Obviously we're biased after hearing it for 50 years, but the Cy Young Award just sounds right. It's short, punchy and doesn't sound like anybody else's name. Mathewson is too long, and easy to mispronounce, Walter Johnson is too generic, and Lefty Grove sounds like an award for the best left-handed pitcher.

Besides, it was foreordained for this classic joke from the early 90s, which I forget who said: "They should have 2 awards for pitchers - the Cy Young for the best pitcher in the league, and the Anthony Young for the worst."

Haha, of course Cy Young sounds good, because we are so used to it. If it was called the Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson Award since 1956 we would feel much differently. I probably would have written an article based on how someone else deserved to have the award named after him and we would think "Cy Young Award"??? That sounds ridiculous!

I agree it sounds right and that's fine since the name will never change. It's just very interesting to really see what the guy did in his seasons and how he stacked up with everyone else in his league. Now, I go into a bit more detail about this in the book I'm writing, but it also is not as if Cy finished 1-2 points behind everyone else in the years he did not win - he was legitimately behind them. He was consistently in the top three or top four, but the award should be named after the person most consistently #1, not #3.

If they changed it that McDonald's on I-77 near Newcomerstown, OH would have to redecorate, and that would be sad. Best McDonalds ever.

I guess I'm more surprised to learn that the Moose played two games at second base than that he met Cy Young.

Haha, of course Cy Young sounds good, because we are so used to it. If it was called the Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson Award since 1956 we would feel much differently. I probably would have written an article based on how someone else deserved to have the award named after him and we would think "Cy Young Award"??? That sounds ridiculous!

On the other hand, the "Vince Lombardi Trophy" still sounds a bit odd after all these years. Too many syllables. It should be named after, um, some legendary coach with a two-syllable name. The Paul Brown Award!

I think one reason Frick named the award after Young was because he needed to name it after a player who represented both leagues. Young won 200+ games in both the AL and NL. All of the other great pitchers on your list competed mostly or entirely in only one of the two leagues.

If it was called the Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson Award since 1956 we would feel much differently. I probably would have written an article based on how someone else deserved to have the award named after him and we would think "Cy Young Award"??? That sounds ridiculous!

I don't know, "Cy" is a pretty cool sounding first name. The fact that it is almost never used anymore gives it a sort of added, old timey (in a good way) feel.

The Paul Brown Award!

Chuck Noll pisses in your general direction.

His real name was Denton, too, with regards to Cy Young, which is used even less. If you guys want to see something really funny from my study, look at these names -

There were two DIFFERENT pitchers named Lefty (Grove and Gomez) who would have won the award every year from 1928-1937.

There were two DIFFERENT guys named Dizzy and one named Dazzy.

There were also winners with the names Tiny, Tex, Spud, and Mort. Never met anyone with those names.

I don't know, "Cy" is a pretty cool sounding first name. The fact that it is almost never used anymore gives it a sort of added, old timey (in a good way) feel.

Precisely. I can think of few award names (in or out of sports) better than the Cy Young Award.

Sandlapper, that's a very good point however if you look at 1890-1900, when Cy was in the NL, there were two other guys (Hutchison and Nichols) who each were the best pitcher thrice while Cy was only once. In the AL, in 1901-1911, Cy was the best pitcher thrice but so was Ed Walsh.

Essentially, his career as a whole was great but he was never more dominant than anyone else in his years in each league.

Him having pitched an equal amount of years in the NL and AL is probably the only logical reason to name the award after him, but who said he needed to name the award after a player? He couldn't have come up with some sort of MVP-type name for pitcher?

It would be like naming a 3000 K club after Greg Maddux, who never led the league, but was consistent in good numbers and pitched long enough to amass 3000. That's not the perfect example but I'm sure you know what I mean.

It's named after him because he won the most games? By a huge margin? "Represents both leagues?" Nope. Just wins, baby.

Also - he died in November 1955 & they started giving out the award in 1956. His death sparked a desire to name an award for most outstanding pitcher after him.

I think Pete Rose is a better analogy. It would be like naming the winner of the Batting Average contest each year the "Pete Rose Award," even though Rose only led the league in batting three times. But he does hold the major league record for most career hits.

Not a bad idea, actually. Maybe he'd settle for that instead of a HOF plaque.

A minor nitpick about the article: Seidman says, in talking about 1890-1900, that "During those 11 years there was no American League. The National League was major league baseball." What he's missing there is the one-year experiment of the Player's League in 1890 and the dying two years of the American Association in 1890-91.

