Phantom Cy Youngs
The 2006 Cy Young Award race in the National League was wide open. Brandon Webb won the award with a so-so 64% award share, but as you may or may not have noticed, Webb didn’t get a single MVP vote. On the other hand, the Cy Young runner-up, Trevor Hoffman, finished a respectable 10th in the MVP voting, with an MVP award share of 10%.
This seemed rather unusual to me. The very same writers who collectively considered Webb to be the league’s best pitcher didn’t consider him to be the “most valuable” pitcher when it came time for them to vote on the MVP. And Hoffman, who garnered just a 48% Cy Young award share, vaulted in front of Webb and all other pitchers in the MVP race. In a way, then, Hoffman could be called the “phantom” Cy Young winner. Webb got the fancy hardware, but according to the MVP voting results, Hoffman was the most valuable pitcher in the league.
How common is this? How often does one pitcher win the Cy Young Award while a different guy leads all pitchers in MVP points? The answer: way more common than I expected. Since the leagues split the Cy Young Award in 1967, there have been 81 winners (the odd number is because Denny McLain and Mike Cuellar shared the award in 1969). Remarkably, a different pitcher has led in MVP points a whopping 33 times. That is, over 40% of the time, there is a “phantom Cy Young.”
What’s more, 24 of those phantom Cy Youngs have been relief pitchers. It seems that the writers typically go for a starting pitcher when they vote for the Cy Young Award, but they often prefer a reliever when it comes time to rank MVP candidates. Actually, I’ll break it down for you: Since 1967, relief pitchers have won just 9 Cy Young Awards (11%), but they have led all pitchers in MVP voting 32 times (40%).
I found a lot of interesting nuggets when I did this little study, so I figured I’d share them with you. At the end of this article I’ll give you a list of every phantom Cy Young since 1967.
– Brandon Webb was just the third Cy Young winner since 1967 to not receive any attention whatsoever in the MVP voting. The other two guys were both Blue Jays – Pat Hentgen in 1996 and Roy Halladay in 2003.
– If we just gave the Cy Young Award to the pitcher who fared best in the MVP vote, the biggest loser would be Randy Johnson. By this method, he loses his Cy Youngs in 1995, 2000 and 2001. Others who would lose multiple awards are Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, Bret Saberhagen, Greg Maddux, Roger Clemens, and Tom Glavine.
– The biggest winners are relief aces Dan Quisenberry, Dennis Eckersley, Mariano Rivera and Trevor Hoffman, who each pick up two apiece. Eck is the only one of the group who won a real-life Cy Young Award as well.
– Greg Maddux loses his Cy Youngs in 1992 and ’93, but he replaces them with wins in 1997 and 2000. Tom Glavine is robbed of both of his awards, but he does steal one from Maddux in ’92.
– Only one player, Rod Beck in 1993, has won a phantom Cy Young despite not garnering a single vote in the real Cy Young race. Nine other pitchers, including two closers, got attention in the Cy Young vote. Think about that. The writers completely ignored Beck when they voted for the Cy Young Award. Even relievers Bryan Harvey and Randy Myers got some attention. And then the same writers, apparently using totally different standards, ranked Beck as the most valuable pitcher in the league in the MVP vote.
– Remember Bob Welch’s crazy 27-win season back in 1990? He clearly wasn’t the best pitcher in the league (both Roger Clemens and Dave Stewart were far better) but he won the Cy Young Award with a solid 76% award share. In the American League MVP voting, Welch placed a respectable 9th overall, but it was an unusually strong year for pitchers – four pitchers had more MVP votes than Welch. Clemens led the pack with a 54% award share and an overall 3rd place finish (including 3 first-place votes). Bobby Thigpen (57 saves) and Dennis Eckersley (0.61 ERA) ranked 5th and 6th overall, respectively, and Dave Stewart finished 8th.
So according to the Cy Young vote, Welch was the best pitcher in the league, but according to the MVP vote, he was just the third-best pitcher on his own team (behind Eck and Stewart).
