The Cy-pothetical Young Award: 1912-1945
 

In the “greatest lefty of all time” thread, I suggested a poll where we can "vote" for retroactive Cy Young Award winners pre-1956 (1st year of the award).

Actually running a poll over multiple years/threads is way too chaotic, but who are your top candidates from any year of choice?

Let's focus on 1912-1945 (the year after Cy retired through the end of WWII).

For an added challenge:

- Try to pick a year in which a pitcher did not win an MVP
- Try to pick a winner from the AL and NL (like it has been since 1967)

Walter Johnson. If he would've played on a good team he would have more wins than Cy himself.

His Career Shutout total is one of the most impressive records in baseball history. Even without a good team behind him, WaJo was superb.

I believe Johnson also holds the record for most 1-0 losses. On a decent team, Johnson could very well have been the wins leader. Or come extremely close.

To get Walter to the wins lead he’d need 95 wins. If we give him 95 wins, and deduct 95 losses, he’d be 512-184. That’s a winning percentage that seems unlikely even for Walter on the best teams. Young just pitched so many innings that I don’t think any team change would take his title away and give it to any other pitcher.

Could he have won 4.5 games a year instead of lost? Seems plausible with a good team behind him.

1930: Lefty Grove
1931: Lefty Grove
1934: Dizzy Dean
1945: Hal Newhouser
1946: Hal Newhouser with a very strong argument for Bob Feller

1912 Joe Wood

Yes, holds the record. He lost 26 1-0 games

+1 Agree.

And interesting his cards seems to be under appreciated also.
Perhaps also because not playing on good teams.

by year
 

1912 - Walter Johnson
1913 - Babe Adams (I would pick Walter Johnson, but he won the 1913 MVP)
1914 - Walter Johnson
1915 - Walter Johnson
1916 - Pete Alexander
1917 - Ed Cicotte
1918 - Walter Johnson
1919 - Walter Johnson
1920 - Pete Alexander
1921 - Red Faber
1922 - Red Faber
1923 - Dolf Luque
1924 - Howard Ehmke (I would pick Dazzy Vance, but he won the 1924 MVP)
1925 - Bullet Rogan (what a year! he was 15-2 with a 1.74 ERA)
1926 - George Uhle
1927 - Ted Lyons
1928 - Dazzy Vance
1929 - Lefty Grove
1930 - Lefty Grove
1931 - Wes Ferrell (I would pick Lefty Grove, but he won the 1931 MVP)
1932 - Lefty Grove
1933 - Lon Warneke (I would pick Carl Hubbell, but he won the 1933 MVP)
1934 - Slim Jones (I would pick Dizzy Dean, but he won the 1934 MVP)
1935 - Wes Ferrell
1936 - Lefty Grove
1937 - Lefty Grove
1938 - Bill Lee
1939 - Bob Feller (I would pick Bucky Walters, but he won the 1939 MVP)
1940 - Bob Feller
1941 - Thornton Lee
1942 - Tex Hughson (I would pick Mort Cooper, but he won the 1942 MVP)


Walter Johnson and Lefty Grove really stand out.

Great list, and agree with Grove in particular…except 1937. Really seems like the other HoF Lefty would have gotten the nod that year. He almost runs the table on Grove.

https://stathead.com/baseball/player...om=1937&type=p

Admitting to some prejudice on the matter, I've never understood how Cy Young--one of the all-time great pitchers, without question--gets a pass on his first ten seasons taking place in the 19th century. If you're going to assign a starting date for "modern" baseball, 1901 and the beginning of the two major leagues would seem to be a logical choice. We don't give Hoss Radbourn the record for wins at 59 or Will White the record for complete games at 75, because the game was too different when they pitched. Even the rules hadn't solidified: the distance from the rubber to the plate was 50 feet through 1893. If you start in 1901, the record book for career pitching feats looks quite different. Are there any other baseball records accepted from the 19th century? If not, why are those? I suppose the answer would be that Young proved himself a great pitcher in the 20th century, also, but is that enough?

Yeah, not like Kid Nichols is ever in the mix of greatest pitcher discussions, but he started the same year as Cy and I believe had more wins in the 1890s.

One of the great mysteries, for sure. Nichols was outstanding by all accounts, and even Cy himself conceded Nichols was superior to him in their early years.

See for yourself:

https://stathead.com/baseball/player...to=1899&type=p

If you haven’t read Joe Posnanski’s The Baseball 100, I highly highly recommend it. He addresses this very issue in his profile of Nichols (#82, pages 115-118).

FWIW, Posnanski clarifies that a number assigned to each player is not ordinal, so he is not suggesting that Nichols is merely the 82nd greatest player.

Wow, what a record he had! I had no idea.

