11-2, 1.65 ERA, .92 WHIP, 128K, 25BB, in 17 Starts, 141.2IP, 7CG, 3 SHO

Here’s Lincecum:

18-5, 2.62ERA, 1.17 WHIP, 265K, 84BB in 33 starts, with 227IP, 2CG and 1 SHO

Basically, in half a season Sabathia tripled Lincecum’s CG and SHO numbers, crushed him in WHIP, ERA and K:BB (5.12 to 3.15), beat him in winning %, and was a key cog for a playoff team under intense pressure, pitching extremely well on 3 days rest his final 3 turns through the rotation – 21.2IP, 2ER, 20K, 4BB, 15H (.88 WHIP).

I think there’s a legitimate case to be made that, half season or no, Sabathia deserves the NL Cy Young

It is a myth that Tim Lincecum didn’t receive offensive support this season. The last time I checked, the Giants’ offense had scored about a run and a half per nine innings more for Tim than for its other pitchers, including Matt Cain with the second-worst support in the game.

Where Tim was let down was primarily by his bullpen, which blew five wins for him. Intriguingly, the Mets blew seven of Johan Santana’s wins, while the Diamondbacks’ relievers blew only one win for Brandon Webb. If none of the three bullpens had blown a single win for these top three guys, each would have won 23 games.

Tim was let down by a questionable balk call, which cost him his first win of the season. He was let down by his defense in two of his final three games, with a horrible misplay by Eugenio Velez — an infielder making only his fourth start in the outfield — and an error on Rich Aurilia that was changed to a hit after the game costing Tim four earned runs and the ERA title.

But Tim wasn’t let down by the Giants’ offense, who uncharacteristically supported him well.

Tim finished first in the NL in strikeouts, SLG against, OPS against, batting average against, batting average against with runners in scoring position (.164 entering his final start), strikeouts per nine innings, homers against, homers per nine, and winning percentage.

He was second in ERA and wins.

Sadly, I think Johan Santana — based in New York — will win the award. Clearly I think Tim deserves to become only the second NL pitcher to win the award in his first full season (with the other being Fernando Valenzuela).

It’s like people saw Santana not put up an ERA in the 1’s for the first month he was in the NL and wrote him off for the year. I would have no problem penciling him in right behind Lincecum.

I thank AAP212’s analysis is right on. And I think Brandon Webb’s 22 wins will, sadly, make it a three-way race, with CC Sabathia finishing fourth, then Ryan Dempster and Edinson Volquez.

There is no question Tim Lincecum didn’t pitch in games as meaningful as the other top Cy Young Award candidates. But no pitcher was as great a stopper as Tim, who went an amazing 14-1 after Giants losses.

Oh, and Tim went 13-1 in games in which he received three or more runs of support.

When Tim pitched at AT&T, it wasn’t merely a ball game; it was a rock concert. Tim yielded very few important runs, pitching with incredible consistency.

It’s extremely close. I think Lincecum will win because the talk has been mostly about him the last two months but Santana has been amazing. Both pitchers, with proper offensive/bullpen support would have won 20+ games this year. Both are high on the strike out list with low ERA’s. Honestly, I think it’s going to come down to two things:

a) Lincecum’s much higher strikeout total makes him look for “dominant”
b) Johan’s ERA is only slightly lower and he’s (currently) one win behind Lincecum.

Not Braun or Pujols or Howard? They’ve all been better, except maybe for Howard. But Howard’s been better in HR’s and RBI’s. And Braun had a huge impact with the Brewers. He was a huge part of the reason they just made the playoffs.

CC Sabathia was the best pitcher in all of baseball after being traded to the Brewers. But he threw less than half his games in the NL and didn’t pitch his very best ball down the stretch.

If CC had done what he did for the Brewers all season long, we wouldn’t have much of a discussion going on here. But aside from CC in the second half, Tim Lincecum was the NL dominator all season long.

Santana could get it wrongly.
Hes got more starts and innings than Lincecum, a better ERA and an equal (actually ever so slightly better) ERA+ and there isn’t a big difference in the W-L (if thats looked at)

I meant to say that Harden is as good.

i didn’t realize Harden has been THIS good for the Cubs. I thought he had been merely “great” after the trade not “248 ERA+ great”.

Of course, as others have pointed out, not even making the 150 IP mark in a year pretty much disqualifies you from consideratioin

I find K’s divided by walks+hits to be a useful relative index of dominance. In running numbers of the same pitchers across seasons, it is an index that has good predictive power for the next year.

I tried two winters ago to get John to make Tim his top pitching prospect, but he insisted on ranking the younger Phil Hughes and Homer Bailey higher.

I believe that order has since changed slightly. :)

What, and Johan’s three day rest shutout to keep the Mets in contention is garbage? Cy Young should have no bearing on your team’s eventual finish. If so, Lincecum wouldn’t even be in the discussion.

Tim Lincecum threw the most pitches of any pitcher in the NL, and I read that his 138 pitch peak was the most pitches thrown by anyone in several years. A few starts before he had tied the majors’ season high at that time with 132.

And the Giants didn’t move him up gently. The 132 was up from a previous career high of 122, while the 138 was up from the 132.

Not only would I have taken Tim out an inning earlier in six or eight starts, I also would have had him pitch in his normal turn on Wednesday of the final week instead of moving him up to Tuesday so he could pitch the last day of the season.

Tim pitched a phenomenal four-hit, two-walk, 13-strikeout game in his final start, but in that Tuesday start, he yielded a season-high six earned runs, although two were originally scored as unearned and then changed to earned after the game.

