LinCYcum

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Not only was Tim Lincecum's second straight Cy a huge pick-me-up for Giants fans, it was a big vindication for people who have let go of the hidebound notion that wins and losses in a pitcher's record is a leading indicator of talent. It can be, but it doesn't have to be.

As you all probably know, Lincecum won 15 games, and his two main competitors Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright of the Cardinals won 17and 19, respectively. The voters saw through Wainwright's win total, boosted by generous run support, and rightly had a hard time deciding between Carpenter and Lincecum. They were close in many respects.

But the closeness also brought out the bias toward W-L that some writers still harbor. I have a lot of respect for Andy Baggarly, but his blog post Thursday rankled me. He would have voted Carpenter-Lincecum 1-2 if he had had a BBWAA vote:

I do think wins are important, though. You can't completely discard them. Some pitchers just know how to win, whether it's 6-5 or 2-1. That's just as much a skill as anything else. There is a human element to this game that doesn't fit in any computer simulation. There's no stat to measure fortitude. But it's an important component in a performance-driven industry. There's a reason teams spend a lot of time assessing makeup and personality when they research draftees and potential free-agent signings. It matters. Just ask Matt Cain.

I don't know, and I will never know, how you would prefer a pitcher who "knows how to win" by giving up five runs in five innings when his team scores six to a pitcher who "pitches just well enough to lose" (i.e., "a loser") by giving up two runs in eight innings when his team only scores one. It makes absolutely no sense, and that's essentially Baggs's argument.

Granted, he acknowledges a bit earlier that wins "often are misleading" -- very true -- because they put responsibility on a pitcher for "things out of his control." Also true. But when the chips are down -- when Baggs can't decide between Lincecum and Carpenter -- he lets W-L record tip the scale.

I'm not saying Tim Lincecum doesn't have the fortitude to be a big-game pitcher. But I do believe he wasn't at his best in the second half. He didn't get consistent run support. He played for an inferior team, despite its 88 wins. And yes, his ERA demonstrates that he certainly pitched well overall. But at the end of the day, wins and losses are what matters. And a Cy Young Award winner doesn't allow his team, a contending team, to go 7-7 in his starts after the All-Star break.

What? Did Baggs actually look at Timmy's post-ASG game log? Fourteen starts, three of which could be assessed as mediocre or worse. Of the rest, he went at least 7 innings every time, and gave up zero earned runs three times, one earned run twice, two earned runs five times, and three earned runs once.

I'll allow that Carpenter could have been better than Lincecum down the stretch. Carpenter is an impressive, polished, dominating pitcher, and I am open-minded to the possibility that a non-strikeout artist like Carpenter can be as good as a guy who dominates with Ks. It's not as easy, because the pitch-to-contact guy needs great D and more luck so those bleeders and bloopers don't fall in; on the other hand the strikeout guy needs to learn to keep his pitch counts down and go deep into games.

But Baggs isn't making an argument for Carpenter's slight edge of sublimity. He's saying it's Lincecum's fault the Giants didn't win more of his starts, as if somehow he could have willed Aaron Rowand not to suck in the second half. Or Randy Winn to hit more than the occasional single. Or Ryan Garko to find his American League mojo.

Sorry, this has been rant-against-the-beat-writer week for me, but when these guys, God bless 'em, give credence to notions that make no sense, I can't sit still.

Let's move on. Even before the second Cy award, Tim was going to get bankalicious, probably breaking the first-time arbitration record for pitchers. Now there's no doubt, because the award itself is a market-fixing device. It's a codification of perceived value. His agent will say, Tim isn't just statistically the best pitcher in the National League the past two years, he's officially the best. Perhaps the judge will find that superfluous, perhaps not. 

I'd love to see Lincecum sign long-term, but I don't think it will happen unless the Giants can move a big contract. And which one would that be? Uh, yeah.