Cy Not In The Cards

(OK, I’m sure that’ll be a headline used by just about everyone.  Nobody’s ever said I was creative.)

The news is out, and Tim Lincecum won another Cy Young, beating out Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright.  It was a ridiculously tight race, with Lincecum beating Carp by 6 points and Waino by 10, with Wainwright getting the most first place selections.

It was a race that any of them could have won.  If the Cardinals don’t blow the lead in Wainwright’s last game and he gets to 20, would that have made a difference?  All it might have taken was to sway one or two voters.  We’ll never know.

Derrick Goold was kind enough to let people in on his vote.  Like Bernie’s article this morning, it lays out a strong argument.  No matter who won this race, the other two were not going to be robbed.

Which is even more surprising that the BBWAA went with Lincecum, to some degree.  I’ve thought that, with younger sportswriters and more open minds, the writers were coming to the point where they were making less egregious errors.  (Then they gave Chris Coghlan the ROY, so I wasn’t so sure.)  This is the kind of race that, in years past, would have gone to Wainwright because he had the most wins.  Not so much today.  While some of the uberstatmeisters might have torn their garments if a Cardinal had one, claiming Lincecum was decisively better, most recognized the closeness of the race.

What I’m trying to get at is, more than Zack Greinke’s selection in the AL, the fact that Tim Lincecum won the NL award is an indication the BBWAA is changing as an organization.  As Cardinal fans, we wish they could have changed a year later.

Daniel Shoptaw is the founder of “C70 At The Bat,” where he regularly writes about his beloved St. Louis Cardinals.  You can find more of his work here