How about Babe Ruth in 1916?

An AL contender, no doubt, but I think it was Johnson’s to lose. Shawkey, Coveleski, and Dauss were also in the mix.

Johnson's teams
 

I dunno guys, I guess I'm just contrary, and I agree that Johnson was the greatest pitcher of all time, but . . . I don't see the whole "if he hadn't been on such wretched teams" argument.

I figure the Senators' W/L record while he was on the team (August 2, 1907 through 1927) at 1531-1559 - that's .49546.

After that horrible 1907 season, where he was with them for only two months, they had 10 winning and 10 losing seasons during his time there (and 3 of the losing seasons were 76-77, 75-78, and 74-79). From 1908-1927 they finished first twice and last once. They finished 1-4 in the standings 11 times, 5-8 9 times.

Also, the 1-0 games: should we give him wins in all 26 that he lost? How many 1-0 games did he win anyway?

I'm not saying the Senators teams were great but they weren't horrible - just middle-of-the-road. I don't see you get many more wins for Johnson unless you put him on a team that played .600 ball for 20 years (in other words, the Yankees after 1920).

For comparison I looked up the W/L records of Cy Young's teams between 1890-1911 (in partial seasons including the team's record only while he was there) and I got 1582-1426, .526. I figure Pete Alexander's teams at 1470-1314, .528. Definitely better teams but not by a huge margin.

How does this translate to wins?
If you take the 3090 games (1531-1559) the Nats played when Johnson was with them and give them a .525 Winning PCT instead of the real .49546, that would be 1622 wins instead of 1531. That's a "win shortfall" of 91 wins over the 20+ seasons. During his career Johnson won 27% of the team's wins (417 of 1531). 27% of the 91-win shortfall would be 24 or 25 extra wins, just over one game a year. That's not nothing, but doesn't transform his stature (after all, he's already the best ever).

Tim

cjedmonton - It's interesting you bring this one up. It's one I have wrestled with, myself. I don't have any problem saying Gomez was right up there with Grove in 1937 and a good case can be made that Gomez was the best pitcher that year. We agree that it should definitely be a guy name "Lefty"!.

Interesting analysis, Tim. The Nationals were only truly wretched his first five years, with two last-place and three seventh-place finishes. After Clark Griffith arrived in 1912, they had scrappy good-defense, good-baserunning, fairly competitive teams before assembling a truly world-class squad for the pennant seasons of 1924-25. Question: if Walter might have won an extra 25 games in his career with better teams, does that mean he would he have also lost 25 fewer games? If so, that would be pretty transformative for his career winning %. Of course, as you say, how much better does he need to be?

Interesting info I have posted years ago, but a refresher ...

These are consecutive head-to-head appearances of the two pitchers (as both were in American League and played against each other):

August 14, 1915 - Ruth defeats Johnson 4-3
April 17, 1916 - Ruth defeats Johnson 5-1
June 1, 1916 - Ruth defeats Johnson 1-0
August 15, 1916 - Ruth defeats Johnson 1-0 in 13 innings
September 9, 1916 - Ruth defeats Johnson 2-1
September 12, 1916 - Johnson defeats Ruth 4-3

During 1916 and 1917, Ruth compiled won-lost records of 23-12 and 24-13 with ERAs of 1.75 and 2.01

In 1916, Ruth led the league in ERA and Shutouts (9) and in 1917, in complete games (35).

Johnson put up some eye-popping numbers also. But his stats weren't as good as Ruth's. Over the same two years, Johnson was 25-20 and 23-16 with ERAs of 1.89 and 2.30

For the record, I’m not suggesting that Young was the greatest ever. Can’t imagine any scenario where it’s not comfortably The Big Train.

The thread title was just a cheeky play on words to debate who should have been recognized as each league’s top pitcher if such an award existed then.

This is a little misleading though. To truly measure how good they were, we need to know how they performed when he wasn't pitching. He was so good that logic says they won games with him they wouldn't have otherwise. For example, in 1914, the Senators were 24-15 when he started and 30-18 when he pitched at all. They finished 81-73. So they were under .500 when he didn't start and multiple games under .500 when he pitched at all.

I'm not seeing a fast way on BBRef to get the team's record in games he pitched without looking at each individual season. However, even if we look at just his pitching decisions, he was 417-279, for a winning percentage of .599. If we take those decisions off the top of the totals you listed, the team is now 1114-1280 for a winning percentage of .465. That's 71 wins a year in a 154-game schedule. 71-83 is pretty terrible, especially over a 20+ year span.

I considered Joe Wood for 1912. But Walter Johnson led the league in ERA, K, ERA+, WHIP, H/9, K/9, and K/BB. Joe Wood led in wins (1 ahead of Johnson), CG, and shutouts. Johnson threw 25 more innings AND had a 0.52 lower ERA.

