To celebrate the pending announcements of the AL and NL Cy Young award winners, a countdown of the worst Cy Young Award selections, according to bb-ref’s WAR statistic. (And if you’d like a refresher of the worst MVP selections, please go
here.)
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
20
|
1998
|
NL
|
Kevin Brown
|
8.4
|
Tom Glavine
|
5.6
|
2.8
|
Why did Glavine win this award over Brown?
It’s easy to attribute this to personality …Glavine was well-liked, whereas Brown was thought of as a bit of a jackass. The writers went with the guy they liked, the guy they could stand.
I think this is probably untrue; I think that very few of baseball awards are ever won or lost on the basis of personality. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens top the MVP and Cy Young Award lists…it is questionable that either man would win a popularity contest in their own house, let alone a contest decided by moralizing sportswriters. Before Maddux and Clemens and Randy Johnson came on the scene, Steve Carlton was the only guy to win four Cy Young awards...three of those awards came after Carlton stopped talking to the press entirely.
Maybe….maybe a few awards come down to likeability. I doubt it, though. I think the writers of Ted Williams’ era really thought that Joe DiMaggio was the better player. They were wrong, but we’ve come to assume that they were intentionally wrong; that they knew the truth and voted against that truth.
Glavine win the 1998 Cy Young Award because he had done it before, and Kevin Brown hadn’t. Glavine won because he was on a clear Hall-of-Fame trajectory, playing on a team that was in the midst of a dozen consecutive playoff appearances. Kevin Brown was a much better pitcher than Glavine in 1998, but no one really thought that Kevin Brown had been a better pitcher than Glavine. Kevin Brown, like his Padres team, was an upstart…the voters went with the established guy.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
t-18
|
1980
|
AL
|
Britt Burns
|
6.8
|
Steve Stone
|
3.9
|
2.9
|
|
t-18
|
1977
|
NL
|
Rick Reuschel
|
8.7
|
Steve Carlton
|
5.8
|
2.9
|
Two here…I covered Reuschel/Carlton in an
article earlier this year. I also mentioned Steve Stone’s 1980 season in another
article: this was the year he threw 50% curveballs, and ruined his arm in a (successful) bid for glory. That leaves Britt Burns.
1980 was Britt Burns’ first full year in the big leagues. He had a two-start call-up in 1978, as a nineteen-year-old rookie for the White Sox. He made it into six games in 1979, all as a spot-reliever.
But he was excellent in 1980: in 238 innings, Burns posted a 2.84 ERA and went 15-13 for the 70 win Pale Hose. He was twenty-one years old.
Burns followed that with a 10-6, 2.64 ERA season in strike-shortened 1981…he made the All-Star team and finished 7th in the Cy Young vote. He was 13-5 in 1982.
Stop right there….through Age-23, Burns had a career record of 38-26, with an ERA of 3.29. That’s impressive…a good record at a young age, good ERA. What are his comparables like? A few of Hall-of-Famers, right?
No…there is aHall-of-Famer among the ten most comparable players…Dizzy Dean. Mark Buerhle is also on the list. But…it’s mostly guys whose success as young pitchers did not translate to long careers. Guys like Dontrelle Willis. None of the pitchers comparable to Burns won 150 games after age 23.
Burns left baseball at the age of 26…he suffered from a degenerative hip injury. There is a chance that he could’ve become a star: he won 18 games during that last season, posting the best strikeout rate of his career. Maybe…maybe he had figured things out. His comparables list at Age-26 has Tom Glavine on it, and it has Mickey Lolich. Maybe he would’ve figured it out.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
17
|
1973
|
AL
|
Bert Blyleven
|
9.2
|
Jim Palmer
|
6.1
|
3.1
|
Two Hall-of-Fame pitchers here…Blyleven didn’t get a first place vote, as 1973 was the year Nolan Ryan struck out 383 batters. Wilbur Wood had a monster season…24-20, 359 innings pitched. Catfish Hunter was 21-5. Twelve guys won 20 games in the league, which made for a crowded ballot. Palmer led in ERA, and his team won the AL East. Maybe it should’ve gone to Blyleven…and maybe it should’ve gone to Ryan or Wood.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
t-15
|
1958
|
Both
|
Sam Jones
|
6.7
|
Bob Turley
|
3.5
|
3.2
|
|
t-15
|
1979
|
AL
|
Dennis Eckersley
|
6.8
|
Mike Flanagan
|
3.6
|
3.2
|
Turley’s Cy Young Award was the third trophy given out, following Newcombe and Spahn.
This is a theory…maybe the voters in 1958 didn’t have the same understanding of the Cy Young that we have. Today we think of the Cy Young Award as the ‘Best Pitcher Award,’ which is why guys like Greinke and Hernandez have won awards on losing teams.