– Pedro Martinez won his first Cy Young Award back in 1997. Despite winning just 17 games, he won the award on the strength of 305 strikeouts and an incredible 1.90 ERA. In fact, he not only won the Cy Young, he did it in dominant fashion, with 25 of 28 first-place votes and a 96% award share. But in the MVP vote, he placed just third among starters, behind Greg Maddux (19-4, 2.20) and Curt Schilling (17-11, 2.97).
– Of course, Pedro has nothing on Roy Halladay, who had a 97% Cy Young Award share in 2003 but, as mentioned above, didn’t manage even a single point in the MVP voting. In the same vein, Frank Viola 1988, Bret Saberhagen 1989 and Randy Johnson 2001 all had 98-99% Cy Young Award shares and still did not lead all pitchers in the MVP race (each finished second).
This is remarkable. In each of these cases – Pedro, Halladay, Viola, Saberhagen and Johnson – you have pitchers who were far-and-away viewed as the best in their league, each earning over 95% of the possible Cy Young points. And yet all of them failed to lead their fellow pitchers in MVP points.
This obviously calls into question the standards used by the writers when voting on these awards. It seems like the Cy Young Award typically means the “best starter award.” When a reliever wins, it’s usually in a weird year for starters. Well, shoot, there have only been 9 Cy Youngs given to relief pitchers, so let’s look at each situation:
– Mike Marshall, 1974. The year of Marshall’s 106 games and 200-plus relief innings. Also only two NL guys with 20 wins, Andy Messersmith and Phil Niekro. Kind of a wimpy year for starters.
– Sparky Lyle, 1977. Three AL pitchers with exactly 20 wins this year: Jim Palmer, Dennis Leonard and Dave Goltz. Palmer had already won three Cy Youngs in his career, and it was kind of a ho-hum year for him. Both Leonard and Goltz had ERAs in the threes, which wasn’t so grand back then.
– Bruce Sutter, 1979. This is a really strange year. It’s the only time that a reliever won the Cy Young but didn’t lead all pitchers in MVP points. Joe Niekro was the phantom Cy Young on the strength of a 21-11 record, and he finished a close second to Sutter in the real Cy Young vote. Brother Phil also won 21 games, but then again he also lost 20. They were the only NL pitchers with over 18 wins.
– Rollie Fingers, 1981. The strike meant that not one pitcher had even 15 wins, and four AL pitchers tied with 14. A perfect year for a closer to sneak in and win the award. In fact, Fingers was also the AL MVP, beating Rickey Henderson in one of the closest races on record and no doubt helped by the strike-deflated offensive numbers. (As for Fingers’ own stats, he threw 78 innings with a 1.04 ERA and a league-best 28 saves. In a strike year, the closer with the eye-popping stats has an edge.)
– Willie Hernandez, 1984. Hernandez also won the MVP award this year, the second of only three actual closers to ever do that. He was brilliant for the juggernaut Tigers, and just as importantly, Mike Boddicker was the league’s lone 20-game winner. The Cy Young runner-up, Dan Quisenberry, was also a reliever. Incidentally, Quiz finished third in the MVP vote.
– Steve Bedrosian, 1987. Rick Sutcliffe led the NL with a mere 18 wins. In a wide-open year, Bedrosian picked off the Cy Young.
– Mark Davis, 1989. Another weak year for starters. Mike Scott was the only 20-game winner in the NL, and he didn’t even finish in the top 10 in ERA.
– Dennis Eckersley, 1992. The last closer to win the MVP award. And while Eck was brilliant, we once again have an unimpressive field of starting pitchers. Yes, Jack Morris and Kevin Brown won 21 games apiece and Jack McDowell notched 20, but Morris had a 4.04 ERA and Brown and McDowell were in the threes and didn’t look like aces.
– Eric Gagne, 2003. Boy, they sure quit giving Cy Youngs to relievers, didn’t they? This year, only Russ Ortiz reached 20 wins, and with a 3.81 ERA and an ugly 149-102 strikeout-to-walk ratio, he was nobody’s Cy Young. And of course, Gagne had captured the imagination of the baseball world.
Honestly, it’s kind of amazing that Brandon Webb managed to win the Cy Young Award last year, considering everybody and their mother led the league with 16 wins. It was a perfect year for someone like Hoffman to step in and win, but it didn’t happen. There does seem to have been a shift in philosophy since the early 1990s: more than ever, the Cy Young Award is the “best starter award.” Relievers are still winning phantom Cy Youngs, though. There were 7 relievers who led all pitchers in MVP points in the 1970s, 13 in the 1980s, 7 in the 1990s and 5 so far in the 2000s.
