Lincecum Cy Young Winner

San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum has won the National League Cy Young award for the 2nd year in a row. The young ace, backed up his previous season with an even better one. Lincecum improved in opponents batting average against, whip (walk + hits divided by innings pitched), and era while maintaining dominant strikeout totals.

ERA WHIP BAA K
Tim Lincecum 08: 2.62 1.17 .221 265
Tim Lincecum 09: 2.48 1.05 .206 261

So why does Lincecum winning the Cy Young come as a surprise?

The Cy Young winner is determined by a vote by members of the media. While it's supposed to be the award for the best individual pitcher of the season, the Cy Young is often turned into a team award, when the media blindly votes for whomever has the most wins while discounting other stats such as whip, era, opponents batting average against, innings pitched, and strikeouts. All the aforementioned categories give a much better indication of the Cy Young candidate, as an individual. Wins is a reflection of how good the team around a pitcher is and not the abilities of the pitcher himself.

Lincecum had decisively better numbers in whip, era, opponents batting average against, strikeouts, complete games, and complete game shutouts than Adam Wainwright.

ERA WHIP BAA K CG SO
Tim Lincecum 2.48 1.05 .206 261 4 2
Adam Wainwright 2.63 1.21 .244 212 1 0

Despite this Lincecum barely managed to beat him out to win the Cy Young. The reason Lincecum dominated Wainwright in all those categories but still only managed to barely squeak by in the voting is because Wainwright won 4 more games than Lincecum. As a matter of fact Wainwright actually received 12 first place votes for the Cy Young, to just 11 for Lincecum!

The media gets to vote because they are supposed to know who deserves it the most. Seeing results like this time and time again shows they don't know what they are doing. The St. Louis Cardinals were one of the top teams in the National League this season with run support from Albert Pujols and later Matt Holliday. Meanwhile, Lincecum pitched for the one of the worst offenses in all of baseball. The team a pitcher plays for should not have an affect when picking the Cy Young winner. Imagine if Lincecum pitched for the Cardinals this year, and Wainwright had to for the Giants. The pitchers' abilities would be the same, but needless to say Wainwright probably wouldn't even got 3rd place votes, much less 1st place votes.

When looking at the stats, Lincecum should have not just barely squeaked by but won in a landslide. But considering how the media always handles the voting, I'm just happy they ended up picking the right Cy Young, even if the vote was too close for comfort.