Lincecum making case for Cy Young Award
By Andy Lopusnak of Bay Area Sports Drive

There haven't been very many highlights for the 2008 San Francisco Giants.
At 56-72, the Giants are eleven games behind Arizona in the weak NL West.
The Giants have the worst home record in the league and until their recent
success against worse teams like Atlanta and San Diego, San Francisco has a
pretty much forgettable year. Well, except for when Tim Lincecum takes the
mound.

The lanky five-foot-eleven, 170-pound Lincecum has been nearly perfect in
all 27 appearances this season. He's won 14 times, including Friday night's
5-0 shutout against the Padres, lost three times and has been in position
for five more wins if it weren't for the bullpen letting him down. Against
San Diego, he tossed his fourth shutout of the year after going eight
innings and striking out eight. A former Cy Young Award winner was in
attendance of Friday night's game as the Giants honored Vida Blue, who spent
six years with the team. He was the 1971 AL Cy Young Award and AL MVP while
he was with the Oakland Athletics.

In addition, Lincecum tops the majors in strikeouts (200) and leads the NL
in ERA (2.48), but might not even finish in the top three in NL Cy Young
voting due to the Giants' poor win-loss record. That didn't stop Arizona's
Brandon Webb from winning the award two years ago when his Diamondbacks were
76-86. Webb was just 16-8 with a 3.10 ERA and 178 strikeouts. His eight
losses was the tied for the most by a Cy Young pitcher in the last fifteen
years.

With that in mind, Lincecum should have a fantastic chance at becoming just
the second Giants pitcher to ever win the award, joining Mike McCormick who
was 22-10 with a 2.85 ERA in 1967. Also, the NL West has been a hotbed for
Cy Young Award winners recently with seven of the last nine winners,
including the last two.

As of August 23, four NL pitchers have more wins than Lincecum, including
Webb's MLB-leading 19. All four others are on winning clubs. Though Lincecum
has won 27% of his team's victories this year, Webb tops him at 28.3%. In Cy
Young Award history, 1976 winner Randy Jones from San Diego was the last NL
winner with a higher percentage of his team's wins (30%) - that was almost a
decade before Lincecum was born. Since 1976, there have been five NL
pitchers from teams with losing records to earn the Cy Young Award.



In addition to the players with more wins than Lincecum, the stellar
performance of Milwaukee's CC Sabathia, the reigning AL Cy Young winner who
was traded from Cleveland before the All-Star break, has been anything less
than outstanding and unbelievable. Sabathia is 8-0 in nine starts so far
with five complete games, 7.7 strikeouts per game and a 1.60 ERA as a member
of the Brew Crew. If Sabathia continues his stats and the Brewers make it
into the playoffs for the first time since 1982, expect him to become the
first player to win the Cy Young Award in both leagues in back-to-back
seasons.

Cy Young Award or not, Lincecum has established himself as a star pitcher
and the future face of the San Francisco Giants franchise. Fitting since
"The Franchise" is already one of the nicknames of the 24-year old.