What’s the lesson from all this? Clearly, the baseball writers view the Cy Young Award differently than they do the MVP. The Cy Young usually goes to the best starter (or the starter with the gaudiest record), though in weak years a reliever might win it. The MVP is more complex, with a continual debate over the meaning of the word “valuable.”
Actually, come to think of it, the names of the awards themselves may be the key to this whole mystery. The Cy Young Award is named after one of the greatest starting pitchers in baseball history, the all-time leader in career wins. The MVP, meanwhile, with that vague word “valuable,” suggests to many writers something that is only partially quantifiable, thereby opening the door for relievers and all their “high pressure” and “save situations” and “closer mentalities.”
References & Resources
That’s all I’ve got. Here’s the master list of phantom Cy Youngs and their real-life counterparts:
Year Lg Pitcher CYPt CYRk MVPt MVrk MVPit S/R 2006 AL Johan Santana 100 1 29 7 1 S 2006 NL Brandon Webb 64 1 0 99 99 S 2006 NL Trevor Hoffman 48 2 10 10 1 R 2005 AL Bartolo Colon 84 1 1 23 2 S 2005 AL Mariano Rivera 49 2 15 9 1 R 2005 NL Chris Carpenter 82 1 12 8 1 S 2004 AL Johan Santana 100 1 30 6 1 S 2004 NL Roger Clemens 88 1 14 8 1 S 2003 AL Roy Halladay 97 1 0 99 99 S 2003 AL Keith Foulke 1 7 5 15 1 R 2003 NL Eric Gagne 91 1 32 6 1 R 2002 AL Barry Zito 81 1 6 13 1 S 2002 NL Randy Johnson 100 1 28 7 1 S 2001 AL Roger Clemens 87 1 17 8 1 S 2001 NL Randy Johnson 98 1 5 11 2 S 2001 NL Curt Schilling 61 2 5 10 1 S 2000 AL Pedro Martinez 100 1 26 5 1 S 2000 NL Randy Johnson 83 1 1 17 4 S 2000 NL Greg Maddux 37 3 3 12 1 S 2000 NL Robb Nen 12 4 3 12 1 R 1999 AL Pedro Martinez 100 1 61 2 1 S 1999 NL Randy Johnson 84 1 5 15 1 S 1998 AL Roger Clemens 100 1 12 11 1 S 1998 NL Tom Glavine 62 1 0 21 4 S 1998 NL Trevor Hoffman 55 2 26 7 1 R 1997 AL Roger Clemens 96 1 14 10 2 S 1997 AL Randy Myers 10 4 33 4 1 R 1997 NL Pedro Martinez 96 1 2 16 3 S 1997 NL Greg Maddux 54 2 4 12 1 S 1996 AL Pat Hentgen 79 1 0 99 99 S 1996 AL Mariano Rivera 13 3 7 12 1 R 1996 NL John Smoltz 97 1 8 11 1 S 1995 AL Randy Johnson 97 1 28 6 2 S 1995 AL Jose Mesa 39 2 33 4 1 R 1995 NL Greg Maddux 100 1 64 3 1 S 1994 AL David Cone 77 1 10 9 2 S 1994 AL Jimmy Key 69 2 26 6 1 S 1994 NL Greg Maddux 100 1 34 5 1 S 1993 AL Jack McDowell 89 1 13 9 1 S 1993 NL Greg Maddux 85 1 4 13 2 S 1993 NL Rod Beck 0 99 6 12 1 R 1992 AL Dennis Eckersley 76 1 78 1 1 R 1992 NL Greg Maddux 93 1 4 11 2 