But…that’s a new interpretation. The voting of the early Cy Young Awards mirrors the standard interpretation of the MVP: the award went to the best pitcher on a winning team. It was the “Most Valuable Pitcher Award.”
Newcombe’s Dodgers went to the World Series in 1956. So did Spahn’s Braves in 1957. And Turley’s Yankees, 1958.
Early Wynn won the 1959 Cy Young…he was the ace for the Go-Go Sox. Vern Law won in 1960, for a Pirates team that won the Series. Whitey Ford won in 1961…his ballclub didn’t win a game that year, but we’ll move on.
Four of the next five Cy Young Awards went to Dodgers: Drysdale (1962), Sandy (1963), Sandy (1965), and Sandy (1966). The Dodgers made three World Series…and they finished second to the Giants in 1962, 102 wins to 103.
Dean Chance of the Angels was the first Cy Young winner to break the trend…he won the 1964 Cy Young Award, going 20-9 for an Angels team that finished a game over .500. He won because he led in everything: wins, ERA, innings pitched, shutouts, complete games. He had a better ERA than Koufax, which was a considerable feat.
When did the interpretation of the Cy Young change? When did the Cy Young Award go from the “Most Valuable Pitcher Award” to the “Best Pitcher Award”?
The answer is 1972. That was Steve Carlton’s big year, when he won 27 games for the last-place Phillies. Over in the American League Gaylord Perry won the award for a 72-win Cleveland team. This was the start of the change, and it came gradually; the guys who won Cy Young Awards in the 1970’s were still mostly guys on winning teams…mostly, but not always. Randy Jones won the 1976 award for a Padres team than won 76 games. Seaver’s 1975 Mets won just 82 games. It shifted a bit more in the 1980’s, and even more in the 1990’s. Now we understand the Cy Young Award as the ‘best pitcher in the league’ award.
Clayton Kershaw will win the National League Cy Young this week….he will win it even though Roy Halladay had an equally great season, playing on a team that won twenty more games than Kershaw’s Dodgers. He might want to write a thank-you note to Steve Carlton.
Dennis Eckersley rates as the best pitcher in the American League in 1979, at least according to WAR. He’ll make another appearance later on down the list.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
t-10
|
1987
|
NL
|
Orel Hershier
|
6.7
|
Steve Bedrosian
|
2.6
|
4.1
|
|
t-10
|
1982
|
AL
|
Dave Stieb
|
6.8
|
Pete Vuckovich
|
2.7
|
4.1
|
|
t-10
|
1956
|
Both
|
Early Wynn
|
8.2
|
Don Newcombe
|
4.1
|
4.1
|
A three-way tie…Newcombe got the 1956 Cy Young because he was the best pitcher among the World Series teams, which is how the writers understood the Cy Young Award in 1956.
Dave Stieb is a favorite of us sabermetric types: he is a player whose abilities are not shown by traditional metrics. WAR has Stieb as being the most valuable pitcher in the American League in 1982. And 1983. And 1984. He also ranked second in 1981 and 1985. Here’s a table:
|
Year
|
WAR
|
Rank (AL)
|
W-L
|
ERA
|
|
1982
|
6.8
|
1st
|
17-14
|
3.25
|
|
1983
|
6.4
|
1st
|
17-12
|
3.04
|
|
1984
|
7.7
|
1st
|
16-8
|
2.83
|
|
Totals
|
20.9
|
--
|
50-34
|
3.05
|
That’s a real peak…three years in a row as the #1 pitcher in the league.
Just to illustrate how tough that is, Sandy Koufax finished 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 1st in his epic 1963-1966 run. Clemens led the AL in WAR for three consecutive seasons (1990-1992), but Stieb’s accomplishment best matches Greg Maddux’s 1992-1996 stretch, when bespectacled one finished 1st, 2nd, 1st, 1st, 2nd in NL pitching WAR.
So…Dave Stieb was really, exceptionallygreat during the early 1980’s, a fact that baseball analysts have been crowing about for a long time.
What nobody ever seems to crows about is that Orel Hershiser was just as dominating, and just as underrated, as Dave Stieb:
|
Year
|
WAR
|
Rank (NL)
|
W-L
|
ERA
|
|
1987
|
6.7
|
1st
|
16-16
|
3.06
|
|
1988
|
7.3
|
1st
|
23-8
|
2.26
|
|
1989
|
6.9
|
1st
|
15-15
|
2.31
|
|
Totals
|
20.9
|
--
|
54-39
|
2.55
|
Hershiser tallied an identical WAR between 1987 and 1989, leading his league in pitching WAR each season. He had a similarly under-whelming W-L record to Stieb, but Hershier had the luck of having a W-L record that matched his superlative pitching in 1988.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
9
|
1993
|
AL
|
Kevin Appier
|
8.4
|
Jack McDowell
|
4.1
|
4.3
|
According to WAR, Jack McDowell (4.1 WAR) was the third-best starting pitcher on his team in 1993, behind Alex Fernandez (4.9) and Wilson Alvarez (4.5).
