chastain says that no, he doesn’t think defined bullpen roles will go away.
• Teams are lining up for ex-ray quality role player S-Rod

• Vin Scully will get a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
• David Laurila talked pitching with the White Sox pitching coach. Always a good interviewer.
• Part of why now might be a good time to trade a starting pitcher (weak free agent market).
• Explaining Statcast errors.
• The World Baseball Classic schedule is announced. Roadtrip to Miami? Boattrip to Korea or Japan?
• Speaking of Miami, good choice on the new minor league name.

Trivia

Okay, let’s call this the Bill Chastain-Fred Goodall special. If the goal of a pitcher is to be awarded the most wins while striking out the fewest batters, who, with at least 100 innings pitched, owns the best wins/strikeouts ratio in Rays history?

I’ll go ahead and tell you that this one is hard, so let’s just give the win to whoever can name the most of the top-10 on the list.

Hint: Four of the top ten were relievers who never started a game as a Ray.