In my earlier post looking at a five-player ballot instead of the three-player ballot that exists today for the Cy Young Award vote, my intent was to adapt the pitching process to mimic the ten-player Most Valuable Player Award scoring.
In doing so, I erred in assigning five points to first place. To most accurately apply the MVP scoring system of 14-9-8-7-etc., which provides a greater differentiation to first place, to the Cy Young process, the proper corresponding scoring breakdown should have been 7-4-3-2-1.
I re-ran the numbers that way. Again the base assumption is that Carpenter would have received two fourth-place votes, the most optimistic case for him short of actual vote changes. The first three columns are the actual votes with the fourth- and fifth-place votes made up by me.
| Hypothetical 7-4-3-2-1 vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | Points |
| Lincecum | 11 | 12 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 152 |
| Wainwright | 12 | 5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 149 |
| Carpenter | 9 | 14 | 7 | 2 | 0 | 144 |
| Vazquez | 0 | 1 | 0 | 30 | 1 | 65 |
| Haren | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 31 | 34 |
Because Adam Wainwright received the most first-place votes, he leapt over Chris Carpenter into second place. However, because he had only one more first-place vote and many fewer second-place mentions than Tim Lincecum, the latter would remain the winner.
In this scoring system, even if Carpenter had magically picked up the controversial second and third-place votes from Keith Law and Will Carroll, the additional net of three points (plus seven points minus four) would have still left him in third place, five points behind Lincecum, 152-147.
| Hypothetical 7-4-3-2-1 vote | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | Points |
| Lincecum | 11 | 12 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 152 |
| Wainwright | 12 | 5 | 15 | 0 | 0 | 149 |
| Carpenter | 9 | 15 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 147 |
| Vazquez | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 0 | 64 |
| Haren | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 32 |
In other words, short of other voters changing their actual votes, there doesn’t seem to be a fair system that would have altered the winner.
I am more than ready to move on and I hope Cardinals fans are, too.
I think if Wainwright gets the 20th…….he wins. Lincecum in a risk taker. He is deserving of recognition. Can’t help but think his career will be short.
As an aside, if Cy was scored 14-9-8 exactly like the top three in the MVP vote, then Lincecum would have been at 334, Wainwright at 333 points with Carpenter at 308…