Largest MVP and CY shares with no wins
Posted by Andy on November 7, 2007
I wrote the post below to go up on Thursday, but the controversy over Curt Schilling's new contract is directly relevant to Cy Young voting shares, so I moved it up a day.
Also, this has nothing to do with anything, but why would you have season ticket holders give opinions on TV and radio broadcasters? Aren't those fans AT the games, and not listening on TV and radio? Furthermore, aren't those fans who bought season tickets already deeply committed to the team? Aren't you more interested in the opinions of the fringe, who you'd like to commit to being more dedicated fans? Just one more example of Phillies franchise, uhh, not-so-smartness. But at least our man Sean will get to vote.
Anyway, click through for the full post on MVP and Cy Young award shares.
This isn't a PI post, but just a general Baseball-Reference post.
If you check out the all-time leaders for MVP and Cy Young award voting, you can pick out those with the largest career shares of the awards without ever actually winning one. For those who don't know, players are given shares based on the actual votes they received in comparison to if they'd been a unanimous winner. So, even the true winner doesn't often get a perfect 1.00 share. As we know, there are many inequities in MVP and Cy Young voting, so a list like this at least helps to reward those who have gotten lots of votes but never won.
Here are the top 25 MVP candidates in terms of MVP share, with no wins:
1 Eddie Murray* 3.33 2 Mike Piazza 3.15 3 Al Kaline* 2.92 4 Mel Ott* 2.75 5 Manny Ramirez 2.75 6 Bill Terry* 2.72 7 Kirby Puckett* 2.56 8 Bob Feller* 2.49 9 Gary Sheffield 2.48 10 Johnny Mize* 2.46 11 Warren Spahn* 2.44 12 Al Simmons* 2.43 13 Albert Belle 2.38 14 Pedro Guerrero 2.3 15 Heinie Manush* 2.25 16 Dave Winfield* 2.2 17 Rabbit Maranville* 2.13 18 Vern Stephens 2.12 19 Enos Slaughter* 2.1 20 Derek Jeter 2.04 21 David Ortiz 2.04 22 Pie Traynor* 2.04 23 Bill Dickey* 2.02 24 Luke Appling* 2.01 25 Duke Snider* 1.97
And the top 25 all-time for Cy Young, also with no wins:
1 Curt Schilling 1.85
2 Dan Quisenberry 1.49
3 Nolan Ryan* 1.48
4 Jimmy Key 1.25
5 Dave Stewart 1.22
6 Kevin Brown 1.2
7 Trevor Hoffman 1.07
8 Mariano Rivera 1
9 Mickey Lolich 0.93
10 Tommy John 0.92
11 Mike Mussina 0.91
12 Andy Pettitte 0.89
13 Jack Morris 0.73
14 Dontrelle Willis 0.7
15 Mike Hampton 0.69
16 Wilbur Wood 0.69
17 Mike Norris 0.65
18 Ramon Martinez 0.64
19 Joe Niekro 0.64
20 Rick Reuschel 0.62
21 Jerry Koosman 0.61
22 Steve McCatty 0.6
23 Andy Messersmith 0.57
24 David Wells 0.55
25 Mike Caldwell 0.54
Jason Schmidt 0.54
Lee Smith 0.54
Mario Soto 0.54
John Tudor 0.54
This reminds me that pretty soon we'll get to check how our voting for NL MVP and AL Cy Young compares to the real results...check back soon for that.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:45 am
well, uh, at the risk of pointing out the obvious, the Phillies generally play something like 81 games away from Philadelphia. I don't think season ticket holders get to attend those, but I would imagine a lot of them watch them on TV/listen to them on the radio.
don't get me wrong, the Phillies do a lot of dumb things. but I don't see how this is one of them. and I would imagine that a lot of other franchises do exactly the same thing.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:02 am
Well that's a good point...
November 7th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Two observations on these interesting lists:
1) Dan Quisenberry, probably unappreciated by most, ranks ahead of Nolan Ryan in one significant ranking. Side note: if you pick a 25-man team using only one player for each letter of the alphabet, Quiz is the "Q."
2) Here is confirmation, from another source besides win shares, that Piazza, Ramirez, and Sheffield qualify now for the Hall. (Well, Manny may have one year to go on his win-share cumulative.) After #12, with Albert Belle, the MVP list gets into murky territory. Some HofF, some not, depending on position played, how the Veterans' Committee felt about 'intangibles,' etc.
November 7th, 2007 at 10:56 am
It's going to be interesting to see what happens with Schilling. If he goes 10-16, 4.50 next year...I wonder if he gets a third place vote for Cy Young.
Somehow I doubt it will matter--he'll probably do well enough to warrant at least a few votes, as he has in many years past.
