FanSided MLB 2012 Awards: NL Cy Young: R.A. Dickey

For many fans, the end-of-season player awards are one of the biggest highlights of the long MLB offseason. There’s just one problem: the most deserving players don’t always win. Though the BBWAA generally does a better job with the MVP and the Cy Young than with, say, the Hall of Fame, their picks for the coveted hardware are often questionable, if not dumbfounding.

So at FanSided, we decided to put our money where our collective mouth is. At the end of the 2012 MLB season, 52 FanSided writers representing 28 different sites from around the MLB network cast their ballots for Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, Manager of the Year, and Rookie of the Year.

We’ve already unveiled the results of our first awards: the Rookies of the Year (AL, NL) and Managers of the Year (AL, NL). This week we turn our attention to the Cy Youngs. We’ve already named our pick for the AL, so today we move to the National League.

A couple notes on the voting: Balloting opened on October 1 (when each team had three games left to play) and closed on October 5 before the first playoff game stared. Each voter named three players on his or her ballot, with votes scored on a 9-7-5-3-1 basis.

Without further ado, here are the results:

It’s a relatively close race, but we have a winner: R.A. Dickey is our NL Cy Young, earning first place with 342 points (out of a possible 441). Gio Gonzalez takes home the silver and Clayton Kershaw earns the bronze, with Johnny Cueto and Craig Kimbrel rounding out the Top 5. Cliff Lee, Matt Cain, and Kris Medlen still received significant support, while Stephen Strasburg, Cole Hamels, Kyle Lohse, Jordan Zimmerman, Aroldis Chapman, Madison Bumgarner, and Yovani Gallardo also earned a few votes.

Though Dickey was our winner, he didn’t have a majority behind him—only 18 of 49 voters put him at the tops of their ballots, though he earned votes from all but one submission. Gonzalez received 13 first-place votes, followed by Kershaw with 11, Kimbrel with three, Medlen with two, and Cueto and Lee with one apiece.

What do you think? Did we make the right pick?