Tim’s 265 strikeouts came within two of the highest ever thrown by the Giants’ greatest pitcher of all time, Christy Mathewson. Had the Giants not trailed 1-0 and had to pinch hit for Tim, he likely would have reached or broken Christy’s total.

Tim broke Jason Schmidt’s SF Giants season record in his penultimate start, and he did pass Mathewson’s second best of 259 in that last game, even though he went just seven innings.

There’s a huge difference between ignoring wins and actively advocating against players who have them. Many people, myself included, do the former. I’ve never even heard of anyone doing the latter.

There isn’t a single even pseudo-legitimate pitching stat which suggests that Webb is even remotely in consideration for “best pitcher in the league”.

You’re honestly going to sit there and tell us all that it should be “Webb hands down” Thats ridiculous. Part of me even thinks that you really dont believe what you just wrote.

I’m not going to argue the value of “Wins” in evaulating pitchers in fact I agree with you to some extent. There is something about a pitcher that is able to win and it is damn hard to get to 20 especially nowadays. But if we are going to agree on the validity of wins then shouldnt we also agree on the validity of losses. Both wins and losses are rightly or wrongly more dependent on team involvement than other stats and if you are going to argue for wins then I am going to argue for losses. As already said getting to the 20 Win mark is impressive which is why Webb was the only one to do it in the NL and on the flip side who was the only pitcher (min. 120 innings) to not exceed the 5 loss mark? Lincecum.

Also you talk about Webbs other stats as if they help make a case for him. Besides wins he trails either Lincecum and/or Santana in: ERA, SHO, IP, HR, HBP, BB, K, WPCT, TB, SB, WHIP, SLG, OBA, AVG, K/BB, BB/9, K/9, H/9 or in other words nearly every “traditional” or non sabre stat there is.

I believe that FIP shows how much Tim Lincecum deserves the award over Johan Santana, but giving the award to Brandon would likely be denying BOTH the top two candidates. Almost the only thing Brandon had going for him was wins — and he lost three straight important games late in the season, pitching poorly in each.

Even Brandon himself said that wins shouldn’t be the top criterion. You’re touting a guy who himself says you’re wrong.

Sutcliffe won 16 games for the Cubs. The only other real contender for the Cy Young that year was Gooden with 17. So the wins weren’t important.

Sabathia only won 11 games. That’s a huge different between a guy who won 18.

I try to be objective about Tim. Who else has told you that despite conventional wisdom’s stating that he hasn’t gotten support from those lousy Giants bats, indeed he has received GOOD offensive support?

And until I stumbled across the HUGE difference in FIP, I stated that I didn’t think it would be TOO unfair that Johan receive the award.

Bullpen support was a different story. Brandon’s bullpen yielded only 33% as many runs in his relief as he himself yielded. In Johan’s starts, the Mets’ bullpen yielded only 45% as many runs as Johan himself in Johan’s starts. In Tim’s starts, the Giants’ bullpen gave up 65% as many runs as he.

Your comment that I have a hard on for Tim is completely unacceptable and inaccurate. No question I like the guy a lot, but I am also one of the few who criticizes what is a very good but less than perfect pitcher.

If you would like me to post my criticisms of him, I would be happy to oblige. You’ll probably like them better than when I post them for Giants’ fans. :)

The first three points you made about Johan, Metty, were very good ones.

But #4 and #5 were dead wrong, and I would say that Tim offset #6 by throwing 121 pitches in his first start after being hospitalized the day of the All-Star game and not missing a start when he left after 4 1/3 innings of a game when he was hit with a line drive to the knee.

If it weren’t for the HUGE FIP difference (and things such as Tim’s 14-1 record after a Giants loss, his having allowed less than HALF as many homers as Johan — including just THREE on the road compared to Johan’s 11, and NL batters saying that Tim is the best pitcher they faced, I would say the race was really close.

By the way, you incorrectly cited Tim’s home field park advantage without mentioning that he posted a 2.22 road ERA compared to Johan’s 3.00.

I think it is so selfish and stupid for someone to say that a thread should be euthanized. Because you have lost interest, we should interfere with the free speech of others?

good at preventing runs and worse at eating innings

I do think Johan deserves extra credit for that. Do we know when he injured it?

I will say that I think this falls into the area of icing on the cake as opposed to the cake itself, but I certainly don’t think it should be ignored. And the longer he had to pitch with the injury, the more credit he deserves.

By the way, while I haven’t gotten behind Johan quite to the point I did with Pedro Martinez, Pedro’s run from 1997 to 2003 ended with the latter season. Since then Johan has been the man. Since FIP has been shown to be a better predictor of future ERA than ERA itself, I would say that Tim Lincecum’s posting a FIP that was incredibly enough nearly nine-tenths of a run lower than Johan’s could indicate another passing of the mantle could be coming.

What a wonderful pitcher Johan has been and continues to be, though. Along with Roberto Clemente, easily the two best Rule 5 guys ever.

Counting Roger Clemens, we could easily be looking at 10 or more Hall of Fame pitchers pitching right now. This would seem to be one of the top pitching eras (not ERA’s :) ever. I’m not sure anyone has ever been better for peak than Pedro, and Roger has had one of the ten best pitching careers of all time, with Greg Maddux not far behind. And Randy Johnson hasn’t exactly been chopped liver. Not to mention Mariano Rivera among the relievers.

The Giants threw Lincecum out there for 227 innings, and not on 100 pitch a game pitch counts, either. Lincecum didn’t rack up complete games because, like most pitchers, he couldn’t throw few enough pitches per inning, not because the Giants were protecting him.

When it comes to complete games, Sabathia and Halladay are freaks; I don’t think anyone else comes close.