So my vote goes to Walter Johnson for 1912.

Joe also won 3 more in the World Series including the deciding Game 8, but if the Cy-pothetical Young Award doesn't count post season I guess that's moot.

Wow great comparison and supervising results
Just shows the greatness of both

Big train
 

Hank, I see what you mean - 25 games difference would make his W/L PCT 442 - 254 (.635) instead of .599, which would probably be enough to silence silence all the arguments for anyone else as GOAT.

I was mainly reacting against the "he'd 'a won 4.5 more games a year!" stuff, which is just wacky. If we play that 4.5/year out over 20 years, we get a pitcher who goes 517-179 with a .743 W/L.

Lefty Grove went .680 and Whitey Ford .690 with some of the greatest teams in history behind them - that's pretty much the upper limit for a pitcher's career W/PCT. Grove's teams were at .578, Ford's teams PCT were at .600. Notice a pattern? The greatest pitchers seem to have a PCT about 90-105 points higher than their teams. Johnson's is right in line with that. If his team was holding him back a whole bunch, we would expect that difference to be larger.

PITCHER W/L PCT TEAM W/L PCT
Alexander .643 .528
Johnson .599 .495
Grove .680 .578
Young .619 .526
Ford .690 .600
Mathewson .665 .576

This chart suggests that it was Alexander, not Johnson, who outperformed his teams by the greatest amount.

(I wonder how that would play out with all the pitchers in the HOF...

Here are a few I chose at random:

Drysdale .557 .547 (ugly)
Mussina .638 .559 (not bad)
Maddux .609 .554
Gomez .649 .635
Lyons .530 .458

Thought experiment: swap Lyons for Gomez in 1931. Gomez goes 137-153 for the White Sox (slightly better than the team) and visits the HOF as a paying guest in his later years. Lyons goes 340-150 for the Yankees (about as much better than his teams than he was in real life) and is thought of as one of the GOATs.

That analysis seems to me to be somewhat confounded by the fact that you're taking Johnson into account in assessing how good a team the Senators were versus other teams. What if you looked at how many runs per game they scored versus other teams? EDIT SEE NOW THIS POINT WAS MADE ALREADY

more WaJo
 

Hi Chris,
I see what you mean - the Senators were obviously a good bit worse when WJ wasn't pitching than when he was. But that would be true with any great pitcher. He will outpitch the rest of the team by a wide margin, which is what makes him a great pitcher. I figure Cy Young's teams as being under .500 (1071-1111, .491) in games he didn't win or lose. Same with GCA (1097-1106, .498). With all three of these pitchers, it appears that they lifted their team's overall WPCT by about 25-35 points. Also, check my previous post where I look at the difference in WPCT between the pitcher and the team. That might be of interest.

To clarify, Washington was somewhat worse than a typical club that has an all-time great pitcher on it. No argument there. But not exponentially worse. The question is how many more hypothetical wins we can imagine the pitcher having with a better club. In my other post I proposed about one extra win a year for Johnson. I'll stick with that for now.

Good analysis, but as noted, WJ's team was not considered as good. Can't be done of course, but how do you think those games may have turned out had they switched the teams they were pitching for?

I think 512-184 is a mathematically implausible winning percentage for any pitcher. Personally, I think Johnson is probably the greatest ever; but this is not a likely scenario on any team.

Personally, I think “all time” means all-time and that excluding the 19th century is inappropriate. The game was different, which is why we compare great players to their context, OPS+, ERA+, etc. that factor in what norms were in that time. Young is in my book probably the 2nd greatest pitcher ever, his effective innings thrown is absolutely astounding even in the context of his time and place. He hurled 1,300 more innings than anyone else, and did so very, very effectively. WAR, explicitly written in a way to try and punish 19th century pitchers more than anyone else, still has Young and Johnson neck and neck. Young seems oddly underrated in these conversations, to me. 138 ERA+, 7,356 innings is hard to beat.

Every record, almost, is set in a favorable context. Bonds’ record is partially due to his time and place, so is Ruth’s, so is Johnson’s, so is almost everyone’s. The 19th century is not different in this regard; the difference is people tend to like the context of eras they saw or romanticize. But for an all-time argument, I think all times must be included fairly or it’s not all-time.

And let's not forget that Ruth won two games in the 1916 WS as Boston defeated Brooklyn.

Hey John - I think that Ruth won 1 game in the 1916 Series.

He won 2 in the 1918 Series.

I wish that Carrigan would have used him in the 1915 Series. He was 18-8 during the regular season

Yeah, I excluded postseason since that's what the awards have always done.

+1. Cool chart comparison.
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