The Cy Young Award Story: From 511 Wins to Roger Clemens' Seven Trophies
Why is pitching's highest honour named after a pitcher from the early 1900s? From a 511-win record that will never fall to four-in-a-row legends, a history of the Cy Young Award.
At the end of every season, Major League Baseball names the best pitcher in each league and gives him the Cy Young Award. It is the highest honour a pitcher can win, and it is named after a pitcher from more than a century ago: Cy Young.
The 511-win legend
Cy Young's real name was Denton True Young. His fastball earned him the nickname Cyclone, later shortened to Cy. He pitched more than twenty seasons between 1890 and 1911 and won 511 games, still the major league record.
That record will almost certainly never be broken. A modern starter makes about 30 starts a season; even winning 20 games every year, he would need about twenty-five seasons to catch up. Young also completed 749 games and threw more than 7,000 innings, numbers that are hard to imagine today.
Creating the award
The award was established in 1956, after Young's death. For its first years only one was given across both leagues, and the first winner was the Dodgers' Don Newcombe. From 1967, one award has gone to each league.
Winners are chosen by members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, who weigh wins, earned run average, strikeouts and innings pitched. In recent years voters have relied more and more on advanced statistics, and wins carry much less weight than they once did.
The most decorated pitchers
Roger Clemens won the most, seven, with four different teams: the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros. Randy Johnson won five, including four in a row from 1999 to 2002. Greg Maddux also won four straight, from 1992 to 1995, with pinpoint control.
In the modern era, Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander have each won three, making them the defining aces of their generation.
Not only for starters
Most winners have been starting pitchers, but relievers have won too. Oakland closer Dennis Eckersley won in 1992 and Dodgers closer Eric Gagne in 2003, proof that an elite closer can be seen as the best pitcher in his league.
How the voting has changed
The way voters judge pitchers has shifted a great deal. For decades, a pitcher with 20 wins was almost assured of serious consideration. Today voters look closely at how well a pitcher prevented runs regardless of the support his team gave him, and they consider innings and strikeouts alongside earned run average. Pitchers have won the award with relatively modest win totals, something that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
Why wins matter less
A pitcher's win total depends heavily on his team's lineup and bullpen; a pitcher can be excellent and still lose games because his teammates do not score. In 2010 Seattle's Félix Hernández won only 13 games but took the American League Cy Young thanks to his outstanding earned run average and innings. In 2018 the Mets' Jacob deGrom won just 10 games and still won the National League award. Those two cases marked a turning point in how voters judge pitchers.
The shift reflects a broader change in baseball thinking. Teams themselves now evaluate pitchers with the same tools, separating what a pitcher controls, such as strikeouts, walks and the quality of contact he allows, from the luck of run support and defence behind him. The award has simply followed the game's understanding of what makes a pitcher great. Fans have largely come around to the change, and today a winner with modest win totals rarely causes the uproar it once would have.
For Baseball Dream players
In Baseball Dream, a true ace can decide a whole series. When you judge your pitchers, think like a modern Cy Young voter: look past wins and weigh earned run average, strikeouts and innings together to find the arms that really help your team win.