NL Cy Young Winner is...................

[HoustonGM]

Let the whining commence.

It was an incredibly close race. Nobody got "jobbed." Anyway:

Many baseball writers downplayed the value of actually winning games, since Lincecum won just 15 times with a decent supporting team.

Wainwright won the most games in the NL, 19. Winning games is the whole point of playing, so that statistic should carry great weight.

I said "let the whining commence" before I got to this part of the article:

But Wainwright didn’t win his 20th game . . . and you saw how the balloting turned out. Adam got jobbed.

Let the complaining begin.

lol

But, anyway, there's this:

Carpenter was left off two ballots, with Javier Vasquez and Danny Haren presumably getting some local love. If Carpenter made those two ballots, he could have won the award.

The ballots that Carpenter was left off of were as follows:

Will Carroll:
Wainwright
Lincecum
Haren

Keith Law:
Lincecum
Vazquez
Wainwright

You put Carp in replace of Vazquez and Haren and he gains 4 points and still finishes 2 behind Lincecum...so...false.

[Jeffy25]

there will be complainers no matter what the vote is no matter what the out come is.

lince earned it. no one got ripped off, st. louis powerful rotation got some awesome recognition out of this.

i am happy with it, so whatever.

[Jeffy25]

sigh

[Jeffy25]

stupidest ****ing article.

i think this is the one hgm was referring to, but i am still hungover

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...3?OpenDocument

[HoustonGM]

stupidest ****ing article.

i think this is the one hgm was referring to, but i am still hungover

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...3?OpenDocument

Too hungover to scroll up a couple of posts? lol

[Jeffy25]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...C?OpenDocument

this i can agree with

[Jeffy25]

the comments are exhausting to read

[Jeffy25]

Too hungover to scroll up a couple of posts? lol

actually.................

[HoustonGM]

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/spo...C?OpenDocument

this i can agree with

Still some silly reasoning:

— Lincecum told reporters that Carpenter deserved to win. That carries more credibility because it wasn't a matter of one teammate deferring to another, as Carpenter and Wainwright did in discussing this Cy Young race.

Why does it carry more weight? Why does it carry any weight at all? How many players, when questioned, are going to say that they should win the award? I'd bet very few. Most are going to be modest about it. What the contenders think should not matter. It's the award for the best pitcher in the league. All that should matter is who pitched the best.

Again, no problem with anybody choosing Wainwright or Carpenter...The three could be ordered in any way, they were so close. It's just that a lot of the reasons that are given really strain credibility.

[KowboyKoop]

It's amazing how little attention Javier Vazquez's year got. 2.87 ERA with a K/BB of 5.41 and a WHIP of 1.02. Nice.

[metsguy234]

Cy Young pick fail.

[dps]

I hear this notion a lot, usually in regards to the MVP voting, but don't quite understand how or if it works in practice.

Well, the MVP usually goes to someone one a team that won its division, or at least contended. In fact, on the occsasions when it's gone to someone on a team that didn't contend, people have gotten upset about it. Well, even on a contending team, it's pretty common that there is one player who has fairly clearly had a better season than any of his teammates, so in deciding who should get the MVP, naturally people are going to compare that player's season to the seasons that the top players on the other contending teams. And some people are going to tend to decide that it should got to the best player on the best team, regardless of whether there were players on other teams who had even better years. But in a year when the best team has 2 players who both had great seasons, but one isn't clearly better than the other, some of those voters who are going to vote for the best player on that team are going to vote for one of the two, and some will vote for the other.

An example might help. I'm not going to use real teams or real players, so that any emotional content is take out of the picture. Imagine a year in which the 3 best team in the league all won 95 or more games, while no other team won more than 88. So the top of the standings look like this:

EASTERN DIVISION

Team A 114-48
Team B 82-80

CENTRAL DIVISION

Team C 97-65
Team D 96-66 (WC)

WESTERN DIVISION

Team E 88-74
Team F 75-87

OK, now let's say that Team A had a RF who went .345/.421/.564 with 35 HR and 37 SB. Team B had a RF who went .352/.466/.598 with 48 HR and 16 SB. Team C had a C who went .320/.404/.519 with 29 HR. Let's also assume that all of these guys are above average defensively, but not at a Gold Glove caliber level. Let's also assume that none of these teams had any other position players who had seasons anywhere near that good. So, who would win the MVP? Well, if all 3 teams had the same W-L record, Team B's RF would get a lot of votes because he had the best raw offensive stats (let's also pretend here that those rather simple stat lines accurate reflect each players real offensive value--we know better, but I don't want to make this example too complicated). The catcher on Team C probably get some votes because that level of production is harder to come by at catcher. The RF on Team A would get some votes from people who over-value steals, but would probably finish 3rd in the voting--again, IF all 3 teams had the same record. But Team A's W-L record is so much better than the other 2 teams, he's going to get some additional votes because of that, and would have a good shot at winning.

But now let's make a change. Let's assume that the 3B on Team A also had an outstanding season, going .338/.465/.522 with 27 HR, 17 SB and GG-type defense. Now what's going to happen is that some of the voters who would have voted for Team A's RF are going to vote for the 3B instead, and make it unlikely for either of them to win the award.

That's basically the theory, anyway. Does it actually happen? Probably, on occasion, but it's hard to say because lots of times we have no real idea what the voters were thinking. However, I don't think it influences any of the other player awards much. In fact, in context of the Cy Young award, while obviously being on a bad team will tend to reduce a pitcher's win total, and the therefore making it harder to win, if the pitcher is able to win 20 on a team that finishes under .500, the team's poor record will probably work in his favor.

[actionjackson]

According to Fangraphs, favourite of a lot of folks on this site the voting "should" have been (by WAR):

1. Tim Lincecum
2. Javier Vazquez
3. Dan Haren

and a big bag of poo for Cliff Lee, because everyone knows it's all his fault he got traded from one league to the other in the middle of the season. No Carpenter, no Wainwright, so really no problem. Could somebody please give those St. Louis Cardinals writers some cheese to go with their whine? Thanks. And metsguy...your troll attempt...fail.

[Jeffy25]

It's amazing how little attention Javier Vazquez's year got. 2.87 ERA with a K/BB of 5.41 and a WHIP of 1.02. Nice.

same with Haren and De Le Rosa

but waino, lince, and carp were better

[HoustonGM]

According to Fangraphs, favourite of a lot of folks on this site the voting "should" have been (by WAR):

1. Tim Lincecum
2. Javier Vazquez
3. Dan Haren

Yeah. I don't really like using WAR much for pitchers though. I give it a cursory look, but I think it's far behind WAR for position players. It's based entirely off FIP - strikeouts, walks, home runs. It doesn't take into account that there are differences in pitchers when it comes to BABIP that aren't just defense-related...it doesn't take into account things like holding baserunners, which generally may not be a big deal but there are cases where it does add a lot of value to a pitcher (see: Mark Buerhle). In a case of two pitchers with identical ERA's and/or VORP or whatever, I'll look to WAR/FIP and give it to the guy who did better there, but I can't give it enough to weight to push Dan Haren over Chris Carpenter for example.

and a big bag of poo for Cliff Lee, because everyone knows it's all his fault he got traded from one league to the other in the middle of the season.

Well, even considering Lee's full season stats, he's behind Greinke and Lincecum, along with guys like Carpenter and Wainwright.