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
t-7
|
1978
|
NL
|
Phil Niekro
|
9.1
|
Gaylord Perry
|
4.7
|
4.4
|
|
t-7
|
1970
|
AL
|
Sam McDowell
|
8.2
|
Jim Perry
|
3.8
|
4.4
|
Jim Perry won 215 major league games, despite being moved to the bullpen at twenty-six, for parts of the next seven seasons. Had he remained a starter, would he have won 300 games?
To begin with, it’s worth mentioning that Jim Perry did make starts during those seven years…a quick-and-dirty way to answer this question is to measure the starts he did make against the starts we could’ve expected him to make, had Cleveland manager Mel McGaha not demoted him to the pen in 1962.
|
Year
|
Actual Starts
|
Anticipated Starts
|
Lost Starts
|
|
1962
|
27
|
36
|
9
|
|
1963
|
25
|
36
|
11
|
|
1964
|
1
|
36
|
35
|
|
1965
|
19
|
36
|
17
|
|
1966
|
25
|
36
|
11
|
|
1967
|
11
|
36
|
25
|
|
1968
|
18
|
36
|
18
|
|
Total
|
126
|
252
|
126
|
Anticipating that Jim Perry, as a full-time starter, would’ve made about 36 starts a year, we come up with 126 ‘lost’ starts...
Perry made 447 actual starts in his career, going 190-163 as a starter, a .538 winning percentage. He received a decision in 79% of his starts. If he had made those extra 126 starts, we can estimate that Jim Perry would’ve received about 100 decisions, posting a record of 54-46.
Add 54-46 to Perry’s career record and you get a W-L tally of 259-220…so we can conclude that Jim Perry was unlikely to reach 300 wins.
Of course, this method is flawed because it uses a lot of starts by young and old Jim Perry, to give us a measure of peak Jim Perry. Gaylord won 314 major league games….I’d hazard that had Jim Perry spent his career as a starter, he would’ve pushed the family total pretty close to 600 wins.
So Jim Perry, the lesser brother of the Perry clan, got demoted to the bullpen at age 26, and didn’t get back to full-time starting until he was thirty-three. When Jim Perry returned to starting, he rattled off two straight 20-win seasons.
Astonishingly, the same thing happened to Joe Niekro: the lesser Niekro lost his starting gig in 1971, when he was twenty-six. He got back to starting full-time seven years later, and then rattled off back-to-back 20-win seasons. Weird, isn’t it?
You’d expect that the success of the other brothers would’ve prompted managers to give Jim/Joe a shot. But it didn’t happen, not for a while.
In 1965, Sam McDowell led the major leagues in walks, wild pitches, and ERA…he must be the only pitcher in history to lead the league in those three categories. Nolan came close to doing it in 1972…he led in walks and wild pitches, posted a 2.27 ERA.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
t-5
|
1977
|
AL
|
Nolan Ryan
|
8.3
|
Sparky Lyle
|
3.6
|
4.7
|
|
t-5
|
1959
|
Both
|
Hoyt Wilhelm
|
7.4
|
Early Wynn
|
2.7
|
4.7
|
1959 was the year they tried Wilhelm as a starter….obviously, he couldn’t do the job.
Nolan Ryan’s 1977 season is one of the most remarkable seasons in baseball history: 341 strikeouts, 204 walks (Ryan and Feller being the only two pitchers to walk 200+ batters post-1900), a league-leading 21 wild pitches…just a staggeringly Nolan Ryan-esque season.
21 wild pitches…interestingly, a pitcher listed on baseballreference as ‘The Only Nolan’ also tossed 21 wild pitches, one hundred years before Lynn Nolan did it. The Only Nolan was blacklisted from the NL for “confirmed dissipation and general insubordination.” Wikipedia has a great write-up about the possible origins of his nickname…I won’t give it away here, except to say that one story involves a burlesque actor who performed simultaneously in blackface and drag.
There have been seven ‘Nolans' to make it to the major leagues….two of those seven are enshrined in Cooperstown. Pretty good percentage.
Sparky Lyle won the Cy Young, in part, because Ryan (six 1st place votes), Palmer (six), and Dennis Leonard (five) split the starters votes…the three had similar W-L records and ERA’s, though Ryan edged everyone in strikeouts.
Early Wynn’s Go-Go White Sox won the AL pennant, so the writers gave him the trophy. He did lead the league in wins, starts, innings pitched, and walks.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
4
|
1984
|
AL
|
Dave Stieb
|
7.7
|
Willie Hernandez
|
2.9
|
4.8
|
Maybe I’ve said this before…the 1984 Tigers have to be the best team in history without an actual Hall-of-Famer. They had scads of guys who were close; Trammell and Whitaker, obviously. Lance Parrish. Jack Morris. Darrell Evans. Kirk Gibson. Howard Johnson. That’s a lot of talent.
