For so many years, the formula for winning a Cy Young Award was pretty simple: win a lot of games.
Denny McLain was a unanimous pick in 1968 and deservedly so. He posted 31 victories — the combined total of this year’s Cy Young starters, Tim Lincecum and Zack Greinke.
A whopping win total, a good ERA and a bunch of strikeouts often won.
But the perception of pitching has changed, with fans and voters now relying more heavily on new-age stats such as WHIP (hits plus walks per inning) and FIP (a designer equation that factors out a team’s defensive ability).
Pitchers have taken notice, too. Greinke talked about his Fielding Independent Pitching after this week’s win.
A look back at some Cy Young races and how they might’ve been seen under modern light:
2005 AL: Bartolo Colon leads the league at 21-8 and takes the award by a wide margin. Johan Santana is a distant third at 16-7, despite a better ERA (2.87 to 3.48), more strikeouts (238 to 157) and being the only starter in the AL with a WHIP under 1.00.
1998 NL: Tom Glavine takes the award as the league’s only 20-game winner. Braves teammate Greg Maddux is way back in fourth place with an ERA that’s a quarter-run better. Maddux is the lone NL pitcher with a WHIP under 1.00; Glavine isn’t in the top 10.
1996 NL: John Smoltz is the overwhelming pick with 24 wins and 276 strikeouts. Kevin Brown barely gets a look with 17 victories — plus an ERA that’s a full run better and a more impressive WHIP.
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frazzled (anonymous) says…
The statistic called "wins" is misnamed; a more accurate name for it would be "games in which you left with the lead and in which the rest of your teammates retained the lead without your help." That is a bad metric by which to judge pitchers (and is certainly more complicated statistic than WHIP or strikeout-to-wak ratio); unfortunately, too many people (including lots of sportswriters who ought to know better) get distracted simply because of the name "wins".
Congratulations to Zack Greinke for a well-deserved Cy Young Award.