The Baseball Bloggers Alliance, a group of 89 bloggers from across Major League Baseball, announced today that Kansas City Royals pitcher Zack Greinke and San Francisco hurler Tim Lincecum had won the Cy Young balloting among its members.
Greinke, who was unanimously selected across the nineteen blogs that voted for the American League winner, fashioned a dominating 2.16 ERA with 242 strikeouts while putting up 16 wins for a Royals squad that won only 65 games. Greinke’s Cy Young case was built on non-traditional statistics, as he was only tied for seventh in the league in wins, but led in categories such as defense-independent ERA, component ERA, and WHIP along with the more traditional ERA.
“He’s a magician with the baseball and when he’s focused and puts his mind to it, there are games when he’s untouchable,” wrote Noel of The Tribe Daily. Jeff of Royally Speaking was blunt, saying “Zack Greinke was the best pitcher in baseball all season long.”
In becoming the first player to garner a unanimous selection in BBA history, Greinke tabulated 90 total points. Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners came in a distant second with 37 points.
The National League selection was a little more varied, though not at all more dramatic. Lincecum, who won the baseball writers’ Cy Young in 2008, put up a league-leading 261 strikeouts in 225.1 innings and finished second to Chris Carpenter with a 2.48 ERA. As with Greinke, his case for the award was not fashioned on the traditional bedrock of wins either, as he only was credited with 15, four shy of the league leader.
“He has the filthiest stuff in either league and has turned himself into a rock star in San Francisco,” stated Matt from Feeling Dodger Blue, who overcame the innate Dodger/Giant rivalry to cast his vote for Lincecum. ”It seemed a daunting task to improve on what Lincecum did last season, but he did it,” said Bill from Crashburn Alley.
Lincecum totaled seventeen first-place votes from the twenty ballots cast and finished with 88 points overall. Carpenter, the league leader in ERA and one of the pitchers ahead of Lincecum in the win category, finished second with three first place votes and 47 total points.
The complete voting results are as follows (first-place votes in parenthesis):
American League
Zack Greinke, Kansas City (19) 95
Felix Hernandez, Seattle 37
Roy Halladay, Toronto 22
Justin Verlander, Detroit 14
CC Sabathia, New York 2
National League
Tim Lincecum, San Francisco (17) 88
Chris Carpenter, St. Louis (3) 47
Adam Wainwright, St. Louis 23
Javier Vazquez, Atlanta 21
Dan Haren, Arizona 1
The Baseball Bloggers Alliance was formed in the fall of 2009 to encourage cooperation and collaboration between baseball bloggers of all major league teams as well as those that follow baseball more generally. As of this writing, the organization consists of 89 blogs spanning 28 of the 30 major league squads as well as those that focus on general baseball writing.
The BBA is organized under a similar structure as the Baseball Writers of America, where blogs that follow the same team are combined into “chapters” and only two votes from the chapter on an award are counted. Those blogs that are not dedicated to a specific team are allowed to vote on either the American League or National League award, but not both.
Ballots are posted on the respective blogs and tabulated on a 5-3-1 point scale for first, second and third. In the interest of transparency, links are given below for the ballots. Team affiliation is in parenthesis.
American League
The Blue Jay Hunter (Toronto)
Royally Speaking (Kansas City)
Seamheads (General)
SoDo Mojo (Seattle)
The Sporting Hippeaux (General)
The Tao of Stieb (Toronto)
Tremendous Upside Potential (Chicago)
The Tribe Daily (Cleveland)
Wezen-Ball (General)
Why I Like Baseball (New York)
National League
Astros County (Houston)
Bernie’s Crew (Milwaukee)
Bullpen Brian (Chicago)
Cincinnati Reds Blog (Cincinnati)
Crashburn Alley (Philadelphia)
Disgruntled Mets Fan (New York*)
Dodgerfan.net (Los Angeles)
Feeling Dodger Blue (Los Angeles)
Friar Forecast (San Diego*)
Quevedo At The Buffet (Milwaukee)
Raise the Jolly Roger (Pittsburgh*)
Red Reporter (Cincinnati)
Stan Musial’s Stance (St. Louis)
Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke? (Pittsburgh*)
*Both the Pittsburgh and San Diego chapters agreed to pool their votes, take an average, and submit that average as both of their official votes. The New York chapter agreed to allow one blogger to vote and for that ballot to count as both their official votes.
Any questions or inquiries about the voting or the organization can be directed to Daniel Shoptaw at baseballbloggersalliance@gmail.com.
I am curious about something. It was my understanding that the baseball writers select the Cy Younc awards. Is this correct? I ask because your press release states you vote for them.
The baseball writers do vote on the official Cy Young Award. We were selecting our own Cy Young winners. In the future, we will be changing the name of the award to avoid any confusion with the awards most people are familiar with.