Matt Cain is having a Tim Lincecum type of year. 9-1, 3 CG, 68k's, 3.81 ERA, WHIP 1.26 with a opponents BA of .241.

It would be exciting of Cain can win the Cy Young a year after Tiny Tim did. Do you guys think it's possible?

Discuss.

Edit: Meant to write All Star in the title of the thread but I failed.

I think it's more likely that Tim repeats.

3.81 ERA and 1.26 WHIP are good but not great numbers. Ditto the .241 BA.

The complete games total in this era is impressive as is the win loss record.

but those are not CY young #s

I don't see any reason why he can't win it, although right now I'd have to give the nod to Billingsley. But it's still pretty early and a lot can happen. Cain is actually getting some run support this year, but can the Giants sustain that for the rest of the season? CY Young voters obviously value wins over pretty much anything else, so the run support is gonna be huge. If wins were not held in such high regard, then as of right now I would think that Dan Haren would be the favorite since he's pretty much leading the world in all the categories you mentioned.

If the awards were handed out right now I would give the award to Lincecum. Regarding the other names mentioned in this thread I would rank them Billingsley, Haren and then Cain.

I know close to nothing about what's happening in the NL, but those numbers are far from amazing. They're good, but when is the last time a pitcher won the Cy Young with a 3.50+ ERA?

His ERA is actually 2.39. I'm not sure why he has it at 3.81. His FIP is 4.04 though so he's due to regress.

Oh. Well then yes, he's having a fantastic year so far. But like you said, he's probably due to even out. .241 Opp. BA isn't stellar either.

If the whip and .BA are right then his ERA will regress eventually (or he will pitch better and keep his ERA down).

Still thats a very good stat line.....he is making a lot of money this year.

The thing that always gets me about Cain is that he's still younger than Lincecum. He will be making a lot of money for the rest of his career.

Lincecum has turned it on and is looking at a repeat of the Cy Young.

His FIP of 2.0 is way ahead of the next Pitcher, Javier Vazquez at 2.59. SJ Merc Blog had a nice blurb about he's a Super 2 so he'll be looking at a huge pay increase next year in arbitration if the Giants and he don't settle on a long term deal. He'll get at least $10M one year earlier - exhibit 1 for why a lot of teams wait til June to bring up their star rookies.

Most teams wait till later in the season so that the player gets to be a Super 2 afaik. If your a super 2 your under team control for 7 years instead of 6. In Tim's rookie year they waited till May 6th to bring him up which isn't that long but was still long enough to make him a super 2.

I think the Giants did a good job handling Tim in the minors and he was definitely major league ready when he was called up and the idea of keeping pitchers in the minors for extended periods of time after they are ready seems like a bad idea to me considering how often pitchers get hurt or their stuff just goes away. I think that if a pitcher is good enough to help your team he should be on it. For position players I think its different but that's how I feel about pitchers.

And I don't see Cain winning the Cy Young this year(or any year after). It seems to be getting down to Lincecum or Haren for who I think deserves to win it.

Matt Cain is one of the best in baseball...my Brewers denied him his 10th win of the season the other day

Where have you been? A blast from the past!

Yeah, Tim was ready to come up - his stats were ridiculous at the minor league level. I just remember that the Giants really had no shot at the playoffs so they could have held off (e.g. Wieters, Price examples) but I'm glad that they didn't.

Took a lot of time away from poker due to financial constraints.

I'm back now

Welcome back!

Cain is down 1-0 in the 7th last I heard. Go Giants.

Haren has a .81 WHIP. He's always been an average second half pitcher, but .81!

Since Cy Young voters aren't smart, though, this mediocre record will probably hold him back. Timmy looks to be in the lead for the repeat right now.

Nice to see Cain finally pitch well while getting run support after the last couple years.

I hope you're not trying to say that Lincecum is undeserving. If I had a vote I'd likely vote for Timmy.

Haren's 7.53 K/BB is damn good, but also much better than he has ever done. His BAA is .194, which is also remarkable but again likely due to regress given his .241 BABIP. That number also helps explain his incredibly low .81 WHIP and 84.2% LOB. This isn't to say he hasn't pitched well, in fact he has pitched very well posting a 2.76 FIP.

Lincecum has been amazing, and I would be shocked if he didn't walk away with the Cy Young again. Using only the numbers I used with Haren, Lincecum has a 4.71 K/BB, .226 BAA, 1.07 WHIP and a 76.2% LOB all while having a BABIP of .322. All of this resulting in a 1.99 FIP.

Didn't mean to come off like that, I was referring more to a Pedro snub, Halladay's and Johan's lack of recognition in Cy Young races because their teams weren't good enough, stuff like that. Timmy is beyond impressive, and extremely deserving.

If you look at Haren's career month-by-month, you'll probably notice (I didn't do this myself, and I'm only basing it on a couple of seasons of fantasy that I followed him) his first half's are amazing, and he generally pitches league-average or a little better than that the rest of the year. Two years ago in Oakland he started off gangbusters, similar to this year, but his ERA rose 18 starts in a row because of how good he was in the first half, and he finished with a 3.32. So I expect a similar trend to emerge this year, but whenever a starter keeps his WHIP under 1.00 for a year, I'm beyond impressed.

Ohhh Timmy

Tim is super god like wicked sick!

Wow, only 2 Giants selected to the All-Star game. And those 2 were pretty much no-brainers.