The press release is here.
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.

Ron,

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!

The Cy Young award isn’t supposed to be for the pitcher with the best stats, be it Wins or WAR. It’s supposed to be for the best pitcher of the year, and anyone who thinks Carpenter wasn’t really should learn something about the game.

It’s no secret that the majority of saber-friendly writers/anaylsts wanted Lincecum to win in order to prove that sabermetrics is the only way anyone should vote.

Leaving Carpenter off to ensure Lincecum won is no different than the voters who picked Colon (or anyother pitcher) because of his win total.

You can’t take the moral high ground when you’re standing in the gutter next to those you profess to be better than.

@Ron

So how do you determine who is best pitcher without relying just a little on the stats?

Ron, doesn’t having some of the best stats indicate that a player was probably among the best pitchers, if not THE best pitcher?  And if “It’s no secret that the majority of saber-friendly writers/anaylsts wanted Lincecum to win in order to prove that sabermetrics is the only way anyone should vote,” then why haven’t I read this?  I visit many saber-based sites, and I have never seen anyting about your “Lincecum Conspiracy”.  I will certainly acknowledge that I may have just missed it.

Apparently, I also need to learn something about the game.  Maybe Ron speaks to the St. Louis “lunatic fringe” that KLaw has mentioned before (on an historic Shyster comment thread, IIRC).

You guys are right. Stats are all we need to know who the best player is. 

Like, Pablo Sandoval is the best 3rd basmeman in the game, because he had the highest OPS.  So Sandoval is better than Rodriguez, Reynolds, Longoria, Wright, Zimmerman, and Jones.

Except another stat will say one of those guys is better than Sandoval. Anohter stat will say another guy is better. And so on and so forth. So how do we actually know who the best 3rd baseman in baseball is?

But you guys have helped me a lot. I’ve seen the light. I know longer have to waste my life actually watching the games. I can just read the stat sheets every day and become an expert.

@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?

Per Will Carroll @ BP:

“Chris Carpenter’s time away for injury tipped the scales over to Adam Wainwright between the two of them, that despite the value arguments; consistency and availability are two traits that I don’t think get measured well, but they have clear value for a pitcher.”

He’s acknowledging that he thinks Carpenter has the better stats.  Carroll left him off the ballot simply because Carpenter lost value by missing starts. 

This is the weirdest conspiracy ever: Carroll acknowledges that Carpenter the best stats then votes for Wainwright in order to ensure that Lincecum wins because he has the best stats.

Ron,

This:

You don’t actually have a clue.

Followed by this:

But keep on making judgements about me based on a comment/opinon I made.

...is sweet, delicious, sweet irony. Mmmmm

Ron,

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.