Cy Youngs That Shoulda Been

Handing out the 11 "missing" Cy Young Awards

Chuck Estrada turned 86 last week, which reminded me of this essay I wrote a few years ago for The National Pastime Museum, which (I think!) has granted me all publication rights. I’ve made a few edits for the sake of clarity, readability, and accuracy.

For more than sixty years now, the same three individual awards have been far and away the most coveted by Major League Baseball players: Most Valuable Player, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year. There have always been other awards, and lately it seems like there’s a new one every year. But for various reasons, we still talk about those three awards more than all the others combined.

All three awards are voted on by working members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA), a practice that goes back to 1931 for the Most Valuable Player Award; earlier, there had been other, somewhat less reputable MVP awards. The BBWAA’s Rookie of the Year Award was invented in 1947, the Cy Young Award in 1956. However, until 1967 there was just one Cy Young Award for both leagues, whereas MVPs and ROYs were awarded in both leagues. Which was an odd decision by the BBWAA, for sure.

Because we love to talk about the awards so much, it’s natural to wonder who would have won them before they existed. In fact, one could write a whole book on the subject, for the simple reason that figuring out who would have won awards isn’t simply a matter of figuring out which players were the best; as we’ve seen many times over, the best players don’t always win the awards. In fact, we might argue that the best players don’t usually win the awards.

I hope somebody writes that book!

Today, I’d just like to write about those “missing” Cy Young Awards from 1956 through ’66.

First, here are the actual winners in those seasons:

1956: Don Newcombe, 10 of 16 votes (N.L.)
1957: Warren Spahn, 15 of 16 (N.L.)
1958: Bob Turley, 5 of 15 (A.L.)
1959: Early Wynn, 13 of 16 (A.L.)
1960: Vern Law, 8 of 16 votes (N.L.)

1961: Whitey Ford, 9 of 17 (A.L.)

1962: Don Drysdale, 14 of 20 (N.L.)
1963: Sandy Koufax, 20 of 20 (N.L.)
1964: Dean Chance, 17 of 20 (A.L.)
1965: Koufax, 20 of 20 (N.L.)
1966: Koufax, 20 of 20 (N.L.)

You might have initially guessed that it’s easy to come up with good answers, simply by identifying the highest-pointing pitchers from the leagues that did not produce the Cy Young Award in those seasons.

As we’ll see in a moment (or as you’ve already surmised), it is not easy. Here are the top-pointing pitchers from the “other” league in those 11 years...

1956: Whitey Ford (1 vote)
1957: Dick Donovan (2)
1958: Warren Spahn (4)
1959: Toothpick Sam Jones (3)
1960:
1961: Warren Spahn (6)
1962:
1963:
1964: Larry Jackson (2)
1965:
1966:

In all those years, the voting structure was dead-simple: each of the voters—one for each MLB franchise—was simply instructed to list one pitcher (there were odd numbers of votes in 1958 and ‘61, the reasons for which I have not found). Which meant very few pitchers would gain any points at all. In 1963 and ’65 and ’66, Sandy Koufax got all the points, winning the award unanimously each year. And in 1960 and ‘62, multiple candidates received votes, but all were from the same league.

Wait, it gets even harder. Sure, Dick Donovan ranked first (and only) among American League candidates in 1957. But that’s just one vote! So, hardly a consensus opinion. And the next year, Warren Spahn—who’d gotten 15 of 16 votes to trump Donovan in ’57—finished tops among National Leaguers with four votes. But fellow National Leaguers Lew Burdette and Bob Friend both got three votes, so it seems Spahn would hardly have been a shoo-in if there’d been an N.L. specific election. In 1964, the Angels’ Dean Chance easily won the award, due largely to his 1.65 ERA. But while the Cubs’ Larry Jackson finished second with two votes, Koufax also garnered a first-place vote.

Which leaves only two other-league candidates about whom we can be reasonably sure: San Francisco’s Sam Jones in 1959, and Milwaukee’s Spahn in ’61, with the other nine years wide open.

