Winter meetings, Day 1: Joe Maddon says Cy Young voters got it right

What’d you expect him to say? Justin Verlander should’ve won?

Rays manager Joe Maddon obviously supported the Cy Young win by his ace, left-hander David Price, when asked here in Nashville earlier today.

And here was the case he laid out.

“Of course, there’s a lot of guys,” Maddon said during his meet-the-press gathering at the winter meetings. ”Verlander is outstanding, (Felix) Hernandez, et cetera, (Jered) Weaver, they’re all great pitchers. But I really thought David, wire to wire, he wall-to-wall did it. There was like maybe one or two bad games all year. Otherwise, the consistency was incredible.

“He was kind of like a metronome on a nightly basis, strike-throwing, velocity, the addition of other pitches, deep into the game, innings saved, saving the bullpen. All that stuff was present.”

(Don’t be ashamed, by the way, if you had to Google-dictionary “metronome.” I know someone who did, too. His name escapes me now.)

Price, 27, had a league-leading 20 victories and 2.56 ERA, to go with 173 hits and 205 strikeouts in 211 innings. His WHIP was dazzling, at 1.100.

Verlander, the 2011 Cy Young winner, led the league in innings (238.1), strikeouts (239) and complete games (six), and actually had a better WHIP (1.057). His record was down from his impossible-to-repeat previous season, at 17-8.

Strong cases, both of them. But it was Price who took home the Cy Young in a razor-thin vote, edging Verlander, 153-149.

It was so close, had one first-place vote gone to Verlander instead of Price, the result would’ve been reversed.