Seattle's Hernandez wins AL Cy Young; CC is third

What little relevance remained for victories by a pitcher might have been eradicated yesterday.

In a result that at one time would have been considered unfathomable, Seattle's Felix Hernandez, barely a .500 pitcher this season, was announced as the American League Cy Young Award winner in voting by the Baseball Writers' Association of America.

Hernandez, just 13-12 but with a baseball-best 2.27 ERA, easily beat out Rays lefthander David Price and Yankees lefthander CC Sabathia, the 2007 winner.

Hernandez, last year's runner-up to the Royals' Zack Greinke, won in an unexpected runaway, receiving 21 first-place votes and finishing with 167 points.

"When I heard I won the Cy Young, I just asked one more time, 'I won the Cy Young?' And I started crying," the 24-year-old righthander said in a conference call from his home in Valencia, Venezuela. "It was a great, great, great, great, amazing thing."

Hernandez, aka "King Felix," won the award - which has been given since 1956 and began being given to each league in 1967 - despite a victory total that is the lowest for any winner in either league among starting pitchers in a full season, something he didn't apologize for.

"I think the Cy Young has to be for the [most] dominant pitcher in the league," Hernandez said. "You see what happened last year: I had great numbers and didn't get it. I had better numbers than last year. I think I deserve it."

Price, who went 19-8 with a 2.72 ERA for the AL East champion Rays, finished second with four first-place votes and 111 points. Sabathia, the AL's only 20-game winner (21-7, 3.18), earned three first-place votes and 102 points. He and Hernandez were the only pitchers named on every ballot.

Among the best cases for Sabathia was that he anchored the Yankees' pitching staff in the second half. After Andy Pettitte went down July 18 and was lost for nine weeks, the rotation became a unit in disarray, with Sabathia the one constant. He was 17-4 with a 2.76 ERA in his final 23 starts.

But Hernandez only got better as the season went on for the Mariners, who finished last in the AL West at 61-101, 29 games behind the first-place Rangers. He had a 3.01 ERA entering his July 10 start but posted a 1.49 ERA in his final 16 starts. He allowed no more than one earned run in nine of his final 10 starts, holding batters to a .160 average and posting a 0.96 ERA in 75 1/3 innings in that span.

A mark against Hernandez was his record against Texas - 2-3 with a 4.28 ERA - but he was dominant against the powerful AL East, most of all against the Yankees, against whom he went 3-0 with a 0.35 ERA.

The result was yet another rejection by voters of pitcher wins, a statistic dying a slow death, with the primary cause a lack of significance given to them by an increasing number of fans and media.

Last season Greinke won the Cy Young Award with 16 victories and a 2.16 ERA, beating out Hernandez, who was 19-5, 2.49. The Giants' Tim Lincecum won last year in the NL after going 15-7, 2.48.

Hernandez was superior in just about every other category. He led the league in innings (249 2/3) and was second in strikeouts with 232, one behind the Angels' Jered Weaver. Hernandez held opponents to a league-low .212 batting average and was second in WHIP (1.06) to Cliff Lee (1.00).

He had the lowest run support average in the AL (3.10), with the Mariners scoring one run or fewer in 10 of his starts and two or fewer in 15. He was 2-10 with a 2.84 ERA in games in which the Mariners scored two or fewer runs and 11-2 with a 1.84 ERA in games in which they scored at least three.

Hernandez was asked if at season's end he thought he had a chance. "I don't have the wins, but if you look at all the numbers, I thought, wow, I have a chance," he said. "I'm just so happy."