I would be lying out of my teeth if I told you that I’ve been remotely following Major League Baseball this year. I just learned that the Braves are winning the NL Wild Card race, and I recognized less than half of the starters in the Red Sox lineup three nights ago.

Thus, it seems pretty ridiculous that I’d even attempt to discuss the AL Cy Young race because 1) I hardly know anything about it and 2) I don’t really care. What I am aware of, however, is that this year’s field is strong and a little weird. There are five pitchers that could possibly win the award that is annually given to the best hurler: Boston’s John Lester and Clay Buchholz, the Yankees’ C.C. Sabathia, Tampa Bay’s David Price and Seattle’s Felix Hernandez.

All of those pitchers are big-name players oozing with skill and/or potential. Not one of them comes as that big of a surprise, and all have posted pretty spectacular numbers this season.

Here is where it gets strange. It seems as if the race will come down to Sabathia, Price and Hernandez. Sabathia and Price bring pretty gaudy, but rather standard, numbers to the Cy Young table. The Yankee is 21-7 with a 3.18 ERA and 197 strikeouts, and Price is 19-6 with a 2.73 ERA and 187 strikeouts.

Meanwhile, Felix Hernandez is just 13-12, but has an ERA of 2.27 and 232 freaking strikeouts.

We’re now in an age in sports where statistics are more relevant than ever, and individual talent can and should be measured with numbers. The traditional baseball experts are having trouble wrapping their heads around a potential Cy Young winner with just 13 victories to his name and 12 losses. They see Sabathia and Price, star pitchers on two of the most dominant teams in baseball, as better fits. Well guess what?

Winning isn’t everything.

I’ll be completely honest and say that I don’t know diddly about sabermetrics. WARP, WHIP and PERA sound more to me like animal activist groups than comprehendible measurements of a player’s ability.

What I do know is this: In baseball, you can’t win without scoring. The Rays and the Yankees have no problem in this department, combining for 1,633 runs while smacking 158 and 198 home runs, respectively. Even when Price and Sabathia had off days, they could get the run support necessary for wins. I promise I’m not trying to discount their seasons in any way. It’s just that, in baseball, scoring is a fundamental part of winning. Crazy, right?

So what is Hernandez’s deal? The Seattle Mariners absolutely suck. They are abysmal. Felix’s friends have done little to help his case, registering just 501 runs on a measly .235 collective average. The Mariners are currently the only team in all of baseball with fewer than 100 dingers (99). At 35 games under .500, it’s pretty easy to see why Hernandez has just 13 wins — one earned run is too often not enough to seal a win.

My point here isn’t to advocate for Hernandez — even though, with the limited research I did for this column, he’s the most deserving — but rather to put to rest the conservative view that the only stat that matters for a player in any professional sport is winning. Taking an athlete’s performance out of context to decrease his perceptive value is completely unfair and is an antiquated method for awarding honors.

Still, I have friends who wholeheartedly believe that the most important statistic for determining whether a player is of Hall of Fame caliber is number of championships won. They believe that Robert Horry is a better basketball player and more deserving of a vote into Springfield than, say, a Reggie Miller.

Horry is a career 42.5 percent shooter from the field and just 34 percent from outside the arc. He averaged exactly seven –SEVEN!!! — points per game in just over 24 minutes of play. Compared to Miller, who hit nearly half of his field goals and 40 percent of his threes while averaging 18 points per game, Horry’s Hall of Fame credentials are laughable. Sure, he hit some big shots and has won seven titles, but those came with some of the best teams ever. If you had put me on the 2000 Lakers as the 12th man, they still would have won a title. Let me remind you that in June of 2000 I was nine years old, less than five feet tall and my favorite musical artist was Eiffel 65.

The moral of the story is that regardless of how many rings Horry won, he wasn’t half the player that Reggie Miller was. If you were to pick an NFL quarterback to build a historical fantasy team around, would you choose Super Bowl champion Trent Dilfer, or a loser like Dan Marino? Is Ty Cobb multiple rungs below David Eckstein on the greatest-players-of-all-time ladder?

So give Felix Hernandez his props, award him the Cy Young and get your head out of the sand. This is 2010, and we have the ability to analyze every nanometer of a player’s performance. Championship rings are the ultimate team goal, but they shouldn’t be relied on for determining individual ability.

After all, it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.

Zach Zimmerman’s favorite artist is still Eiffel 65. Ask him why that makes him blue at zachz “at” stanford.edu.