November 7th, 2007 at 11:44 am
One other thing...Abraham's piece that I linked above is really only the tip of the iceberg. True that if a beat writer were to split $1 million with Schilling, that money would (in all likelihood) be very valuable to the writer. But even now, it's true that most players get bonuses for award voting, and even as little as $5,000 or $10,000, which is worth a lot to average Joes like us, could be promised by a player as incentive in return for votes that might be worth $50k to $5 million for the player.
November 7th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Very interesting. This list doesn't necessarily suggest that the top players on the list were unfairly treated in the voting -- it is certainly quite possible that a player could year after year be one of the best players in the league (and thus accumulate lots of award shares) without ever being the very best in any single year. As the number of teams and players has expanded over the years, and the number of MVPs has not expanded, it gets harder and harder to win one, compared to say, the 1950s. Maybe there should be an MVP per division instead of per league?
November 7th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Personally, I have never been much of a fan of the MVP and CY awards. Forget for a moment that the voters so often get it wrong (although less often than some say.) If you look at Barry Bonds in 2001, clearly he was the MVP of the NL. Nobody else really deserved a vote and, forgetting the issue of possible drug-enhancements, he should be very proud to win that award. But then look at the NL this year. To me, there are three guys--Holliday, Rollins, and Wright--who all deserve some consideration. I don't really care who wins--none of them would be a huge upset. For 2007, they all deserve some recognition.
The calculation of award shares, as discussed in the post and on the main B-R page for it, to me is much more valuable. A guy who wins unanimously gets credited with a full 1.0 share, whereas this year the winner may get as little as a 0.5 or 0.6 share, while the other guys will also get as much perhaps as 0.2 or 0.3 share. To me, it's a much better measure of just how well-performing a guy is than whether he actually finished first in the award or not.
Same argument holds for Cy Young.
November 8th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Where's Dave Steib
November 8th, 2007 at 9:20 am
0.29 Cy Young shares for Stieb, so he's way down on the list. If you ask me, that's ridiculous. I'm not sure if there's ever been a more impressive pitcher to get less recognition than Stieb. I assume that playing for Toronto for a bunch of lean years for that franchise has something to do with it.
November 8th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
You're right. If there was a stat for it, his impressiveness-to-recognition ratio would be off the charts!
Actually... can you do a PI search using the MVP/CY shares? I suppose if you were able, you could sort of invent a chart that way, like least CY shares, ERA+ over 120 , 1000+ IP, 70% of appearances as a starter. I wonder if Dave would really be #1.
There's probably a better way to do it. Maybe find the instances where starting pitchers posted an ERA+ of 125 or better, sorted by most times per pitcher, and then just run down the list until you get to a guy who never won the Cy Young.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
Since the CYA started in '56, Mussina and Blyleven each have 10 seasons of > 125 ERA+ and no CYA won. Not surprising. Stieb had 6.
Of course, a 125 probably isn't worthy of a CYA, unless the W-L record is outstanding, you pitch a ton of IP, and no one else is outstanding.
So, raising the ERA+ to 140, you get Kevin Brown and Curt Schilling with 6 seasons each. Two very similar pitchers who I anticipate will be received by HOF voters very differently. As we see above, both have received a fair number of votes, but no CYA. Stieb had 4.
Going up to 160...I anticipate no one will have more than couple of these seasons, and the bad luck to run into a legendary season from someone else.....It's Kevin Brown again with 4. In '96 he lost to Smoltz and his 24 wins. In '98 he lost to Glavine, who at a glance looks equally deserving. In '00 and '03 he didn't have the wins, losing to Randy Johnson and teammate Eric Gagne, respectively. Johnson was better. Gagne was amazing, but a reliever, so that's a personal choice I suppose.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
Oh, Stieb had one season of at least 160 ERA+.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:19 am
Good research.
I don't doubt that there were numerous better pitchers than Dave Stieb who never won a Cy Young. I forgot about Blyleven, but besides him, I would argue Stieb got the least amount of total votes compared to the number of great seasons he had. Brown, Schilling and Mussina never won either, but they got plenty of support from the voters.
November 9th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Stieb was a great pitcher who was hurt by two things.
The first one was that he wasn't on the Blue Jays' World Series teams of 1992 and 1993. I believe he was hurt at the end of the year in 1992, and in 1993 he had just a few appearances (with CWS, not Toronto.)
The second was some really bad luck. He did finally get a no-hitter in 1990, but that was after two games in which he gave up his first hit with 2 outs in the 9th. (Both in 1988, I believe.) And he had a handful of other 1-hitters in his career where the single hit came earlier in the game.
So this is guy who, with just a bit more luck, could have easily had 3 no-hitters, and would likely be remembered as one of the game's greats. He actually WAS a great, let's not forget.