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Pitcher Stats

The following is a typical player entry in The Triple Crown Contenders.

Cy Young

TCC points: 333.25

Top TCC: 3

Titles: 8 (4, 2, 2, 1TC)

			Wins		SO		ERA
Year	Team	Leag.	Place	Pts.	Place	Pts.	Place		Pts.		Totals

1891	Cle	NL	5	6	6	5		8		3		14
1892	Cle	NL	2	9	10	1		1		10		20
1893	Cle	NL	2T2	8.5	3T2	7.5		3		8		24
1894	Cle	NL	6T2	4.5	6	5		4		7		16.5
1895	Cle	NL	1	10	5	6		6		5		21
1896	Cle	NL	3	8	1	10		5		6		24*
1897	Cle	NL	7T4	2.5	10T4	0.25		---		---		2.75
1898	Cle	NL	6T4	3.5	7	4		6		5		12.5
1899	SL	NL	4	7	6	5		2		9		21
1900	SL	NL	6T2	4.5	3	8		8		3		15.5
1901	Bos	AL	1	10	1	10		1		10		30*
1902	Bos	AL	1	10	2	9		4		7		26
1903	Bos	AL	1	10	3T2	7.5		2		9		26.5*
1904	Bos	AL	2T2	8.5	5	6		7		4		18.5
1905	Bos	AL	---	---	2T2	8.5		3		8		16.5
1906	Bos	AL	---	---	7T2	3.5		---		---		3.5
1907	Bos	AL	8	3	5	6		5		6		15
1908	Bos	AL	4	7	7	4		2		9		20
1909	Cle	AL	4T3	6	---	---		---		---		6
			Totals:	118		106.25				109		333.25
			(Pct.)	(35.4)		(31.9)				(32.7)

The career of Denton True Young shows how totally false the premise that the original Wins Above Team had a tendency to “overvalue the contributions of good pitchers on awful teams”. Nobody will disagree that either Young or Johnson was the greatest pitcher ever. And Young had a very consistent career. He was Top Triple Crown Contender once and runner-up three times in the first half of his career in the National League. And he was Top TCC twice and runner-up three times in the second half of his career in the American League. He’s the only pitcher with 100 or more TCC points in each league. His National League years were spent with one of the worst teams ever—the Cleveland Spiders. In fact, after he left the Spiders, they posted the worst full-season record in Major League history. And what were Young’s highest Wins Above Team numbers with Cleveland, supposedly exaggerated by the poor team he played for? 9.7, 9.1, and 7.6. His first two years with Boston, they were in second and third places, well above .500. Young’s Wins Above Team numbers? 11.7 and 12.1. His third-highest WAT number was 9.8 in 1907—not even Boston’s worst year with Young as a member of the pitching staff. I think a closer examination of all the multiple-team great pitchers (five good years with two different teams) would show that Total Baseball’s premise just isn’t true. They simply needed to modify it a little to claim it for their own. So why didn’t they make a modification that made some sense?

But Cy Young. He pitched over 1400 more innings than number two Pud Galvin, and faced almost 5000 more batters than did Galvin. And most baseball fans are very familiar with his most famous number—511. That’s 511 career victories. Walter Johnson is second with 417. But those two pitched in different eras. Their TCC points from Wins show Young ahead, but only 118 to 108. Johnson has a slight edge in TCC points from ERA, and it’s in Strikeouts that he pulls out ahead of Young. Johnson also won three Triple Crowns to Young’s one, had 23 titles to Young’s 8, and led his league in other positive pitching categories 26 times to Young’s 12 times. Still, the best pitcher in each league each year is awarded the Cy Young award.

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Page was last edited on 11/11/10 04:38:34 PM