Lincecum Wins Consecutive CY Young Awards

Tim Lincecum has done something that no other Giants pitcher in history has done, win two consecutive Cy Young Awards. In fact, the only two NL pitchers to ever win the award in consecutive seasons were Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax.

It was definitely a close call though, and by no means did the 25 year-old ace run away with the award. Adam Wainright, who led the NL in wins with 19 and innings pitched with 233, received 12 first-place votes, one more than Lincecum's 11. However, Lincecum received more second place votes and more total points. Chris Carpentar finished second in the voting with Wainright coming in third. Atlanta's Javier Vazquez and Arizona's Dan Haren also received votes. Lincecum only finished the year with 15 wins, but his 261 strikeouts, 1.05 WHIP and his .206 BAA made up for the lower win total. The lanky one who most call "The Freak", but I call "The Franchise", struggled a bit down the stretch and went just 1-3 with a 3.60 era in September. I thought at the time that his slow finish may hurt his chances for the award, but he did enough in the first half of the year (10-2, 2.33 era before all-star break) to allow some sputtering towards the end. The scary part about this kid is that he's still getting better and better and probably a couple of years away from his peak.

I think all Giants fans knew there was something special about this kid when he first started dominating in the minors after the Giants drafted him, but I don't think anyone could have predicted 2 Cy Young awards within his first 2 full-seasons at the major league level. The future of the Giants pitching staff is about as bright as it can be at this point. Matt Cain didn't get any Cy Young consideration this year, but I really think this is the year the Cain broke out and realized that he could be a dominant pitcher in this league. He's been well above league average over the last couple of seasons, and has never been an easy assignment for opposing batters, but this year he seemed to really learn more how to pitch rather than trying to just throw the ball by every batter. Between Cain and Lincecum, the Giants have a duo of right-handed power arms that should contend for Cy Young award for the next 10 seasons. They'll also soon be joined by a left-handed phenom as well, as Madison Bumgarner could do in 2010 what Linceucm did in 2007 (become a full-time member of the rotation by May-June). And these 3 guys could form the best young rotation in all of baseball.