2012 Opening Day Jose Valverde

Jose Valverde as a league leader wasn't so much as a surprise to me as the fact that he did it three times with three different team.  

 

 

As you can see, Valverde led the National League in Saves in 2007 with 47 as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks. After being traded to the Astros in the offseason, he followed up with a National League leading 44 Saves in 2008. After two lackluster seasons, Valverde returned to dominance in the American League with 49 Saves and pitching in 75 Games.

 

And now, he has gone from league leader in multiple categories to free agent with no team near the end of Spring Training. I'm sure he'll find a team soon but it'll tough to forget his epic postseason meltdown from last year.

 

2011 Opening Day Felix Hernandez

Pitching categories are a crazy thing. When I was younger, wins and strikeouts were used to determine a pitchers worth. The more, the better. They still do but other categories like ERA and WAR and WHIP have a little bit more say. Today's card is a good example of  that.

 

 

In 2009, Felix Hernandez tied for the American League lead with 19 Wins. Neither Hernandez, nor Justin Verlander or CC Sabathia (the other two 19 game winners) brought home the Cy Young Award that season. Instead, it went to 16-game winner Zack Greinke, who happened to lead the American League with a 2.19 ERA, 10.1 WAR and 1.073 WHIP.

 

But enough about Greinke because this post is about King Felix. He followed up his 2009 campaign with a less than stellar 13-12 record in 2010. But a closer look reveals he just didn't get enough team support. Hernandez lead the American League with 249.2 Innings Pitched, 6.8 WAR (for Pitchers) and a 2.27 ERA. He was also second with a 1.057 WHIP. So despite not even cracking the top 15 in Wins and barely maintaining a .500 record. Hernandez brought home to the 2010 Cy Young Award.

 

1989 Topps Frank Viola

Last week, I featured a Twins pitcher who led the league in Losses in 1988 . Today's post is a teammate of Bert Blyleven's, Frank Viola. As rough a year as Blyleven had, Viola more than made up for it.

 

Despite leading the league in runs and eaned runs during previous seasons, Viola continued his 1987 World Series MVP ways by winning an Major League high 24 games in 1988, 3 more than American League runner-up Dave Stewart's total. This led to Viola winning the Cy Young award with 27 of the 28 first place votes.

 

 

I was particularly impressed by the 1988 Monthly Scoreboard chart on the back of the card. I didn't pay close attention to these types of things on cards when I was younger, but Viola won 6 games just in the month of May. Without looking, this probably comes down to a timing thing (starting on the 1st day of a month and getting an extra start at the end of the month) but it would surprise me for just about any pitcher to get 4 wins in a month, let alone average it over the course of the season like Viola did.

 

 Unfortunately, I looked up the record for most wins in a month and its some ridiculous turn-of-the-20th century numbers. I can see a reliever maybe lucking into 6-7 wins but Rube Waddell and Jack Coombs each won 10 (!) games in the American League in one month. And John Clarkson won an astonishing 15 games in June 1885. He only won 53 games that year, completing 68 of his 70 starts for the Chicago White Stockings...