Lincy It Is!

If you happen to be reading this you probably already know Tim Lincecum won the Cy Young Award today. Timmy had 18 wins on a terrible Giants team (leading the NL in winning %), was 2nd in ERA (2.62), and first in strikeouts (265). Obviously impressive numbers, numbers that are deserving of a Cy Young Award. Timmy edged out Johan Santana who had a slightly better whip (1.148), compared to Lincecum's (1.172), and a better ERA (2.53) but had a slightly lower ERA+ at 166 compared to Lincecum's 167. With those numbers it's really a toss-up, and the voters decided on Wins, which they seemingly do way too often. Luckily they didn't vote for Webb who although had more wins at 22, was worse in every other peripheral important category. I personally thought that Johan's end of season where he won his last 9 decisions and pitched a shutout on his last start to keep the Met's chances alive would be enough to give him the award. The Met's bullpen woes clearly hurt Johan's chances and if he snuck out 2 more wins that the bullpen didn't blowI think he would have won. I'd be lying if I said Johan definitely should have won or that I'm mad that Lincecum won, but if I had to vote Johan's performance to end the year proved he was worth his millions abd proved him worthy of another Cy Young.

As an interesting little side note, today I heard Peter Gammons have a good point about this awardearlier, so much was expected out of Johan Santana with his $100m+ contract that voters held him to a higher standard. Obviously that's pathetic for the voters, but I think its true. Everyone expects Johan to be the best pitcher in the league, and when someone else is even with him, in this case Lincecum, that person will get the edge. I could see this playing out with the NL MVP voting with Pujols. I will get into it more when it's time for that, but since Pujols is supposed to be unreal, when he is unreal it goes unnoticed. Let's hope they get it right, but for now let's see if Halladay can make a case against Cliff Lee tomorrow.