Cy Young Award

Even had CC Sabathia pitched well last night, who knows if it would've been enough to lock down a second Cy Young Award?

The groundswell for Felix Hernandez is building. The Mariners ace fired eight more brilliant innings in a 1-0 loss earlier Thursday, dropping him to 12-12 on the year.

Before I begin, I must state two things: I am a Yankees fan and I fully believe in utilizing advanced metrics to determine who deserves certain awards.

What exactly does that mean? That means I think the individual performance should far outweigh aspects of a player's profile that are affected by their team's performance.

The year 2010 has been the year of the pitcher in Major League Baseball. It is filled with no-hitters and perfect games, from very different pitchers all throughout the league. 

Last year, Zack Greinke surprised us all by having a 3 under ERA, and earning 15 wins even with low run support. 

This year, only two pitching candidates are veterans, and one is only 24 years old (guess who it is)!

This has certainly been a surprising and exciting season thus far, and this discussion gives us another reason to love baseball.

Fun fact: Who has the best winning percentage of any pitcher in baseball over the past five seasons?

Here's a hint. It's not C.C. Sabathia, Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Johan Santana, Josh Beckett or any of the other pitchers the East Coast writing establishment loves to go on endlessly about.

It's Jered Weaver at .663.

Weaver has clearly taken his game to another level in the absence of former Angels ace John Lackey, and has managed to single-handedly carry his team through a horrific stretch in the process.

Immediately after Roy Halladay tossed the 20th perfect game in MLB history, and an absolute gem at that—coming against a division rival in a hotly contested game, I logged on to different sports web sites to read about the reaction to such a momentous game.

Halladay's perfect game, aside from being only the second in the history of the Philadelphia Phillies, also comes as the second of the month of May—the first one being thrown by Dallas Braden, the pitcher that had mostly been known as the guy Alex Rodriguez disrespected.

When you think of top pitchers in the game, names like C.C. Sabathia, Tim Lincecum, Zack Greinke, Felix Hernandez, and Johan Santana come up.

Nowhere in the discussion does Philadelphia Phillies ace Roy Halladay come up...except with Phillie fans.

However, after what we've seen from Halladay in the first four games of the 2010 season, is it too early to give him the NL Cy Young Award?

Philadelphia fans would be happy for Major League Baseball to go ahead and do this, while others would be hesitant, especially San Francisco Giants and New York Mets fans.

Last year I predicted that Zack Greinke would win the American League Cy Young award, and I nailed that one.

I thought Cole Hamels would win the National League version of the award, and, well, that didn’t turn out quite like I expected.

The Cy Young Award is an honor given annually in baseball to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, one each for the American League and National League.

That's right. Few will have the courage to agree with me, but I'm sayin' it anyway.

In 2009, the San Francisco Giants' superlative right-hander, Tim Lincecum, won his second consecutive National League Cy Young award.

The East Coast establishment of Major League Baseball watched in horror as the Freak made it two-for-two—two full years in the Show, two Cy Youngs—and did so in dominating fashion:

2009: 15-7, 32 GS, 225.1 IP, 4 CG, 2 SHO, 68 BB, 261 K, 2.48 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, 6.7 H/9, 10.4 K/9, .206 BAA, .271 OBPA, .290 SLGA, .561 OPS

Coming into the 2009 season, many people wondered what exactly Tim Lincecum could do following a first full year in the bigs where he won the National League Cy Young Award.

It's not that we expect a drop off or anything like that, but you have to wonder what a guy can do after winning a Cy Young as a 24-year-old who is just two years out of college.

Well, we found out.

Tim Lincecum: 2009 NL Cy Young Award winner—in back-to-back fashion.

That's what you call getting it done.