American League pitching leaders for the 2014 season

Sunday marked the final day of Major League Baseball’s regular season. Six months seems like sure an ominous amount of time in April and suddenly it’s September and individual leaders have emerged for awards and recognition. Most prominent are the MVP Award and the most prestigious award for pitching the Cy Young Award.

Sep 28, 2014; Seattle, WA, USA; Seattle Mariners starting pitcher Felix Hernandez (34) waves to the fans as he walks off the field after being pulled from the game during the sixth inning against the Los Angeles Angels at Safeco Field. Mandatory Credit: Steven Bisig-USA TODAY Sports

Yet, other recognitions like the player who has the highest batting average wins the batting title and the ERA title goes to the pitcher in each league with the lowest ERA, are also important to note.

Here we’re going to take a look at the best pitching statistics compiled by players in the American League over the course of the 2014 season. There are a lot of famous names in this group of pitching leaders and then there may be one or two that you may not recognize at first but at least they will be recognized for their efforts and accomplishments now.

ERA

Seattle Mariner’s superstar “King” Felix Hernandez led the American League in ERA this season thanks to a strong outing over the weekend as well as a scoring change that was made just prior to the weekend. The scoring change turned what was originally deemed a hit into an error that took four runs off of Hernandez’s record. If not for that along with his strong final outing of the season, Chicago White Sox lefty Chris Sale would have been the likely ERA winner.

Sale finished the year with an ERA of 2.17 while Hernandez came just barely below Sale with a 2.14 ERA on the year. Both A.L. league ERA leaders bested the rest of the league except for the National League’s Clayton Kershaw who has owned the title of the best ERA in both leagues for four consecqutive seasons.

WINS

Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

There was a three-way tie in the wins category with the highest number of wins by any pitcher in the American League being 18. A lesser known name than most who, even so, has been in the Cy Young converstation all year is the Cleveland Indians Corey Kluber who ended the season with a recod of 18-9 and a 2.44 ERA.

Interstingly enought the ERA leaders are not the other two who also led the league in the wins category. Those honors go to last year’s Cy Young Award winner, Max Scherzer of the Detroit Tigers and surprisingly, Jared Weaver from the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Weaver was 18-9 with a 3.59 ERA. The Scherzer reigning Cy Young Award champion who won 21 games in 2013 finished the season at 18-5 with a 3.15 ERA.

Strikeouts

The difference between the American League king of strikeouts this season came down to three. Just three strikeouts came between the winner and the runner up.

Saves

The arrow thrower himself, Seattle Mariners closer Fernando Rodney who is famous for his celebratory arrow shoot into the sky usually after a save, won the race for the most saves collecting 48 on the season. There was one rather amusing incident of Rodney releasing the arrow prematurely during the eighth inning in a game against the Angels and then going on to lose in the ninth much to the elation of Mike Trout and Albert Pujols who took the liberty of shooting arrows of their own after the win.

Despite taking that blown save down in Southern California, Rodney blew only two other saves over the course of the season going 49-51 in save opportunities, giving him a 94.1% success rate which was higher than any other closer in the game.

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