Young (along with Nichols and Rusie) made his debut in the era of the 55' pitching distance with no mound - an era in which 500 IP seasons were commonplace. Possibly the most wrenching transformation in baseball history (maybe partly inspired by Rusie) was the move back to 60'6" in 1993. Young, Nichols, and Rusie survived that transition - Hutchison (who was quite a bit older) not so much. The 500 IP seasons went away, and after a few years, so did the 400 IP seasons. As for the one-league, 60'6" era (1893-1900), who was the best pitcher of the era? There's a pretty good argument for Nichols, but the one thing you have to watch out for there is the question of how much of what appears to be Nichols's own value might be attributed to the superb defenders who backed him.

As for the coolness of "Cy" and/or "Denton," I think that when Steve Treder wrote a time machine article about him, he called the time-displaced version "Denny" Young.

Studes,

THAT's the right example, haha. I've got my Greg Maddux jersey on so it was the most accessible example. Pete Rose would be the right one. Only led the league a few times but holds the career record in the area. Cy Young has the record for 511 career wins but, as my article points out, rarely led his league in wins.

OCF, great point. I actually debated using the Player's and American Association but ended up not using them in order to keep the discussion with National and American.

If you want to see some crazy Bill Hutchison numbers, in 1890 he went 42-25 while making 66 starts, going for 65 complete games, and lasting 603 IP.

One of the long-term effects of the crime that was syndicate ownership is that when you say "Cleveland Spiders" to most baseball fans, the first thing that they think of is the 1899 abomination of a team that went 20-134. That was not the result of long-term neglect or incompetent management. No, it wasn't incompetent management, it was actively hostile management - the Spiders were murdered, for the benefit of the team now known as the Cardinals. The 1898 Spiders were 13 games above .500 and had plenty of star power: one inner-circle all-timer (Young), two other Hall of Famers (Jesse Burkett and Bobby Wallace) and another Hall of Meriter (Cupid Childs). Childs, Wallace, and Ed McKean makes for a pretty impressive 3/4 of an infield.

And St. Louis couldn't even hang on to Young and Burkett. Both of them found the AL to be an attractive option.

If you want to see some crazy Bill Hutchison numbers, ...

1890 was his breakout season, his second full season in the majors and his first carrying that kind of load. He was already 30 years old. And he had even more IP a couple of years later. Who knows what he could have accomplished with a more conventional career path? (Either that, or he would have blown his arm out. You never know.)

But I personally don't recommend using a formula devised to look at post-1893 pitching (such as the one in this article) and trying to apply it to the preceding era. I don't really know any sane way to think about Charley Radbourn's 1884.

OCF,

If we just start at 1893, it means that we lose Bill Hutchison's 3 consecutive seasons as best pitcher/cy winner. All that does to the rest of the article's results is show that there were 11, not 12, players who were the best seasonal pitcher/cy winner more than Young, equal to Young, or within one of Young.

Another interesting thing about the 1890-1892 is that Hutchison's IP totals were - 603, 561, 622. Rusie was his next closest at - 548.2, 500.1, 532. Rusie finished 2nd to Hutchison, with this formula, for those three years and then after the switch, Hutchison did not register in the top five in 1893, while Rusie finished first.

An odd thing about Hutchison's 1893 was that he posted a 4.75 ERA, which usually would be the equivalent of posting an 8.00 ERA in today's game, however he had an ERA+ of 102, still slightly better than the league average.

From looking at the runs scored differential between 1892 and 1893 it appears as though the shift from 55-60'6 resulted in almost an additional 1,000 runs scored.

If they had not named it the "Cy Young Award", we would have missed out on Greg Nettles great remark about Sparky Lyle:

He went from Cy Young to Sayonara.

Not to forget the classic "Cy Old" remark whenever some geezer appears on the ballot.

As for the coolness of "Cy" and/or "Denton," I think that when Steve Treder wrote a time machine article about him, he called the time-displaced version "Denny" Young.

Yep.

As for the question of why the award was named in honor of Young, the Chris's in #12 and #13 nail it: he'd just died, and he won 511 games.

Think about it: he won 511 games. That isn't merely a weird artifact of his era; none of his contemporaries won anything close to 511 games. Certainly it's true that he was rarely the #1 pitcher in his league in a given season (and when he was it was mostly in the newly-created American League, not quite yet the competitive equal of the NL), but he was incredibly consistent and incredibly durable and just damn good for a very, very long time.

Young's career stats just boggle the mind. They're so phenomenal we rarely stop and consider them; we just take them for granted. But they deserve all honor the award grants them, and more.

Greg Nettles

Who?

There were two DIFFERENT guys named Dizzy and one named Dazzy.

Not to mention their French cousin Goufée.

You know, baseball players today have very peculiar names...

I agree, but

1) Switch W Johnson and Young in teammates OR time, and Big Train might win 500. Swap both and he surely wins more.
2) Kid Nichols was as good as Cy thru age 28 (I sponsor his BBref page), and he missed time pitching in the 'minors' out west; simply because in 1902, that wasn't considered a bad option.

Cy will look like Maddux in 50 years, if Greg wins another 40 games; clearly would be a obvious career value leader in his generation, but Clemens/Big Unit/Pedro et al were periodically better.

