Cy Young Awards

Naturally, statistics are kept in the Cloverland Leagues. And naturally, awards are given. However, I get the only vote. :) I actually went to the trouble of determining VORP for all the players, and rely pretty heavily on that statistic, though I'm willing to use other info as appropriate. The Cy Young awards for the Cloverland Leagues this season have two relatively obvious winners.

AL: Lefty Grove. While the Philadelphia Athletics had a disappointing season (under .500 and tied for last in the AL Classic Division) Grove provided a bright spot, leading the league in wins (22), ERA (2.40), and shutouts (6, tied with the Yankees' Red Ruffing) while coming in second in strikouts and leading Philadelphia in saves. Baltimore's Jim Palmer was quite close, also winning 20 games with a better winning percentage and more quality starts, along with pitching in a pennant race, but Grove's across the board excellence gained him the nod.

NL: Ed Reulbach. Unlike Grove, Reulbach did not lead a lot of categories-- Kid Nichols (among others) had many more starts and unsuprisingly racked up the counting stats (Nichols led the league with 27, Don Sutton led the league in strikeouts). Reulbach did, however, run away with the ERA crown, finishing with 1.41 in 243 innings, nearly 2 runs better than the league average. He also finished second in shutouts (6, Mordecai Brown led the league with 8) and held opponents to a .164 batting average, way below the league average of .243 and by far the best for pitchers over 100 innings let alone over 200 innings. He held opponents to an average of 5 hits per game and allowed an astonishing 0.04 home runs per game, the league leader by a factor of 5. He pitched 6 two-hitters and a 1-hitter, single-handedly accounting for half of the Cubs number of two-hitters or better. Although not taken into account for these purposes, Reulbach continued to excel in the postseason, finishing 5-0 with 5 quality starts in 5 tries and an ERA of 0.63 as the Cubs almost won the Series. There was no particularly strong competition for this award, Brown was second in VORP but was only the second-best pitcher on the Cubs...