Is there a pitching Miguel Cabrera out there?

Miguel Cabrera is this year's American League Most Valuable Player, Cabrera's Triple Crown outweighing Mike Trout's all-around excellence.

Although I wouldn't have bemoaned the horrible injustice of it all if Trout had won, I thought Cabrera should get the award, and yes, it was because of the Triple Crown. Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I think batting average and RBI have some value, so to lead the league in both of those, plus home runs ... 45 years after the last guy did it ... that's an MVP to me.

Although Cabrera was the first guy to win the Triple Crown since Carl Yastrzemski turned the trick in 1967, theoretically anyone could have done it, just like a 56-game hitting streak, a .400 batting average, 73 home runs, 190 RBI or most other statistical milestones or records can mathematically be surpassed. The games are there to play; someone just has to put up the numbers.

But there's one single-season mark that I'm not sure will be reached, and it happened the year after Yaz's Triple Crown.

Thirty wins.

To explain why, let's look at some of the top pitching seasons since 1968.



Here's the last guy to do it:

Denny McLain 1968 -- 31-6, 336 innings pitched, 41 starts, 28 complete games.

Then there are the two guys who have come closest since then:
Steve Carlton 1972 -- 27-10, 346.1 innings pitched, 41 starts, 30 complete games.
Bob Welch 1990 -- 27-6, 238 innings pitched, 35 starts, two complete games.

And the Cy Young and MVP season of the guy who I believe is the best pitcher in baseball:

Justin Verlander 2011 -- 24-5, 251 innings pitched, 34 starts, four complete games.

And this year's Cy Young winners:
David Price -- 20-5 (tied with Jered Weaver for the league lead), 211 innings, 31 starts, two complete games.
R.A. Dickey -- 20-6 (second to Gio Gonzalez's 21), 233.2 innings, 33 starts (plus one relief appearance), five complete games.

In 1968, McLain won 75.6 percent of his starts, and received a decision in 90.2 percent of his starts.

Carlton (on a team that, let's not forget, won 59 games the whole season), won 66 percent of his starts, and got decisions in the same 90.2 percent as McLain. If the Phillies had been any good that year, Carlton probably would have won 30.

For his part, Welch won 77 percent of his starts, and got a decision in 94.2 percent. At the same pace, he would have gotten to 30 with four more starts. If he made 41 like McLain and Carlton, he could have won half of the six extra starts for 30.

Verlander won 70 percent of his starts, and got decisions in 85 percent of them. At that rate, he would have needed to make 43 starts to win 30 games, or nine more starts than he actually made.

And then there are Price and Dickey. To win 30 games, Price would have needed to win all but one of his starts this year, and Dickey would have needed to win all but three. At their winning rates of 64.5 percent for Price and 60.1 percent for Dickey, they would have needed to make 47 and 50 starts, respectively, to get to 30.

Simply put, between five-man rotations and pitchers working fewer innings per start (Dickey, who led the National League in innings pitched, averaged just under 7.1 innings per start, a full inning less than either McLain or Carlton), there aren't enough chances for someone to win 30 games.

And if someone did, believe me, there would be people who believe he shouldn't win the Cy Young Award. After all, wins don't matter.