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Originally Posted by howard38
I agree with that. In 1972 for example there was no way any pennant winning pitcher was going to win the CY Young award over Steve Carlton. I think being on a winner was used more as a "tie-breaker" like Early Wynn over Sam Jones in 1959 or Vern Law over Ernie Broglio in 1960. With todays advanced stats it's harder to justify denying the award to a pitcher on a poor team simply because he had less run support to work with.
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Win/Loss is one of he flukiest things ever. But sometimes, you can get a great guage on just how good a guy was when he's still raking in the wins for a bad team. You can also get a real feel for how well he's pitching in tight games..
I think that's one of the reasons that Cliff Lee's 2008 season was so special. Dude went 22-3 with a 2.54 era for a team that only won 81 games. Although, I will admit that that teams issue really wasn't offense, but rather a total lack of pitching beyond cliff.. One of the things with teams that aren't contending though, is that a pitcher may tend to lose focus or not care as much down the stretch, when the games are meaningless.
On the flipside, look at Kevin Millwood's 2005 season.. Led the AL in era at 2.86, but somehow only had a 9-11 record... Now just looking at that, you would naturally assume that he was just pitching for a terrible team... And you would have assumed wrong... That was for a 93 win team.. Meanwhile on that same team, Scott Elarton goes 11-9 with a 4.61 era. and Cliff Lee goes 18-5 with a 3.79 era(almost a run worse than Millwood).