After a matchup of two of the five candidates Friday night in Oakland, only four have a shot.
Boston's Clay Buchholz, pitching opposite fellow contender Trevor Cahill of the Athletics, likely removed himself from contention with the worst start of his career and also the shortest that did not involve an injury.
The Red Sox' right-hander gave up five runs on five hits and four walks — one shy of tying a season high — in just one inning of work in a 5-0 loss to the A's. He did face four batters in the second, but all of them reached and two eventually scored. Of his 37 pitches, 22 were balls.
Mr. Young probably wasn't rolling in his grave, but he may have squirmed a bit, having lost a rooting interest in a member of his former team.
Cahill, meanwhile, yielded three hits in seven scoreless innings to surpass Buchholz in wins and lower his home ERA to 1.58. Such extremes would make it very difficult to put Buchholz ahead of Cahill on any ballot. A quick glance at where the effort left Buchholz statistically makes it that much harder to consider Boston's best starter for even a top four finish.
Buchholz entered the night with one card he could throw at any time when sitting at a table with the rest of the candidates. He led them all in ERA, traditionally a nice statistic to have on your side in Cy Young discussions (Zach Greinke won the award last year after leading the AL in ERA but finishing tied for seventh in wins, and four of the last six winners have topped the junior circuit in that category).
But the ugly outing in Oakland dropped Buchholz to second in ERA behind Felix Hernandez and left him just .08 ahead of Cahill. It also increased Buchholz's WHIP to 1.24, placing him behind Cahill, Hernandez, CC Sabathia and David Price, the quartet that Buchholz is now looking up at in the race. Buchholz's one strikeout leaves him a distant fourth among contenders and behind such AL luminaries as Brett Cecil, Kyle Davies and Jason Vargas.
Greinke overshadowed his marginal wins total with 242 strikeouts, second in the league, and sported a WHIP that easily topped them all. Buchholz cannot boast of such peripherals and no longer has his trump card in a league-leading ERA. If wins mean anything to voters, Buchholz has now fallen into fifth among the supposed contenders.
As if the statistical hit is not enough to completely eliminate Buchholz from contention, there is one more thing.
Votes will be made and tallied after the season ends in just over three weeks. When the voters make their selections, the candidates' most recent starts will often stand out, whether fair or not. An absolute stinker in a must-win game against a marginal offense in mid-September will not help Buchholz's cause one bit.
The race for the AL Cy Young Award remains a tight one, but Buchholz's departure gives the rest of the contenders a little more breathing room.
