Cy Young discussion (split from MLB Negotiations...)

[batmagadanleadoff]

I'm feeling totally apathetic to baseball's 2020 plight. OTOH, it'd be a shame for Jake deGrom to lose a season at the height of his considerable talents. It's rare to be rooting for a pitcher that deservedly won back-to-back Cy Youngs. Not even Tom Seaver, by comparison, ever had consecutive seasons where he deserved to win the CYA. He was certainly Cy-Young caliber in consecutive seasons, but never the league's best for two straight seasons. The closest he came was 1976-77, -- where he might've been the league's best pitcher in 1976, but lost to Randy Jones, finishing a distant 8th in the voting thanks to a ho-hum 14-11 W-L record -- and was the league's 2d best pitcher in 1977 -- and even then, he was a Met for only half a season in 1977.

[nymr83]

Another problem with a lost 2020 season: Whose hall of fame chances get wrecked by a losing a season they really needed? deGrom's only real shot given how late he started his career would have been the 'Koufax route' - being the best pitcher in the game for 5 straight years with a little bit around it. a 3rd straight CY Young was almost a necessity for those slim hopes.

[Ceetar]

and deGrom is already 'old'. Maybe that means he has more 'bullets' or whatever, but it could just mean his window/peak is smaller. This year will be less taxing on his arm, but the rest of his body is still aging too.



We'll still be citing this season in 50 years when comparing deGrom to whoever's the hot pitcher of 2066.

[batmagadanleadoff]

Wait a second! Seaver's best two year Cy run may have been 1975-76, instead of 1976-77. He deserved to win it in 76 and actually did win the Cy the year before, though Seaver's status as 75's best NL pitcher is more debatable.

[Ceetar]

shoutout to '70/'71.

[Benjamin Grimm]

1971 is really the year he got robbed. Seaver even named his cat Ferguson Jenkins because of it.

[Ceetar]

meh, arguable Fergie Jenkins was REALLY good that year too. less Ks, but also a lot less BBs than Seaver. Seaver had a better ERA but that was mostly because 85.7% Left On Base percentage, and lower batted ball luck

[batmagadanleadoff]

Seaver or Jenkins?



Expand the leaderboards and decide for yourselves.



https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1971-pitching-leaders.shtmlhttps://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/NL/1971-pitching-leaders.shtml



Jenkins had 39 more IP's than Seaver. That's about a whole months worth of work. FWIW. And 30 complete games. Wow!

[Edgy MD]

We're looking at a split thread here, but here's a fun fact: By the time Jacob deGrom started his rookie year, Bob Feller had:

• pitched in six seasons, adding up to about 5 1/4 seasons worth of service time,


• made four All-Star teams,


• finished in the top five in MVP balloting three times (there was no Cy Young), and


• served in the armed forces for three seasons.

[G-Fafif]

=Ceetar post_id=37903 time=1591279551 user_id=102]
shoutout to '70/'71.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=G-Fafif post_id=37913 time=1591284515 user_id=55]
=Ceetar post_id=37903 time=1591279551 user_id=102]
shoutout to '70/'71.

[Edgy MD]

I've long advocated for Seaver to have won the 1981 award, and that Valenzuela's victory was as much a product of novelty as observation, but the truth is that four guys could have won it that year, and if you took their names off of their stat lines, I might vote differently every time.



Short seasons create tight races.

[G-Fafif]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37915 time=1591285808 user_id=68]But no NL pitcher was better than Seaver in '76. It's just that wins were like everything back then.

[Ceetar]

I was mostly just speaking to the 'Cy Quality' of his years more than trying to get in the voter's heads 10 years before I was born. If his win total sputtered in August in 1970, it makes sense to me that the voters decided he'd fumbled it away or whatever. You could probably make a case that final month performance IS more important (i'm not going to look up competing splits, it's 50 years ago)



I just look at those years, and imagine that Seaver in today's game, and he's still elite with those numbers. (granted, he wouldn't have those numbers against modern hitters, but whatever) He was striking out as many as Syndergaard and Kershaw.

[G-Fafif]

What befell Seaver in 1970 also got the best of Scherzer in 2018 and Ryu in 2019. He had the Cy Young in his grasp deep into the season, and he couldn't hang onto it. Of course in 2018 and 2019, it worked to deGrom's benefit, so you lose some, you win some, though we'd prefer to win all.



The dynamic didn't work for Seaver in 1981. One can only wonder what might have transpired had the season's middle third been pitched.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=G-Fafif post_id=37923 time=1591293974 user_id=55]
=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37915 time=1591285808 user_id=68]But no NL pitcher was better than Seaver in '76. It's just that wins were like everything back then.

[batmagadanleadoff]

=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37950 time=1591346377 user_id=68]
=G-Fafif post_id=37923 time=1591293974 user_id=55]
=batmagadanleadoff post_id=37915 time=1591285808 user_id=68]But no NL pitcher was better than Seaver in '76. It's just that wins were like everything back then.