I Know You Just Wrote This to Stir Controversy, But...

Relievers can't win the Cy Young Award.

I mean, they can, theoretically. If they put up a truly unprecedented, historic, dominant season, while simultaneously no starting pitcher has a particularly good year. That's never really happened. The voters have deemed a reliever worthy of the Cy Young Award nine times, and each time you can find starters who were far more worthy of the reward.

Why is this? Starting pitchers are always more valuable based on the number of innings they throw and how difficult they are to replace. It's relatively easy to find a pitcher who throw as hard as they can one inning a time without the need to worry about pitch counts or facing batters multiple times.

So, naturally, someone named Gregg Doyel of CBS Sports.com thinks that the two front-runners for the 2012 NL Cy Young Award are both relievers. And, according to him, it's not even close. He writes:

R.A. Dickey is having a Cy Young sort of season. So is Johnny Cueto. Maybe a few other starting pitchers in the National League, too, but especially Dickey and Cueto. They're on pace to win 20 games, lose fewer than half of those and finish among league leaders in ERA and strikeouts -- which is to say, they're having seasons typical of a Cy Young winner.

But Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel are having seasons that have never been done before.

So let's give the Cy Young to one of them.

Terrible, miserable logic. Hey, check this out: Aaron Cook of the Boston Red Sox is succeeding in the major leagues despite, quite literally, not striking anyone out, which has pretty much never been done before. Does he deserve the Cy Young? Simply because he's having a season that has "never been done before"? Of course not. This is stupid. Justin Verlander might win the AL Cy Young by doing the exact same thing he did last year. This does not detract from his candidacy.

Problem is, Chapman and Kimbrel are relievers, and relievers aren't supposed to win this thing.

Correct!

A closer will win it from time to time, but usually he has to have some bitchin' facial hair or 50-plus saves or just do like Sparky Lyle did in 1977 and pitch for the Yankees.

Well, that's one problem with my position. There are several, all of which can be explained away, but only in the hands of an expert. Which is where I come in. But first, I'll take your top three complaints.

1. It's too early to be talking about the Cy Young!

In a vacuum, yes -- if this were a typical season for the NL Cy Young, meaning it would go to the best starting pitcher, it would be way too early. (...)

But this isn't a typical season, because Chapman and Kimbrel aren't typical candidates. They're not even typical closer candidates. Chapman has 25 saves, which is nice but isn't going to lead the league -- and Kimbrel might not lead the league either, seeing how he's one behind Joel Hanrahan's league-leading 32. How do you give the Cy Young to a closer who doesn't lead the league in saves (or have bitchin' facial hair or pitch for the Yankees)?

You don't. And if the season ended today, voters wouldn't.

The ONLY thing in the universe worse than giving the Cy Young to a reliever is giving the Cy Young to a reliever based on the most arbitrary, dreamed-up statistic ever engineered: the save.

Without telling them why, I asked four baseball writers at CBSSports.com and one at Yahoo Sports for their top-three Cy Young ballot if the season ended today. None of them named Chapman or Kimbrel.

You should've taken the hint, dude.

So I'm here to get the word out, start a conversation about the NL Cy Young, because the right thing must be done. And the right thing is for Chapman and Kimbrel to be sitting in the lead at this moment.

2. Chapman and Kimbrel can't be THAT good.

They can, and they are. Again, they're historically good, both of them, which is weird because it's happening in the same season. (...)

This isn't the question. Of course they're THAT good. The question is whether they're good ENOUGH to overcome the very large natural gap that exists between starters and relievers. (Spoiler alert: they're not).

3. They don't work as many innings as starters.

No kidding. That's an argument-ender for lots of people, and on the surface, it makes sense. Dickey, Cueto, Cain, Kershaw -- lots of starters having great seasons are on pace to throw 200-plus innings, potentially tripling Chapman or Kimbrel.

But below the surface of that number are other numbers. Kimbrel's ERA is 1.29. Chapman's is slightly behind that at 1.34, but against National League foes, his ERA is 0.19.

But...you completely ignored that whole innings thing. You tried to distract me with those shiny ERAs. Nice try.

Because of the whole innings thing, ten NL starters have been as valuable or more valuable than Aroldis Chapman based on Wins Above Replacement. 21 have been at least as valuable as Craig Kimbrel. As Doyel pointed out, Chapman and Kimbrel's innings totals will be tripled by other top starting pitchers, like Johnny Cueto.

Chapman's ERA in 48 1/3 innings against National League opposition is zero point one-nine. Again, that's Little League stuff. (...)

He's pitching one inning at a time. You can't compare this to a starting pitcher's ERA. They are completely different things.

Actually, here's a good test. Both Johnny Cueto and Aroldis Chapman pitch for the first-place Cincinnati Reds. Chapman has a 1.34 ERA. Cueto has a 2.58 ERA. One would assume that Chapman > Cueto. Now: take Chapman off the Reds, and they'd lose a few more games, but they'd be fine. Take Cueto and his 100 additional innings off the Reds? They probably wouldn't be in first place. One of these players is far more difficult to replace than the other. Extrapolate from there.

You can see who would get my vote Cy Young, if the season ended today: Aroldis Chapman. But I would settle for Craig Kimbrel.

Anyone else? There isn't anyone else.

It's a complete fallacy to put relief pitchers in consideration for the same award as starting pitchers for reasons that go even beyond the innings gap. It's like comparing apples and oranges, or like giving the MVP award to a specialized bench player over an everyday player. For one, relievers are inherently replaceable (just look at Fernando Rodney, a scrap-heap pick-up converted into shutdown closer). Top aces, on the other hand, are the rarest, most-sought-after commodity in the game. Furthermore, Chapman and Kimbrel don't need to worry about fatigue or pitch counts or facing hitters multiple times. They get to throw as hard as they possibly can for one inning at a time. Who's to say that Stephen Strasburg or Clayton Kershaw couldn't do what Chapman and Kimbrel do? Quite frankly, it's easier. But most importantly of all:

Relief pitchers are almost always failed starting pitchers.

Again, because it's that important:

Relief pitchers are almost always failed starting pitchers.

That makes the reliever inherently inferior to the starter. If Aroldis Chapman and Craig Kimbrel were good enough to start, they would, because of how exponentially more valuable that role is compared to a bullpen arm. But they can't start. They can't do what Johnny Cueto and Matt Cain and R.A. Dickey and Cole Hamels do so well, for a variety of reasons. Chapman relies on superhuman velocity to beat hitters, which wouldn't hold up over a six-inning start. Plus, he would walk too many guys to be effective. Kimbrel can't start because he doesn't have the stamina, and his mechanics are far too wacky to survive the wear-and-tear of 200 innings. And neither Chapman nor Kimbrel has the third or fourth pitch that a starting pitcher needs.

Appreciate Chapman and Kimbrel for what they are, and acknowledge their brilliance within its proper context. But rewarding either of them--or any relief pitcher--with a Cy Young would represent a gross misunderstanding of how pitching works.