SABATHIA FINISHES 4TH! (OH, AND ZACK GREINKE WINS THE AL CY YOUNG.)

I love living in New York. And, CC Sabathia is a very good pitcher. 19-8 with a 3.37 ERA and 197 Ks is a season to be proud of. But after being inundated with articles that have titles similar to the one above, I reach over for a Baseball Weekly. Oh, that's right, make that Sports Weekly. I'll skip through the football news.

Did anyone other than a diehard Yankee fan or a person with less than a third of a functional brain honestly think that Sabathia had any chance to win the Cy Young? Now, by all accounts Sabathia is a great teammate and person, but he's not even the best pitcher with 19 wins. Felix Hernandez had superior numbers (19-5, 2.49 ERA, 217Ks). Verlander and Sabathia had comparable seasons, but I suppose Verlander having the most Ks this year in all of baseball (269) meant something to one voter.

Actually Yankee fans should be happy that Mr. Carsten Charles (mmm . . .Charleston Chew) did not win. First, if there are any incentives in CC's contract, the Yankees will not have to add another .025% to their operating budget for the year. I'm sure that savings will go straight back to the fans. If there are no contract incentives, I applaud the man. His contract is far more straightforward than Johan Santana's.

More importantly, we can use this information the next time a Met or Yankee wins a Cy, ROY or MVP award as proof that the New York media bias is not as strong as people think. Though, I'm sure that I'll be reading some permutation of this headline tomorrow:

Santana ties for 17th! Cy Young goes to Cardinal's Carpenter.
or
Santana fails to get a single vote! Oh, and Tim Lincecum wins a second NL Cy Young.

Carpenter gets an edge with the better ERA, W-L record and like Greinke, he makes for a better story, being the Comeback Player of the Year. Lincecum has already won it before while putting up more eye-popping totals: 18-5 with 265 Ks in '08, versus 15-7 with 261 Ks in '09.

However, Lincecum had a pretty impressive season. He had an ERA comparable with Carpenter's with more starts and led the National League in Ks with 261. And batters hit a disgusting .206 against Lincecum. Only Clayton Kershaw who walked twice as many as Lincecum did, had a lower BAA. We'll see if Baseball Writers give it to a kid who has only won 15.

If anyone else, even Wainwright, gets the NL Cy today, it's a total travesty.