Shattered Sun

I once posted about how wonderful I think Brandon Webb is. And yes, I still believe that he’s wonderful. Of course, now the world agrees with me, as dear Brandon as won this years Cy Young! As quoted from the online edition of the Arizona Republic:

Cy of excitement
Webb wins pitching’s highest honor


Bob McManaman
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 14, 2006

There was no sighing in baseball Tuesday for Brandon Webb.
That’s because the Diamondbacks’ ace pitcher captured the National League Cy Young Award in balloting released by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Webb, who went 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA for Arizona in 2006, received 15 of a possible 32 first-place votes, totaling 103 points in a 5-3-1 points system. He beat out San Diego Padres closer Trevor Hoffman (12 first-place votes, 77 points overall) and last year’s winner, St. Louis Cardinals starter Chris Carpenter (two first-place votes, 63 points).
Webb joins Randy Johnson as the only Diamondbacks pitchers to win the award. Johnson won it four consecutive years (1999-2002), giving Arizona five Cy Young Award winners in the club’s nine-year history.
Webb tied for the league lead in victories, finished second in innings pitched (235) and third in ERA. He led the majors in groundball to air out ratio at 3.64, whikle his 400 groundball outs ranked second to only the Yankees’ Chien-Ming Wang.
Webb, 27, tied for fifth in the majors with 23 quality starts – pitching at least six innings and allowing three or fewer earned runs.
He was the early favorite to win the Cy Young, jumping out to a 8-0 start with a 2.14 ERA. He stumbled a bit down the stretch, however, going winless in his final three starts and winning only three of his last nine outings.
In his debut as the Diamondbacks’ No. 1 starter, Webb earned his first All-Star appearance, garnering a league-best 325 votes among National League pitchers. In one inning of work in the All-Star Game, he retired the American League’s Derek Jeter, David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez in a 16-pitch performance.
Asked on Monday what he planned to do to celebrate should he win the Cy Young, Webb said from his home in Ashland, Ky., “I have no idea, really. I’ll probably come out to Arizona, do some things out there, and celebrate it with the organization.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 14th, 2006 at 8:38 pm and is filed under Simply Anything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.