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Baseball issued the first Cy Young award in 1956, one year after the death of its namesake. Don Newcombe was the first winner. Until 1966, there was only one award given for the major leagues. Beginning in 1967, separate awards have been given for each league. I saw a stray comment on an internet board about Bob Feller not winning a Cy Young, as if this was a point against him in all-time rankings. The person did point out that Feller pitched before the award, but since he didn't win an MVP either it was still supposed to be a valid point. So I decided to award the Cy Youngs to pitchers. I'm doing this based on the actual votes of the men who voted at the time, not any kind of sabermetric value-driven award. If there had been a Jake deGrom of the 1930's, he's not going to win this one. I wanted to go with the best guess of who would have won, warts and all, if the writers of the time were asked to vote on it. I want an award that gives me not just Pedro Maddux, but Bartolo Vuckovich too. The answer seems obvious to me. Just use the actual MVP voting. If the MVP did not go to a pitcher, then just give the Cy Young to the first pitcher I see in the voting totals. For 1956 to 1966, one Cy Young was awarded, I gave the other one out to the pitcher in the other league who did best in the voting. The Cy Young ballot at the time did not have down-ballot places. Sandy Koufax was unanimous in 1963, 1965, and 1966, so for those years I went back to the MVP voting. I went back to 1931 only because that is the first year from which we have an unbroken streak of an MVP award given in both leagues. Here are the winners:
In 1931, Ed Brandt won the award with an 18-11, 2.92 ERA season. This seems a little unimpressive for an award winner. He is not a familiar name today, he was an average pitcher who had a good year and excellent timing. He's not a bad choice, there wasn't any pitcher who had an obviously better season. Nobody in the league won 20 games. Two pitchers had better ERAs, but Brandt's WAR was within 1 win of the leader. In 1932 we have our first Bartolo. Lefty Gomez won the award with a 24-7 record and a 4.21 ERA. Another Lefty, Grove, won 25 games and his ERA (2.84) was more than a run better. Grove also pitched more innings. Thanks to having Ruth and Gehrig batting for him, Gomez only lost 7 games while Grove lost 10. Two years later Gomez won the award again (26-5, 2.33) but this award was deserved as he also won the pitching triple crown. Lefty Grove was robbed again in 1936. He led the league in ERA, 2.81, for a bad Red Sox team. Thanks to a bad offense that was a few years away from adding Ted Williams, his won lost record was only 17-12. So they gave the award to a winner, Vern Kennedy (21-9). Kennedy's ERA (4.63) was almost 2 runs higher, and he also walked 147 while striking out only 99. The National League 1938 award went to Bill Lee, and it looks well deserved. He led the league in wins (22), ERA (2.66), and pitching WAR (8.0). I had no idea he had been around so long. In 2012 at the age of 65 he threw a complete game win in an independent league game, and now 75, it would not surprise me to find him still pitching somewhere. Oh wait, different Bill Lees. The NL Cy Young award winner from 1938 was not the spaceman. Feller won 3 in a row before he went off to fight World War 2. When he came back he had perhaps his best season, 26-15, a 2.18 ERA, and 348 strikeouts. At the time, his strikeout total was only one off the 20th century record (Rube Waddell, 1904). He did not win the award that year, however, as Hal Newhouser also won 26 games, led the league in ERA, and took home his 3rd consecutive award. In 1947, the award went to a reliever for the first time. Joe Page of the Yankees won 14, saved 17, and pitched 141 innings. That's being a closer and his own setup man, in comparison to modern relievers. He won the award again 2 years later with 13 wins and 27 saves while pitching 135 innings. He beat out Mel Parnell, who led the league in both wins (25) and ERA (2.77). Jim Konstanty won the NL award the following year with 16 wins and 22 saves. His season not only gets a retro-recognition, he actually won the MVP award that year, the first reliever to do so. The 1955 season is the last one where I'm choosing the winners solely by the MVP vote, and it's a weird one. A reliever named Ray Narleski won it. He was 9-1 and led the league with 19 saves, but his ERA was an unimpressive 3.71, only slightly better than league average. He pitched 111 innings. That's more than modern relievers, but far less than the elite relief pitchers of his own time. He's not a guy I'd ever heard of, his career only lasted 6 seasons. Billy Pierce probably should have won. He had almost twice as many innings (205) with an ERA just over half of Narleski's (1.97). For the next decade I'm just giving out one retro-Cy, as one of the awards was actually given out. Whitey Ford won it in 1961, he also would have picked up awards in 1956 and 1963. Sandy Koufax won 3 awards in real life (all unanimous), but doesn't pick up any more. New Hall of Famer Jim Kaat picks one up for his 1966 season. In real life Warren Spahn won only a single Cy, but if there had been awards for each league his whole career he would have ended up with 5. Lefty Grove won 2 Cy Youngs, but might have picked up one or two more if there was MVP voting to go on for 1929 (won 20, led league in ERA and strikeouts) and 1930 (pitching triple crown). Strangely, he didn't even get any MVP votes for his 1928 season (24 wins, 2.58 ERA, led league in strikeouts). Waite Hoyt would have won the retro-Cy despite worse numbers in all categories. Here's an updated list of pitchers with multiple Cy Young awards:
This page was last modified 02/04/2022 |