Which leaves us where we might have started: with the statistics, leavened by our knowledge of voters’ tendencies over the years, described in some depth by Bill James in our book, The Neyer/James Guide to Pitchers. As Bill discovered, there are essentially three important factors: wins, winning percentage, and ERA. Plus two secondary factors: strikeouts, and pitching for a first-place team. With all that in mind, we can make some pretty good guesses about those “missing” Cy Youngs…

1956, American League: Candidates abound, as eight pitchers won 19, 20, or 21 games. Detroit’s Frank Lary paced the league with 21 victories and 294 innings, but otherwise his numbers don’t stand out. Whitey Ford won only 19 games, but led the A.L. with a 2.47 ERA and a .760 winning percentage, while pitching for the pennant-winning Yankees.  And there’s also Cleveland’s Herb Score, who went 20-9 with a 2.53 ERA and racked up 263 strikeouts, far more than anyone else in the league. Oh, and Score also led the league with five shutouts, two more than Lary and three more than Ford. But then again, Score’s team finished second to the Yankees, and yet somehow he finished behind five other pitchers in the balloting: Lary and Ford, but also Chicago’s Billy Pierce and two of his teammates, Early Wynn and Bob Lemon.

It’s an odd thing about awards: oftentimes there’s a narrative that is inscrutable, decades later, and might be discovered only with a great deal of study. In this case, Score finishing behind Wynn and Lemon in the MVP balloting is practically unfathomable. But he did finish behind them, so it’s difficult to imagine him finishing ahead of them and everyone else in our hypothetical Cy Young balloting.

So, Billy Pierce then? He actually finished highest in the MVP balloting among the pitchers, despite the absence of a single signature statistical marker. It’s almost as if the voters were rewarding him for his 1.97 ERA the season before. Except, why would they do that? As I said: inscrutable. But with Pierce drawing more than twice the MVP support of Ford, the No. 2 pitcher on the list, I think we’re compelled to choose Billy Pierce in 1956. However inscrutably.

1957, American League: This one’s easier. Pierce (20-12) and Detroit’s Jim Bunning (20-8) were the league’s only 20-game winners, and Bunning edged Pierce in winning percentage, innings, and strikeouts. What’s more, Bunning finished slightly ahead of Pierce in MVP voting, and well ahead of all the other pitchers. So it’s Jim Bunning in ’57, winning his only Cy Young Award.

1958, National League: As noted above, Warren Spahn fared only slightly better than teammate Lew Burdette and Pirate Bob Friend in the Cy Young voting. And Spahn also just edged Friend in MVP balloting. Which is hard to figure, since Spahn’s winning percentage, innings, and strikeouts were all superior to Friend and Spahn pitched for the first-place Braves. What seems likely is that teammates Spahn and Burdette simply split some of the vote. But I still believe Warren Spahn would have won the award, his second straight.

Well, that’s if we ignore the rule — which according to Wikipedia was in place in 1957 and ‘58 — that a pitcher couldn’t win more than one Cy Young Award. So in our imaginary world, if Spahn won in ‘57 he couldn’t win in ‘58, leaving Burdette as the best candidate because of his superior ERA and better teammates.

1959, National League: Really, Spahn might have won three straight. San Francisco’s Sam Jones was the only National Leaguer to garner any Cy Young votes in ’59, but Jones was one of three N.L.ers with 21-15 records, as both Spahn and Burdette matched him. Jones did post a slightly lower ERA than Spahn, but Spahn threw slightly more innings and Spahn’s (and Burdette’s) team finished the regular schedule in a first-place tie with the Dodgers (who won their best-of-three playoff series). There’s also an x-factor: Pirates reliever Roy Face, who went 18-1 and finished second among pitchers—behind Jones—in the MVP balloting.

Speaking of which, Spahn somehow finished sixth among the pitchers and well behind Burdette, despite a vastly superior ERA. It seems the voters simply didn’t want to continue rewarding the relatively ancient Spahn. Which is another reason why Sam Jones seems the right choice here, with Face the dark horse.

1960, American League: With four National Leaguers monopolizing the vote, we’re left to sift through a list of American Leaguers who didn’t much impress the voters that season. In fact the only American Leaguer who drew more than token support was Orioles rookie Chuck Estrada, who went 18-11 with an unimpressive 3.58 ERA that ranked just 17^th in the league. It was just a strange season, with five of the league’s best pitchers—Jim Bunning, Ray Herbert, Bill Monbouquette, Pedro Ramos, and Frank Lary—combining for 65 wins and 73 losses. So Chuck Estrada was probably the best Cy Young candidate. But if you’re looking for evidence that by 1960, the American League had fallen far behind the National League, talent-wise, you might just start here.

