TOWER GROVE — Come Friday morning, Bryan Burwell & Company will have to find something different to ask me about and a new way to introduce me on radio shows, if they have me on at all. As of this afternoon, I no longer hold a secret ballot in one of the more talked about award votes in years.

A fellow baseball beat writer, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Henry Schulman, aptly called it “by far the most agonizing for me” in more than two decades of voting for Baseball Writers’ Association of America awards. Colleague Bernie Miklasz felt the same, calling it the “toughest call of them all by far.”

The 2009 Cy Young Award vote was a doozy.

This afternoon, at 1 p.m. St. Louis time, the BBWAA announced on its official Web site — bbwaa.com –  the winner of the award, and the favorites are two St. Louis Cardinals pitchers — Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright — and San Francisco Giants ace Tim Lincecum. The ballots had to be submitted before the first pitch of the postseason, and early that morning I still had not filed by ballot. I took a walk. I took a look at the other numbers. I called a few other voters. I spoke at length with the big man, Miklasz, about how he saw the numbers. And in the end, I submitted the following ballot:

1. Adam Wainwright, STL
2. Chris Carpenter, STL
3. Tim Lincecum, SFG

Each of those three pitchers had my first-place vote at some point in time during my deliberations. And I don’t mean I oscillated from one to another depending on who was starting that night. I mean in the final week of the regular season. Each had their case. Carpenter was dominant when he was healthy, leading the NL in ERA, going 10-1 in the second half of the season and putting the Cardinals in position to win a vast majority of every start he had. Carpenter won 17 games and had two other victories blown by the bullpen. Say what you will about wins — truly all wins are not created equal — but Carpenter, as Miklasz showed me with the numbers he pulled up, won the games he deserved to win with his performance.

Wainwright had the league-lead in wins (19) and innings pitched (233). He also was the only one of the three not to miss a start. Lincecum had incumbency and the fact that his 2009 was in many ways better than his 2008, when he did win the Cy Young Award. Despite winning only 15 games (again with the wins, right?), Lincecum led the NL in strikeouts (261), was second in ERA (2.48) and graded well when it came to the overall body of work this past season.

That was where I started.

Like I’ve done in previous years with the MVP award, I though one way to attack the Cy Young Award was to consider stats in an aggregate fashion. It’s not a perfect approach. It’s not even adequate. But it was a good place to begin. When you consider an array of statistics from pitchers around the National League and chart where each pitcher ranks in those individual stats, Lincecum scores well — from wins to innings pitched to something I tried to cook up about high-quality starts to WHIP to strikeouts and even to some of the fancier stats. Lincecum, in fact, scored better than No. 2 Wainwright and No. 3 Carpenter.

Cut to the crux: No matter what stats I looked at what I found was a deadly embrace.

Finding an area where one pitcher distanced himself from the other two was difficult, nigh impossible.

Take their second-half performances:

Wainwright … 9-3, 2.10 ERA

Lincecum … 5-5, 2.67 ERA

Carpenter … 10-1, 2.06 ERA

Got a favorite in that bunch? OK. Well consider their first-half performances:

Wainwright … 10-5, 3.04 ERA

Lincecum … 10-2, 2.33 ERA

Carpenter … 7-3, 2.47 ERA

Things any clearer? Try looking at the quick thumbnails of their final three months:

Wainwright … 11-3, 1.90 ERA, 18 starts

Lincecum … 7-5, 2.59 ERA, 16 starts

Carpenter … 12-1, 2.14 ERA, 17 starts

Bend them. Shape them. Anyway you want them. Home/Road splits shift the standings again, for example. If you want to follow an MVP bent then Lincecum’s scuffling down the stretch for a team trying to get in the playoffs cannot be overlooked. Lincecum, when the Giants needed him, faltered. The statistics — especially the ones mentioned above — can be morphed to fit any argument you want to make for the guy you want to see first on the ballot. My list got whiplash with as many changes as went through.

But ballots aren’t decided on statistics alone. Numbers can be abused in these cases, when often the answer is found beyond the box scores. So, I asked around. I talked with other voters, as mentioned. I also talked to scouts and I even talked to players. One scout I spoke to advocated Wainwright as the winner because he did what the other two didn’t — took the ball every five days and, in the scout’s opinion, gave his team a chance to win in more games than the other two. He said such durability and consistence “is a forgotten tool” when it comes to judging pitchers. A few managers said the same thing, citing Carpenter’s exceptional stuff and fearsome demeanor but adding that his absence earlier in the year due to injury couldn’t be overlooked when Wainwright was chugging along.

One scout I spoke to said that Lincecum had no-hit stuff every time he started and that on pure ability — what that pitcher takes to the mound — he should win. A few players agreed.

Carpenter, however, had an intriguing take that was difficult to ignore. He said it while doused with champagne in the clubhouse after the Cardinals had clinched the NL Central Division. From that night’s blog entry, “Carpenter: Wainwright Deserves Cy Young”:

“If that game right there doesn’t solidify him as the best pitcher in the league, then I’m can’t imagine what would,” Carpenter said, goggles perched on his forehead, sticky from the Cardinals’ clinching celebration. “I think that’s what it’s all about. That game, that eighth inning, and everything he did tonight. That’s what you want: Your big stud on the mound. Big game. Big situation. And he comes through.”

When working with Carpenter on the article he wrote for Sunday’s Post-Dispatch (check those articles here — Carpenter on Wainwright — and here — Wainwright on Carpenter), he reiterated some of those sames thoughts. A few things he said in that article, he also said that night in Denver, and both resonated with me: Body of work. Consistency from start to start. Body of work went to Lincecum when you looked at raw cumulative stats, though he didn’t lead the league in either innings, ERA or wins. Atlanta’s Javier Vazquez scored well in body of work, too, and for a time I had him at No. 3 on my ballot. But I learned something about those body-of-work numbers.

Several of the arguments against Wainwright cite the run support he received, which was in the 7s per nine innings compared to the 5s for Carpenter and Lincecum. It’s true, as Miklasz pointed out so well, that Wainwright had about three wins where he benefited from run support (one memorably in Pittsburgh). But in Wainwright’s final four losses, the Cardinals scored a total of four runs. He allowed 11 runs in those four losses. Of Wainwright’s eight losses, he was supported by two or fewer runs in five of them. He lost games 0-2, 0-1 and 1-2. Run support is a fine stat, but it, too, needs context.

What completed my ballot was something that we usually overlook: Consistency.

Wainwright had 26 consecutive starts of at least six innings or more. That, by itself, isn’t enough to sway the vote. But consider Lincecum’s long streak was 17 and Carpenter’s longest was 16, and the stat takes on a little more gravity. Quantity is fine. Quality is essential when it comes to the Cy Young. Wainwright had a run of 13 consecutive starts — lodged within that 26-start streak, mind you — where he allowed two earned runs or fewer. Carpenter had a couple runs of four consecutive starts like that (if you dismiss his streak that included a three-inning and five-inning appearance). Lincecum’s longest streak was five.

That was one of the gaps that I finally found that helped shape my ballot. Consistency blended with body of work. It’s hardly a bulletproof recipe for voting, and even days later I went back and looked over the numbers and the notes to see if I would vote differently.

Clearly, with this year’s Cy Young, no vote was wrong.

It’s just important to feel that your vote is right.

-30-