I don’t have a link yet, but people are talking about it already. He’s a fine choice. Great year. I probably undervalued the fact that he had more innings than Carpenter, so no arguments here.
Given that he has a court date on a controlled substance thing coming up soon, be prepared for the most boring celebration party of all time.
No respect for winning the games. LaRussa cost Wainwright at least 3 wins – Bad choice – especially since Lincicum decided to smoke a doobie!! Writers? Geez!!!!!!!!!!
It wasn’t a walkover for Lincecum, he got 11 first place votes, Chris Carpenter 9, and Adam Wainwright 12. Lincecum got a total of 100 points to CC’s 94, and AW’s 90.
Nice. Leave the best pitcher in the NL off of your ballots to insure the saber-metric favorite wins.
The BBWAA guys might not be the best at voting, but the saber friendly guys don’t have the right to accuse them of manipulating the vote anymore.
There’s justification for not including Carpenter. He wasn’t in my top-three, but then again, my opinions don’t particularly matter.
The reason he didn’t make my top-three: he made four less starts and pitched 30 fewer innings than Lincecum, and six less starts and 40 fewer innings than Adam Wainwright. Durability counts for something, and it certainly has an effect on a player’s value.
FWIW, according to FanGraphs, Lincecum was worth ~2.5 WAR more than both Carpenter and Wainwright.
Don’t forget about Javier Vazquez!
That’s interesting about Carroll, but he actually didn’t vote for Lincecum according to his article over at BP.
It seems like somebody who was rigging their vote to make sure Lincecum won would have voted for Lincecum. Carroll voted for Wainwright.
So how do you determine who is best pitcher without relying just a little on the stats?
@Ron – Aren’t stats used to reveal who the best players are? I kinda thought they went hand in hand. How else do you judge players? Clutchiness? Or some other Tim McCarver catch phrase?
I personally couldn’t make up my mind between TL, CC, or AW so what do I know?
You don’t actually have a clue. But keep on making judgements about me based on a comment/opinon I made. Of course, that allows me to judge you in return.
@Ron – what’s your rationale for concluding that Carpenter was the best pitcher in the NL this year?
Also, please address – if Will Carroll was part of a sabermetric conspiracy to make sure that Tim Lincecum won the Cy Young Award this year, shouldn’t he also have voted for Lincecum and not Wainwright?
I didn’t realize the enjoyment of watching a baseball game AND understanding the underlying metrics of performance were mutually exclusive.
You don’t actually have a clue.
But keep on making judgements about me based on a comment/opinon I made.
As Neyer has often written, that’s why we look at more than one statistic.
As for best 3rd baseman, that Michael Young is pretty gritty, no?
You are assuming alot of prescience on the part of the Law. Wainright was certainly a viable candidate. In fact, more people voted Wainright first, over Carpenter and Lincecum. If Law was trying to guarantee Lincecum a victory, he should have left both Wainright and Carpenter off the ballot. Law more than justified his vote in his blog. Just because you disagree with his rationale, doesn’t make it wrong, or provide evidence of some sort of conspiracy of one.
A voter could justify leaving Carpenter off the list pretty easily to me: he didn’t pitch 200 innings. 30 more innings of very slightly-worse ball is a pretty big deal. Someone has to pitch those innings. Would you rather have Tim Lincecum doing it or the Cardinals’ middle relievers?
Oh, Ron, this makes me sad.
Of COURSE best stats = best pitcher. That’s different from saying best arbitrarily selected single stat = best player, like in your example (Sandoval has the best OPS and is therefore the best 3B). Taken altogether, the stats show—at least to me—that Lincecum was a better pitcher than Carpenter. And you can make a strong case that Vazquez and Haren were better than Carpenter, too.
regarding Lincecum’s alleged infraction: meh. so he recreationally enjoys a drug that has been scientifically proven to be generally less harmful than alcohol – a drug that is available at every convenience store.
screw the nylon industry, circa 1939, and screw Nancy Reagan too.