S 1992 NL Tom Glavine 65 2 5 10 1 S 1991 AL Roger Clemens 85 1 15 10 1 S 1991 NL Tom Glavine 92 1 5 11 2 S 1991 NL Lee Smith 50 2 26 8 1 R 1990 AL Bob Welch 76 1 14 9 5 S 1990 AL Roger Clemens 55 2 54 3 1 S 1990 NL Doug Drabek 98 1 18 8 1 S 1989 AL Bret Saberhagen 99 1 21 8 2 S 1989 AL Dennis Eckersley 2 6 30 5 1 R 1989 NL Mark Davis 89 1 23 6 1 R 1988 AL Frank Viola 99 1 10 10 2 S 1988 AL Dennis Eckersley 37 2 40 5 1 R 1988 NL Orel Hershiser 100 1 33 6 1 S 1987 AL Roger Clemens 89 1 2 19 4 S 1987 AL Jeff Reardon 3 8 9 11 1 R 1987 NL Steve Bedrosian 48 1 2 16 1 R 1986 AL Roger Clemens 100 1 86 1 1 S 1986 NL Mike Scott 82 1 10 10 1 S 1985 AL Bret Saberhagen 91 1 11 10 2 S 1985 AL Donnie Moore 1 7 24 6 1 R 1985 NL Dwight Gooden 100 1 48 4 1 S 1984 AL Willie Hernandez 63 1 78 1 1 R 1984 NL Rick Sutcliffe 100 1 45 4 1 S 1983 AL La Marr Hoyt 83 1 6 13 2 S 1983 AL Dan Quisenberry 58 2 27 6 1 R 1983 NL John Denny 86 1 7 13 2 S 1983 NL Al Holland 3 6 12 9 1 R 1982 AL Pete Vuckovich 62 1 3 18 3 S 1982 AL Dan Quisenberry 29 3 10 9 1 R 1982 NL Steve Carlton 93 1 12 9 3 S 1982 NL Bruce Sutter 21 3 40 5 1 R 1981 AL Rollie Fingers 90 1 81 1 1 R 1981 NL Fernando Valenzuela 58 1 27 5 1 S 1980 AL Steve Stone 71 1 14 9 3 S 1980 AL Goose Gossage 26 3 56 3 1 R 1980 NL Steve Carlton 98 1 40 5 1 S 1979 AL Mike Flanagan 97 1 26 6 1 S 1979 NL Bruce Sutter 60 1 21 7 2 R 1979 NL Joe Niekro 55 2 22 6 1 S 1978 AL Ron Guidry 100 1 74 2 1 S 1978 NL Gaylord Perry 97 1 13 8 1 S 1977 AL Sparky Lyle 40 1 20 6 1 R 1977 NL Steve Carlton 87 1 30 5 1 S 1976 AL Jim Palmer 90 1 14 10 2 S 1976 AL Bill Campbell 6 7 17 8 1 R 1976 NL Randy Jones 80 1 14 10 1 S 1975 AL Jim Palmer 82 1 24 6 2 S 1975 AL Rollie Fingers 21 3 38 4 1 R 1975 NL Tom Seaver 82 1 19 9 2 S 1975 NL Al Hrabosky 28 3 20 8 1 R 1974 AL Catfish Hunter 75 1 32 6 2 S 1974 AL Fergie Jenkins 62 2 35 5 1 S 1974 NL Mike Marshall 80 1 43 3 1 R 1973 AL Jim Palmer 73 1 51 2 1 S 1973 NL Tom Seaver 59 1 17 8 2 S 1973 NL Mike Marshall 45 2 28 5 1 R 1972 AL Gaylord Perry 53 1 26 6 2 S 1972 AL Sparky Lyle 2 7 47 3 1 R 1972 NL Steve Carlton 100 1 37 5 1 S 1971 AL Vida Blue 82 1 80 1 1 S 1971 NL Fergie Jenkins 81 1 21 7 1 S 1970 AL Jim Perry 46 1 19 9 1 S 1970 NL Bob Gibson 98 1 33 4 1 S 1969 AL Mike Cuellar 42 1 16 8 2 S 1969 AL Denny McLain 42 1 25 6 1 S 1969 NL Tom Seaver 96 1 72 2 1 S 1968 AL Denny McLain 100 1 100 1 1 S 1968 NL Bob Gibson 100 1 86 1 1 S 1967 AL Jim Lonborg 90 1 29 6 2 S 1967 AL Joe Horlen 10 2 32 4 1 S 1967 NL Mike McCormick 90 1 26 6 1 S