1961, National League: With six Cy Young votes, Warren Spahn was closer to winner Whitey Ford (9 votes) than third-place finisher Frank Lary (2). So he’s the obvious choice as imaginary N.L. Cy Young winner. It’s worth noting that he actually finished third among pitchers in the MVP balloting. But there’s an explanation for that: Joey Jay and Jim O’Toole, who finished ahead of Spahn, both pitched for the pennant-winning Cincinnati Reds. That’s typically been a factor in Cy Young voting, too, but not nearly as strong as in MVP voting. So I think Warren Spahn would have picked up his third Cy Young (two imaginary).

1962, American League: Don Drysdale finished atop the list of four pitchers receiving votes, all of them National Leaguers. And all of them were National Leaguers for a simple reason: there weren’t any tremendous candidates in the American League. Sure, Ralph Terry went 23-12 for the pennant-winning Yankees, and nearly pitched 300 innings. But Terry’s 3.19 ERA was nearly a run higher than Hank Aguirre’s league-leading 2.21 ERA. I’ll also mention that Terry finished well down the list in MVP voting, second among pitchers but far behind Cleveland’s Dick Donovan, even though Donovan won only 20 games and posted a higher ERA than Terry. But that’s probably due largely to MVP Mickey Mantle and No. 2 finisher Bobby Richardson both playing for the Yankees, with many voters unwilling to list another Yankee near the top of their ballots. Because he finished with 23 wins and the lowest ERA among the five A.L. pitchers who won more than 18 games, I have to think Ralph Terry would have topped a Cy Young ballot (although an interesting case might have been made for Red Sox reliever Dick Radatz, who put together a real monster of a season).

1963, American League: This was the first of Koufax’s three unanimous awards. If there had been an A.L. Cy Young, Whitey Ford might well have been unanimous, considering his 24-7 record for the first-place Yankees (he also led the league in games started and innings pitched).

1964, National League: As mentioned above, Dean Chance took Cy Young honors with his 20-9 record and (especially) 1.65 ERA. The choice was not unanimous, as three voters preferred Cub Larry Jackson’s 24-11 record, and Koufax (19-5, 1.74) picked up one vote, too. So would a National League battle have been fought by Jackson and Koufax?

Probably. Jackson had the wins, Koufax had the ERA, the reputation, and the contending Dodgers. But Jackson finished first among pitchers in MVP voting, while Koufax was fifth—behind Hall of Famers Jim Bunning and Juan Marichal, but also (bizarrely) Reds reliever Sammy Ellis—perhaps because he missed a few weeks during the season with a sore elbow and later an injured shoulder. So it seems pretty likely that Larry Jackson would have edged Koufax, Bunning, and Marichal.

1965, American League: Just two American Leaguers won more than 17 games: Mudcat Grant (21-7, 3.30) and Mel Stottlemyre (20-9, 2.63). But what about Sam McDowell, who went 17-11 a league-best 2.18 ERA and 325 strikeouts, far more than anyone else in the league? Oh, and there was also Eddie Fisher, a knuckleballing relief pitcher who went 15-7 with 24 saves, and threw 165 innings; Fisher actually finished fourth in MVP voting. Speaking of which, McDowell finished fifth among pitchers, behind Fisher and Grant and Stottlemyre and Stu Miller, another fireman.

My guess? Mudcat Grant would actually have topped Cy Young balloting, because he won those 21 games for the pennant-winning Twins; he didn’t fare particularly well in MVP balloting because teammates Zoilo Versalles and Tony Oliva finished first and second, but the Twins’ success would likely have boosted Grant’s Cy Young chances.

1966, American League: This one’s an easy call. While Koufax, in his last season, was going 27-9 in the National League on the way to Cy Young unanimity, Minnesota’s Jim Kaat was going 25-13 and leading the A.L. with 41 starts, 19 complete games, and 305 innings. Oddly, three first-place Orioles took the top three slots in MVP balloting, followed by three Twins: Harmon Killebrew, Kaat, and Tony Oliva. The next two pitchers in the MVP table were relievers, well down the list. So Jim Kaat is our hypothetical winner.

There you have it! All these years later, new Cy Young Awards for Billy Pierce, Jim Bunning, Warren Spahn, Sam Jones, Chuck Estrada, Spahn again, Ralph Terry, Whitey Ford, Larry Jackson, Jim “Mudcat” Grant, and Jim Kaat.

As recompense for all my hard work, I will happily accept an official baseball signed by Estrada, Terry, Ford, Grant, and Kaat ... all of whom, at this writing, still walk among us.

Update: I’m sorry to report that among those five, only Estrada and Kaat – quite recently elected to the Hall of Fame – are still among us. I don’t have a signed baseball, but Kaat did join me on the podcast a couple of years ago.