I would have chosen Oswalt.  It's kind of strange seeing Hoffman's name in second place- 63 innings of very good but hardly exceptional relief work.  It is true that there were not outstanding starters, but still.  Hoffman was miles behind Papelbon and Ryan this year, and they probably won't get a sniff for the AL Cy.

I would have chosen Oswalt.  It's kind of strange seeing Hoffman's name in second place- 63 innings of very good but hardly exceptional relief work.  It is true that there were not outstanding starters, but still.  Hoffman was miles behind Papelbon and Ryan this year, and they probably won't get a sniff for the AL Cy.

Didn't Hoffman get a bunch of saves?  That could be worth a lot of votes in today's baseball culture.

Here are the WARP stats for the top NL pitchers:

Brandon Webb         9.0
Roy Oswalt                8.6
John Smoltz              8.5
Carlos Zambrano       8.1
Chris Carpenter        7.6
Takashi Saito            6.9
Billy Wagner             6.3
Trevor Hoffman        5.7                

I would guess that Hoffman got "extra credit" for both pitching for a winner (the Pads won the NL West, remember?) and for career stats -- he broke the All-Time Saves record, for what that's worth.

Interestingly, other than Hoffman and Carpenter (okay, okay, and Saito for about five minutes), none of the top NL Cy candidates per the results pitched for a playoff team. Didn't that used to be an unspoken "requirement" of sorts?

 

Bizarre how the award voting has morphed into the Oscars, where you can now use your vote to honour someone for a lifetime of achievement, rather than just a specific performance.

Paul Newman won the Oscar for The Color of Money. At least Hoffman only finished second.