LJWorld.com

Of all the many mysteries surrounding our national pastime, none is more baffling than the rather peculiar obsession by so many who profess a love of baseball who repeatedly try to turn this wonderfully simple game into a mind-numbing, highfalutin’ brain twister.

So someone is going to have to help me on this one.

When did pitching victories become passe?

Apparently I have been misled for all these years. Here I was thinking that guys who win 18, 19, 20 or 25 games were some kind of special. I always figured that a guy who was able to go out on the mound every five days and pretty much guarantee his team a victory was one of those Cy Young-type hurlers everyone dreams about. Now I find out that I am wrong. Baseball’s new wave of deep thinkers and pseudo-intellectuals have told me so loud and clear with the voting in this year’s Cy Young awards.

What was my greatest fear in the past is now upon us. Armed with their “advanced metrics” and clutching their spread sheets, the new-age baseball voters have officially taken over the sport both in the front offices and behind the scenes. Baseball’s seamheads have won the battle — and I fear are about to forever dominate the old-school vs. new-school war — with the results of this year’s Cy Young voting.

Victories are irrelevant, or at the very least now considered the most grossly overrated statistic available when it comes to evaluating pitchers. I know this now because the National League (Tim Lincecum) and American League (Zack Greinke) Cy Young winners were respectively only 15- and 16-game winners.

Particularly in the NL voting, I am taken aback, because two voters — ESPN.com’s Keith Law and Will Carroll of Baseball Prospectus — did not include Chris Carpenter on their ballots. Law also had the NL’s winningest pitcher, Adam Wainwright (19-8), in third place on his ballot behind Lincecum (15-7) and Javier Vazquez (15-10). And apparently all of baseball geekdom is perfectly cool with this.

I am not particularly outraged by any of this, but I am confused.

Look, I think Lincecum is a heck of a pitcher, arguably the most gifted hurler in baseball. But I always thought the Cy Young was intended to honor the pitcher with the best season, not necessarily to reward the guy who has the best stuff.

And up until Thursday, I kept hearing from folks with far more baseball knowledge than mine that this was a three-man race in the NL between Carpenter, Lincecum and Wainwright. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had since the middle of August with any number of Cy Young voters who were all wrestling mightily with trying to sort through the merits of this talented trio. I was under the belief that Lincecum, Carpenter and Wainwright had dramatically and definitively separated themselves from the pack.

But sometimes I guess we get guys who just feel like it’s their job to show everyone how much smarter they are than the rest of us. Armed with all their sabermetrics, Carroll and Law — and obviously a lot of other voters — were able to determine that winning the most games in the heat of a pennant push was not nearly as important as looking good while losing.