Young was very, very good and exceptionally durable. His win total is 17 years of league-leading seasonal performance. That would be roughly comparable to someone like Warren Spahn.

1) Switch W Johnson and Young in teammates OR time, and Big Train might win 500. Swap both and he surely wins more.

Maybe. But we honor what did happen, not what might have happened.

Moreover, stupendous as Johnson's 417 win total is, two of his near-contemporaries (Mathewson and Alexander) came relatively close, at 373 apiece. Johnson didn't dominate his contemporaries in career totals (not just wins, but complete games, innings etc.) nearly to the extent that Young did.

Cy will look like Maddux in 50 years, if Greg wins another 40 games; clearly would be a obvious career value leader in his generation, but Clemens/Big Unit/Pedro et al were periodically better.

In my "Denny Young" piece, the modern pitcher I had the modern Young most closely resembling is Maddux.

Young was very, very good and exceptionally durable. His win total is 17 years of league-leading seasonal performance. That would be roughly comparable to someone like Warren Spahn.

Yes. Spahn is another good comp.

I'm not saying he shouldn't have AN award named after him, but Ford Frick himself said that the award will honor the best or most effective pitcher in the league each season. He did not say it would honor the guy who had the best career or posted the best career stats. Otherwise, we would give the award each year to the person who had the best career stats up to that point.

Cy Young deserves to have an award in his name. It should be an award for posting the best career numbers in your era, or some sort of a lifetime achievement award, but the award that currently bears his name is designed to honor seasonal pitching.

Studes hit the (insert word) on the head when comparing it to Pete Rose having the batting average winner each year win an award in his name. It's not to say that these guys were not great or do not deserve all of the accolades they receive, but I'm talking about SEASONS here, not career. Cy had an amazing, amazing career, and nobody is refuting that, but if his award is supposed to honor the best seasonal pitcher each year it retrospectively does not make much sense.

A reader e-mailed me to ask about 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes since that might shed some light on how consistent people were. I looked at my data and awarded 3 pts for first place, 2 pts for second place, 1 pt for third place, and -1 for each season out of the top three. Here is what I got -

Cy Young: 1st(4), 2nd(7), 3rd(6), out(5) = 27
Christy: 1st(7), 2nd(4), 3rd(3), out(3) = 29
Big Train: 1st(8), 2nd(4), 3rd(3), out(6) = 29
Grove: 1st(7), 2nd(0), 3rd(4), out(6) = 19
Alexander: 1st(6), 2nd(3), 3rd(3), out(8) = 19

This shows the consistency in their careers of the top four "cy winners" and Cy himself. Christy and Big Train finished slightly ahead of Young, while Young moved ahead of Grove and Alexander.

I appreciate all of the comments on my article. It had long been a dream of mine to get something posted on The Hardball Times and my hard work paid off today. Whether or not you agree or disagree with my thesis or results, I am very enthused that we are all acknowledging baseball history and having an educational discussion with regards to an era so often forgotten. It's not everyday that I can say I just had a really good discussion about Cy Young, Walter Johnson, and Christy Mathewson. So, in other words, agree or disagree, thank you for reading and posting. I love the interest level.

Cy Young deserves to have an award in his name. It should be an award for posting the best career numbers in your era, or some sort of a lifetime achievement award, but the award that currently bears his name is designed to honor seasonal pitching.

Fair enough, Eric.

The practical issues with this are, of course, that they already have an award for the best career numbers in your era/lifetime achievement award. It's called the Hall of Fame.

Haha, yeah I'm not necessarily an advocate for an award to be implemented like that but I'm saying that based on his career numbers as well as the individual seasons in that career, naming the award for best seasonal pitcher after him does not make as much sense as we think it does. He definitely deserves an award in his name because his career numbers are so gaudy that gaudy does not begin to describe them but I'm just not sold on the idea that best seasonal pitcher is the one for him. If we're going to play the consistency card then look at the perfectly formatted table of results I posted above, which shows that Christy and Walter were more consistent in being in the top three during their careers. I've got to get back to my job now, but if anyone has any questions about the article, feel free to e-mail me - seidburns850@aol.com.

Denny Young? Can't wait to see if he Styx! (Sorry.)

2) Kid Nichols was as good as Cy thru age 28 (I sponsor his BBref page), and he missed time pitching in the 'minors' out west; simply because in 1902, that wasn't considered a bad option.

That's certainly a defensible position. I can also see it argued the other way. The difficulty in the evaluation is the question of just how much advantage it was worth for Nichols over Young to have the Beaneaters' defense behind him. I can see it as a fairly close call.