The Tigers led the AL in runs scored, blowing away every other team except Boston. What’s interesting is that their worst offensive players happened to be at the positions where you’d expect the most production: 1B and LF. They had Dave Bergman at first base and Larry Herndon in left….those two were the only Tigers regulars who didn’t reach double-digits in homeruns.
Hernandez was the most valuable pitcher on the team: 9 wins, 32 saves, 1.92 ERA.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
3
|
1992
|
AL
|
Roger Clemens
|
7.9
|
Dennis Eckersley
|
3.0
|
4.9
|
Eck had an ERA of 1.91 in 1992….a percentage point away from Willie Hernandez’s ERA tally in 1984. Did you ever notice that a lot of famous pitching seasons have an ERA of 1.91 or 1.92?
-Hernandez and Eckersley won MVP awards with ERA’s of 1.91 and 1.92.
-Joe Wood had a 1.91 ERA in 1912…that was his famous 34-5 season. Dueled Big Train.
-Pedro Martinez had an ERA of 1.90 in 1997…won the Cy Young and signed with Boston.
-Luis Tiant was at 1.91 in 1972…and Gaylord Perry was at 1.92 that same year.
-Wilbur Wood was at 1.91 for the White Sox a year earlier, 1971.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Orval Overall, who famously posted a 1.92 ERA for the 1908 Cubs. Impressive company, Overall.
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
2
|
1974
|
NL
|
Jon Matlack
|
8.6
|
Mike Marshall
|
3.1
|
5.5
|
Mike Marshall won the NL award because he did something weird….for whatever criticisms you or I would like to level at the writers who vote on this award, they tend to appreciate weird seasons.
I’d lump Marshall’s 1974 Cy Young with Maury Wills’ MVP award of 1962…Wills won the award because he stole 104 bases, after about four decades of guys like Bill Bruton (25 steals, 1955) and Luis Aparicio (21 steals, 1956) leading the league in the category. This was a revelation for sportswriters, who had come to think of the stolen base as a tactic of a bygone era. Wills brought it back.
What Mike Marshall brought back, briefly, was the idea of the pitcher as an everyday (or at least every other day) player. He made 106 appearances in 1974, including a stretch when he appeared in thirteen straight Dodgers games.
(Marshall, as I’m sure a few of you know, has a lot of interesting ideas about how to keep pitchers healthy: he is not an amateur thinker on the subject; he knows his stuff, and his career (as small a sample as it is) seems to suggest that he might be on to something. If I were a GM looking for a new way to gain a competitive advantage, I’d give Mike Marshall a call.)
Marshall was weird….Jon Matlack was anything but weird: he had a very good season (2.41 ERA, seven shutouts, 198 strikeouts in 265 innings pitched, just eight homeruns allowed) and had an unimpressive W-L record (13-15) to show for it. His middle name is ‘Trumpbour.’
|
Rk.
|
Year
|
Lg.
|
WAR Leader
|
WAR
|
Cy Young
|
WAR
|
Diff.
|
|
1
|
1990
|
AL
|
Roger Clemens
|
9.5
|
Bob Welch
|
2.5
|
7.0
|
According to WAR, the selection of Bob Welch as the AL Cy Young winner in 1990 is the absolute worst award selection in history.
Roger Clemens pitched half his games in hitter-friendly Fenway Park, for an offense that ranked 7th in the American League in runs scored and 11th in Defensive Efficiency. He won 21 games, posted a 1.93 ERA (see above, #3) , and struck out 209 hitters in 228 innings.
Bob Welch pitched half his games in pitcher-friendly Oakland, for an offense that ranked 1st in the American League in runs scored and 1st in Defensive Efficiency. He won 27 games, posted a 2.95 ERA, and struck out 129 hitters in 238 innings.
Roger Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards….according to WAR, he deserved seven Cy Young Awards, but not always for the years he won the award:
|
Won CY, Deserved It
|
|
1987
|
|
1991
|
|
1997
|
|
1998
|
|
Won CY , Didn't Deserve It
|
Deserved It
|
|
1986
|
Teddy Higuera, MIL
|
|
2001
|
Mike Mussina, NYY
|
|
2004
|
Johan Santana, MIN
|
|
Didn't Win, Should've
|
Didn't Deserve It, But Got It
|
|
1990
|
Bob Welch, OAK
|
|
1992
|
Dennis Eckersley, OAK
|
|
2005
|
Chris Carpenter, STL
|
Well…it came out even in the end. Maybe next year we’ll get to the Rookies-of-the-Year.
Dave Fleming is a writer living in Wellington, New Zealand. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.