I know you're all keen to see how Brandon Webb fared, so without further delay, purely for the purposes of generating tension, here are the final results, along with how William K and I submitted our ballots:
Jim | William | |
1. | Brandon Webb | Brandon Webb |
2. | Chris Carpenter | Chris Carpenter |
3. | Trevor Hoffman | Roy Oswalt |
Congratulations to Brandon Webb, who managed to survive that last rocky start to become the inaugural SBN Cy Young winner. It was actually a little bit more of a margin that I expected, with Webb getting most first-place and most second-place votes. The strong showing for Oswalt also surprised me, though he topped the poll among Baseball Prospectus writers, and had a very good second half. Speaking of BP, the top three positions exactly matched those in their 15th annual Internet Baseball Awards.
Between William and I, we covered the four pitchers who received significant votage, so don't feel too out of touch with the rest of society. But the burning question coming out of these results is: who was the one person who did not think Brandon Webb was among the top three pitchers in the National League this year? I want to know, so I can ask him what the dark side of the moon was like during the past baseball season...
Over in the American League, this was less a ballot than a foregone conclusion, with Santana the unanimous choice of all voters. It's basically difficult to argue with that, and the BP poll was similarly one-sided: Santana received 1375 first-place votes there, while nobody else got more than eight. Roy Halladay was almost as emphatic a second-place choice, but there was no clear-cut winner for third spot, with eleven other players receiving between one and six points. I would probably have voted Santana, Halladay, Verlander myself.