But that's just it; Nichols was a no-doubt Hall of Famer, not that far outside of the inner circle. Young matched that career, and then kept right on going for another decade or more. One my pitcher-evaluation spreadsheet, I've got a line for Cy Young in the American League. Just from that portion of his career alone, I'd have elected him to Hall of Merit. I'll argue that the American League-only Young had a better career than Mordecai Brown, among others.

I'll argue that the American League-only Young had a better career than Mordecai Brown, among others.

Indeed. The only question regarding Young's AL stats is the degree to which the AL in its first few toddling years was equal to the NL in terms of quality of play.

Cy will look like Maddux in 50 years, if Greg wins another 40 games; clearly would be a obvious career value leader in his generation, but Clemens/Big Unit/Pedro et al were periodically better.

Maddux finished #1 in innings pitched and ERA+ four straight years in the 1990s. Then he finished 2, 2 and 1 in ERA+ while ranking 2nd, 8th and 3rd in innings. Maddux wasn't "rarely the best pitcher in his league." Maddux had every bit as good a peak as any of those three.

Thanks for the article, Eric. It helped me understand the reasoning behind the naming of the "Cy Young" award. To me it seems analogous to how the "Hank Aaron Award" came to represent an amalgam of stats that don't really say anything about Hank Aaron.


Sounds as if the process for the naming went sort of like this:

* Observers inside and outside of baseball -- BBWAA types -- are vaguely dissatisfied with the league MVP vote short-shrifting pitchers.
* No one does anything about it.
* Cy Young dies.
* Ford Frick says aha, an opportunity for baseball to right a wrong and get in the papers!

"Best pitcher in baseball gets the Cy Young Award!"

"But boss, there are two leagues. What's wrong with awarding one per league, like we do with MVPs?"

"Cy Young pitched in both leagues! Don't want to exclude anyone! Best ALL-AROUND pitcher in baseball gets the Cy Young Award!"

"But boss, why Cy? People have forgotten about him. What about PR? Everyone knows stories about Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson!"

"Oh no no, Cy Young's passing still resides fresh in the minds of our fans! Those two chaps died years ago!"

"But boss, Christy Mathewson and Walter Johnson were and are much more dominant pitchers, which is what the award should honor, right?"

"Dominant? Count the winz, baby!"

"But boss, what will this do to the MVP voting? Are pitchers still eligible?"

"Oh, we can figure that out later. Use an asterisk, perhaps? Everything will be fine, debate over! This release must go to the press, pronto!"

I think Pete Rose is a better analogy. It would be like naming the winner of the Batting Average contest each year the "Pete Rose Award," even though Rose only led the league in batting three times. But he does hold the major league record for most career hits.

Oooh, don't go there. Bad memories from rec.sport.baseball.....

get in the papers

To be sure, that's all this award, the MVP, or the HOF (or the Oscars or the Grammies or what have you) is really all about: it's an industry-generated publicity stunt.

As I well remember Leonard Koppett patiently explaining to me one time, regarding the Hall of Fame: It isn't supposed to be clear as to who's deserving as who isn't; it's a mechanism intentionally designed to provoke irresolvable argument.

Well, given how much the HOF seems to mean to the players, I think it's more than just a publicity stunt.

And I think Mr. Koppett was giving the creators too much credit. The boundary line has always shifted in response to public opinion - they want to get it "right", they just don't realize that they can't.

it's a mechanism intentionally designed to provoke irresolvable argument.

Wonderful philosophical viewpoint. Not necessarily achored in reality.

I sincerely doubt the "mechanism" was "intentionally designed" to do anything, other than select inductees. Inductees = publicity = people going to the museum = the salvation of bucolic Cooperstown.

The arguments were probably no more than the unavoidable consequence of anything having to do with baseball, which of necessity has always generated arguments.

Well, given how much the HOF seems to mean to the players, I think it's more than just a publicity stunt.

What is a revenue-generating museum, if not a form of publicity? It has worked brilliantly. Cooperstown has an economic engine. Baseball gets publicity. Players get honors that translate into higher earning power. Newspapers get something to write about. Fans get something to argue about.

And one poster gets the cause of a lifetime as he lobbies for removing it from Cooperstown.

What is a revenue-generating museum, if not a form of publicity? It has worked brilliantly.

Yes, that's the point.

Moreover, stupendous as Johnson's 417 win total is, two of his near-contemporaries (Mathewson and Alexander) came relatively close, at 373 apiece.

By runs allowed (RA+ and innings), I have that Mathewson wasn't as good as his actual record, Alexander was about as good as his actual record, and Johnson was better than his actual record. My RA+ equivalent records: Mathewson 332-199, Alexander 369-208, and Johnson 427-230. And on the same scale, Cy Young 519-298. Trying to estimate an appropriate defensive support adjustment for Nichols, I have him at 352-210 - and that doesn't count his late-career minor league performances. (I think Nichols was the owner of the team he pitched for, or at least had a stake in it - TomH referred to this in #24.)