Straining while carrying the Cubs.

On Monday, Randy Wells pitched another solid game for the Cubs in their 4-2 win over the Reds which propelled them into first place in the AL Central.

Wells pitched 7.1 innings, allowing one earned run while striking out five. More importantly for Wells and his candidacy for NL Rookie of the Year, Kevin Gregg and Carlos Marmol didn’t screw it up for him.

Wells notched his eighth win in his last nine starts and lowered his ERA to 2.73.  This kind of performance should be closing the door on the rest of the NL competition but Wells has the bullpen and the slow-starting offense to thank for keeping him from running away with the NL ROY award.  If the rest of the team had performed up to reasonable expectations in his first month in the league, Wells would be sitting with a 12-3 record rather than his ho-hum 8-4.

As it stands right now, Wells is second on the team behind Ted Lilly in wins, and depending on how much longer Lilly is out, could wind up leading a hot playoff team in wins heading into the bullpen. Add to that the fact that Wells has had only 3 starts where he has failed to go 6 innings, and racked up 12 quality starts in 16 outings.

Of teams that remain competitive in their divisions (See ya Andrew McCutchen) Wells’ competition appears to be Colby Rasmus (STL) and J.A. Happ (PHI and former Northwestern Wildcat).

Looking at the head to head comparisons with Happ, here’s how Wells stacks up.

W-L record (Overall Team Record)

• Wells 8-4 (57-48)
• Happ 7-2  (59-45)

ERA

• Wells 2.73
• Happ 2.97

K/BB

• Wells 65/23
• Happ 120/55

While Randy Wells isn’t the big strikeout pitcher (which sometimes hurts in these competitions), he compares favorably to Happ. Throw in that Happ maybe demoted to the bullpen when Pedro Martinez is added to the Phillies’ rotation and Wells might have the opportunity to lock down the NL Rookie of the Year award.

In short, Black Jack believes for a team to be considered a legitimate championship contender, a team must have the following three things:

A Cy Young candidate or two;

An MVP candidate in the batting order (he also recommends two or three other guys who would place in the top 15 of voting); and

A Rookie of the Year candidate (he adds that this requirement may be filled by a young player having a breakout year).

While at first glance this criteria seem to be a little too demanding, I’d argue that having one of the first two categories will definitely make your team competitive come playoff time, and having a young player playing well is just gravy.

The recent performances of the South Side’s Gordon Beckham and the North Side’s’ Randy Wells got me thinking how we could assess either team’s potential in the postseason this year given the fact that both teams have players who should legitimately be in the ROY conversation.

Before we look at both teams this year, it may be interesting to see how the last four World Series winners fared in this framework.

Team: Categories (places in voting for each award)

2008 Philadelphia Phillies:

1. Brad Lidge (4th);
2. Ryan Howard (2nd), Brad Lidge (8th), Chase Utley (14th)[Jimmy Rollins had been MVP in 2007 too]; and
3. Could argue that Cole Hamels had breakout in sustaining success from 2007.

2007 Boston Red Sox:

1. Josh Beckett (2nd);
2. David Ortiz (4th), Mike Lowell (5th), Beckett (22nd); and
3. Pedroia (AL ROY), Daisuke Matsuzaka (4th) and Hideki Okajima (6th).

2006 St. Louis Cardinals

1. Chris Carpenter (3rd);
2. Albert Pujols (2nd),  Chris Carpenter (19th); and
3. Adam Wainwright, wasn’t in the running but definitely shone brightly on the biggest stage coming out of the bullpen.

2005 Chicago White Sox (The Astros, who were swept, fit even better into this theory, although it was a weak year for the NL)

1. Mark Buehrle (5th), and Jon Garland (6th);
2. Paul Konerko (6th), Scott Podsednik (12th) and Jose Contreras (T-27th); and
3. Tadahito Iguchi (4th), could also argue for Bobby Jenks here.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at the ROY candidacies of both Randy Wells and Gordon Beckham, along with which teams might also fit this criteria for post season success.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear who you think would be good candidates to fill categories #1 and #2 for both the White Sox and the Cubs this year.