Blog Focus: Tim Lincecum Wins the National League Cy Young
Tim Lincecum won his second straight Cy Young award this season.
While the choice was statistically sound, those who favor wins as a key stat for pitchers have criticized the choice. The sabermetric community went to work defending itself.
FanGraphs: "Five years ago, Lincecum wouldn’t have stood a chance in the voting. He might not have even stood a chance a year ago. But there are clearly members of the Writers Association who are not clinging to the analysis that they grew up with. It isn’t just that they gave Keith Law a vote this year. It’s writers like Larry Stone who have been in the newspaper business for 20 years and are helping to educate their fellow scribes."
Sweetspot: "Yesterday was a strange day, especially (I'm guessing) for Keith Law and Will Carroll. After a few hours of thinking about them, I finally realized, "Hey! That could have been me!" If I'd had the ballot, I probably would have left Carpenter off mine, too. And all those guys on TV and the radio and the Internets would be saying terrible things about me. I've gotten a bit of that over the years, mostly in New York. But never on a national level."
Wezen-Ball: "The travesty here is that Chris Carpenter, who started a whopping 28 games for the Cardinals, was considered to be only the fourth best pitcher in the National League by two voters. Two voters?! Fourth best?! Those two voters should never be allowed to watch another baseball game, assuming they even watched one to begin with. It's a joke."
Big League Stew: "Is San Francisco Giants right-hander Tim Lincecum on a haircut strike until he's no longer the reigning Cy Young? I hope his mane, which appears to be as long as the line of guys headed back to the dugout after strike three, goes down to his belt by July."
Walkoff Walk: "In a bizarre twist, Lincecum didn't even receive the most first place votes, but won the award because more folks thought Wainwright deserved third place than second. Also, Carpenter was left off of two ballots in favor of Javy Vazquez and Danny Haren; had he made those ballots, Carp would have won come a bit closer."
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