Customer Reviews

Pitchers of Perfection: The Cy Young Award Winners

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Cy Young award is given to the pitcher(s) deemed to have been the most dominant in the past season. It is based on a vote take by the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA) and the Cy Young was first awarded in 1956. From that time through 1966, only one Cy Young was awarded in the major leagues, but from 1967 until the present, a Cy Young award was given to a pitcher in both major leagues. This book contains a synopsis of all of the winners, starting with those who have won the award the most times. Quite naturally, more space is devoted to the descriptions of the multiple winners.
The last section of the book is devoted to a list of pitchers who were great, yet never won a Cy Young award. This is of course a natural thing, for some pitchers are always having a career year and for that reason their star will shine the brightest for that season. For other pitchers, they were consistent throughout their careers, never having a truly dominant season in all phases of pitching. For that is truly what the award is all about, the pitcher having a season where they were strong in every phase: Earned Run Average (ERA), strikeouts, win-loss percentage, number of wins, innings pitched, bases on balls and the batting average of their opponents.
These statistics are given for each pitcher in their award winning season(s) and from that data, it is clear why they won the award. For some of these pitchers, the opposing batters his less than .200 against them for the entire season. For example, in the 1963 season, opposing batters hit a paltry .189 against Sandy Koufax. That is the definition of dominance.

This a good book that talks about the past Cy Young winners in a interesting way. If you are a baseball fan that likes to read about strikeouts rather than homeruns, then you'll like this book. You'll read about players from Kaufax to Clemens and may think about pitchers in a much different way after you read this.