Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
Disagree. When someone is overwhelming elected it means a lot. Out of 226 voters, with the chance to vote for anyone in baseball's history, Matty had 205 vote for him. That is significant. To put it in prospective, Ruth only got 10 more votes. A guy getting 20 or 16 votes vs. 10 is irrelevant. Matty getting more votes than WaJo doesn't mean he is better, it just means he is one of the greatest pitchers of all time.
The next year with the top 5 not taking votes away, Young barely made the cut. He only got 153 votes out of 201 and finished 3rd in voting, behind Lajoie and Speaker (He had finished 8th in 1936 behind Lajoie and Speaker) again.
I believe the award was named for Cy Young because he had won the most games at a time when wins were the most important stat. I think today we know better. Jacob deGrom is currently 8-9. By past standards, no one would vote for him because there are several pitchers with 17, 16, 15 wins and winning records. Today, he is a serious candidate to win the Cy Young because we don't value wins, but value ERA, WHIP and adjusting them for things like park, team defense and level of competition.
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And here I thought that you didn't believe in the newer sabermetric analytical methods!
All good points, although having played fast pitch hardball in two summer leagues on quite good teams throughout my teens, in high school and in an over 30 fast-pitch hardball league in my early '40's comprised primarily of good former high school, college and professional players (3 former minor leaguers, and one former major leaguer, Jeff Hamilton of the Los Angeles Dodgers), I would argue that there is a talent to winning which a good starting pitcher must possess to be successful. It arises out of the fact that even the best of starters don't always have their best stuff (in fact, that is probably true the majority of the time), and they are going to have to get through several tight spots in virtually every game to secure the win. These primarily include multiple runners on base with less than two out, just by way of example. The "talent" I am speaking of is primarily psychological: the starter must remain calm and poised, and execute his pitches to successfully maneuver through the inning intact. Pure "stuff" frequently doesn't get it done. See Jeff Smardjia (sp?), former Cub and current Giant, who has great stuff, yet it never seems to translate to many wins. So I personally would not agree with Brian Kenny of "MLB Now" that the win is dead.
While it cannot be refuted that DeGrom has pitched extremely well, and he certainly does possess this "talent," as an old school fan, it troubles me that it has simply not translated into wins. Steve Carlton went 27 and 10 with a 1.98 ERA in 1972 with a Phillies team that only won 59 games total all season. Walter Johnson's Senators were rarely anywhere near the cream of the crop. Check out Koufax's Dodgers teams from '63, '65, and '66--subtract his won/lost record, and it will be seen that they were decent without him, but he primarily carried them to the World Series.
My point is that as long as it is the "Cy Young Award," the pitcher's performance who wins it should correlate to wins. DeGrom's hasn't. Yes, I know the follow-up argument: "but that hasn't been his fault." My response is that it is not a question of fault--the performance either translates to a significant number of additional wins for the player's team or it does not--fault is irrelevant. What Young did was WIN, WIN, and WIN, over a very long period of time. IMHO, Leon is absolutely correct when he states that the volume of success is meaningful. See the ongoing discussion on MLB Now re the volume of innings as a factor in winning versus not winning the award.
Just sayin',
Larry