Fergie Jenkins victory over Tom Seaver in the 1971 Cy Young race.
First let's start with the stats of each player
Wins Losses ERA Strikeouts WHIP
Player A: 20 10 1.76 289 0.95
Player B: 24 13 2.77 263 1.05
Now if you were a CY Young voter, who would you have voted for? I know that Player A would have had my vote easily. Yes he had 4 less wins, but he also had 3 less losses, an ERA a full point better than Player B's and he had 26 more strikeouts. Even his WHIP was an entire tenth of a point better. It should have been no contest between these two players. Yet, Fergie Jenkins (Player B) had more than three times as many first place votes as Tom Seaver (Player A) did. I thought that Jenkins might have won so handily because the Cubs in 1971 were a much better team than the Mets, making Jenkins' contributions more valuable, but in fact the Cubs and the Mets had the exact same record in '71, 83-79.
This means that the only reason why Jenkins dominated the vote getting was because of his 4 more wins. That just doesn't justify the award for me. Seaver still had 20 wins, second most in the National League, the benchmark for any truly amazing pitching season, and that ERA is simply absurd. Seaver was the only pitcher with a sub 2.00 ERA that season, and he was the only pitcher with a sub 1.00 WHIP. Not only that, but Seaver led the league in strikeouts even though he threw 40 innings less than Jenkins. On the opposite side of the coin, Jenkins led the league in home runs allowed and in hits allowed, not the categories you would expect the CY Young award to be leading in.
So for me it is pretty clear that Tom Seaver was robbed in the 1971 CY Young voting. what do you think?
- Mose
2 comments:
I agree...I was looking at old stats and such and noticed that Seaver finsished second in voting this year and was wondering who could have possibly been better when I realized it was actually no one! Clearly better stats, the funny thing is that win and losses mean pretty much nothing as they are dependant on the run support you get or not get. With ERA 1 run higher should have been a no brainer. Perhaps it has something to do with Fergie being black? Just asking the question, not sure though....
I agree...I was looking at old stats and such and noticed that Seaver finsished second in voting this year and was wondering who could have possibly been better when I realized it was actually no one! Clearly better stats, the funny thing is that win and losses mean pretty much nothing as they are dependant on the run support you get or not get. With ERA 1 run higher should have been a no brainer. Perhaps it has something to do with Fergie being black? Just asking the question, not sure though....
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