Tim Lincecum Deserving of Cy Young

On Tuesday, San Francisco Giants' ace Tim Lincecum was awarded the National League Cy Young Award, the award given for the league's best pitcher. In a year where many wonderful pitching performances were turned in, Lincecum outshined the competition largely due to the fact that he held the league's highest winning percentage of any pitcher on a team that finished 18 games below .500.

The recognition of Lincecum as the NL's best was accurate simply for the fact that he recorded a record of 18 wins and only five losses. On a team that recorded the second fewest runs in the National League, Lincecum was relied on more than any other pitcher to produce. Brandon Webb's, the NL's second place vote getter for the Cy Young, was able to garner four more wins but his team, the Arizona Diamondbacks, scored 80 more runs than did the Giants. Lincecum was overpowering throughout the season, leading the league in strikeouts with 265. Johan Santana of the New York Mets, who placed third in the voting, was tied for second in strikeouts and amassed only 206 in 7.1 more innings than Lincecum. Only Lincecum, Cincinnati's Edison Volquez and Los Angeles' Chad Billingsley recorded more strikeouts than innings pitched amongst pitchers who won 15 games or more and Lincecum's ratio of 1.15 strikeouts per inning was the highest in the league.

Lincecum received 23 of the 32 first place votes while playing on a team with a .444 wining percentage. All others receiving votes, Webb, Santana, Milwaukee's CC Sabathia, Chicago's Ryan Dempster and Philadelphia's Brad Lidge all played on winning teams. Brad Lidge was the National League's most dominant closer all season long but Lincecum's walks/hits per innings pitched was even lower than Lidge. If you cast Lidge's total over the same amount of innings that Lincecum pitched, you would see far more base runners. That is significant considering Lincecum is a starter and has to produce for a longer amount of innings. Dempster came into his own this season and helped to solidify the Cubs rotations and really stood out when fellow starting pitcher Carlos Zambrano missed time due to injury. The Cubs however had the most wins in the National League. Their offense was incredible for much of the season. Their team earned run average was over a half a point higher than that of the Giants. The Cubs had Dempster (17 wins), Ted Lilly (17 wins), Zambrano (14 wins) and Jason Marquis (10 wins) and all of this was before Rich Harden was acquired from the Oakland A's to shore up the rotation. Lincecum took on far more of his team's burden than did Dempster and in almost every category, outpitched Dempster.

Then there is CC Sabathia. Sabathia was traded from the American League's Cleveland Indians to the National League's Milwaukee Brewers at around the halfway point in the season. He did have the most dominant second half of the season as any pitcher in baseball. If he hadn't shown up in Milwaukee when he did, the Brewers may very well have missed out on the Wild Card. Had Sabathia been in the National League the entire year, he easily could have walked away with the hardware, no questions asked. However, Lincecum did his damage for his lowly San Francisco Giants all season long and rest assured many of the voters took that into account.

Brandon Webb had the most victories with 22 wins, Johan Santana lead the league in ERA at 2.53, Ryan Dempster came out of nowhere to become the Chicago Cubs ace, Brad Lidge never blew a save in the regular season or in the postseason and CC Sabathia was a truly dominant pitcher in the National League for half of the season. All these pitchers were amazing but all of these teams had a better supporting cast on offense and pitching than Lincecum ever had. He did the best with what he had and turned in a truly spectacular season. Tim Lincecum had the most dominant season overall from start to finish as every other pitcher in the National League and is completely justified as being the recipient of the 2008 Cy Young award.

(Source for Statistics courtesy of ESPN.com)