In 1968, Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain won 31 games en route to snagging the American League Cy Young award.
The 2009 winners — Zack Greinke and Tim Lincecum — won that many games combined.
Since 2002, the National League has crowned just one 20-game winner as its best pitcher.
Lincecum’s 15 wins were the lowest ever for the winner of an award first given out in 1956 to the top pitcher in all of baseball, before it was handed to the best from each league in 1967.
Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright, who finished third in the voting, won a league-high 19 games. When Lincecum won the award in 2008, he also had four less wins than another pitcher in his own league, as Brandon Webb’s 22 victories trumped “The Freak’s” 18.
While you could chalk up Lincecum’s 2008 win as a product of carrying a much lower ERA than Webb — 2.62 compared to 3.30 — that doesn’t work this year.
Wainwright’s teammate, Chris Carpenter, the runner-up to the Giants ace in 2009, won 17 games against just four losses, notched a league-low 2.24 ERA and pitched his team into the playoffs.
Greinke’s Kansas City Royals won only 65 games, and their .401 winning percentage was far and away the lowest for an American League winner.
The Giants won 88 games but missed the postseason, while Carpenter and Wainwright pitched St. Louis to a Central Division title.
Three other AL pitchers won 19 games, and another trio won 17, leaving Greinke tied for seventh in the category.
That leaves me with three conclusions:
1. The 60 voters for this award — 32 in the NL and 28 in the AL, or two votes per team city — don’t vote like this is the Most Valuable Player. Playoff appearances or big-time, stretch-run performances don’t hold extra weight.
2. With the five-man rotation, shorter starts, pitch counts, smaller ballparks and blown saves, pitchers have fewer chances to win and, thus, that part of the equation has been devalued.
Win 15 games and you are in the conversation. Having a lower ERA helps, but wins alone won’t win you this award anymore since starting pitchers really don’t get that many in this day and age.
3. The new glamour stat is the strikeout. Greinke was second in the AL in strikeouts, behind the Tigers’ Justin Verlander (who also won 19 games) but Greinke’s ERA was more than a run lower.
Lincecum’s 261 K’s were an NL-high and 117 more than Carpenter’s 144. Wainwright was fourth with 212. Carpenter’s stats, and ultimately his candidacy, were hurt by the fact that he missed five-and-a-half weeks but the writer’s must love that whiff total.
In 2008, Lincecum’s 265 strikeouts were 82 more than Webb’s 183.
In closing, Greinke was the best pitcher all year in the American League who got countless no-decisions and little to no run support from his Royals teammates. Lincecum faced a similar fate and in the end, I think it was the fact that he improved in many areas from his initial award-winning season that the writers still felt like he was the best guy out there.
But in light of the flame-throwing, rarely-winning triumph of this year’s Cy Young recipients, I think the play on a common phrase I used for a blog about the historic strikeout totals of today’s power hitters works again: “Just swing baby!”