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Posted by Derek Carty at 11:30pm

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Keith Law was right…

Just my opinion, but I believe Keith Law was 100% correct with his NL Cy Young ballot. Maybe my opinion is colored because of all the praise I've heaped on Javy Vazquez this year, but I do try to approach everything as objectively as possible. For the record, my NL Cy Young ballot that I turned into Pizza Cutter's Renegade Internet Awards looked like this:
1) Tim Lincecum
2) Javier Vazquez
3) Adam Wainwright

That's identical to Law's, for those keeping score at home. I won't give a full argument, but in my humble opinion, 220 innings of league-leading xFIP should quite easily merit inclusion among the top three pitchers in the NL. At the very least, the guy who puts him on his ballot shouldn't have to be bombarded by asinine e-mails and comments from people pretending to have a clue. If anything, I find it incredible that Law was the only one to give Vazquez a vote of any kind. Sorry folks, but Chris Carpenter really shouldn't have been on the ballot, which makes the cries that he was "robbed" of first place even more ridiculous. If you are making a case for him, maybe you can make one for third place. Maybe.

With all the flak Law's taking, I figured I'd throw my support his way and give you guys my opinion. I could go on an even longer diatribe about the absurdity of the BBWAA, those claiming guys like Law and Will Carroll were wrong because their ballots didn't match all of the other "experts" (despite the fact that their backgrounds and ability to comprehend logic vary greatly), expecting votes to be cast based on conventional wisdom, or the conventional wisdom itself, but there's been so much around the internets about it that I don't really see the need.