Can Relievers Win MVP or CY Young Awards in Today's MLB?

In today's episode we look at three relief pitchers to win major awards and go over if that is possible in today's era of baseball.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome in to this is Baseball.
My name is Brandon Johnson.
Thank you for tuning in to theshow today.
Today's episode is about threerelief pitchers that accomplished
something unique andaccomplished something that I don't
think will ever happen again.
So there are three pitchersthat won not only the Cy Young award,

(00:23):
but an MVP award in the same season.
So in 1981, Raleigh Fingerswon for the Milwaukee Brewers, Willie
Hernandez in 1984 for theDetroit Tigers, and Dennis Eckersley
in 1992 for the Oakland A's.

(00:43):
And this episode really cameto be when I was doing the best starts
in Major League Baseballhistory, and I was looking at the
1984 Detroit Tigers, and theygot off to their 18 and 2 start and
eventually won the World Series.
And I was looking at thatroster, and Willie Hernandez really
stuck out to me.
He was their closer that year,and he ended up winning, like I said,

(01:08):
MVP and Cy Young.
And I think that is somethingthat is just completely different
in today's game.
I know that there are moreawards now than there were back then.
I know there's.
There's a.
There's awards for reliefpitchers specifically.

(01:28):
And it's almost like you hadto do something insane as a relief
pitcher to be considered for aCy Young Award, let alone an MVP
award.
But I wanted to just look attheir seasons a little bit and then
compare them to some playerstoday and what a player would maybe

(01:49):
have to do in order to when anMVP or Cy Young as a reliever, or
if it's even possible.
So important thing to note inthis era of baseball in the 80s,
and it changed a little bit inthe 90s, but relief pitchers in general

(02:09):
were used differently.
So statistically it's a littlebit different.
Different.
So Raleigh Fingers, let'sstart with him.
1981, he was an All Star CyYoung Award winner, MVP.
And I'm looking at his stats,and let's just not overanalyze this,

(02:32):
but he had 78 innings pitched,which isn't anything that's abnormal
in today's game, but he onlyhad 28 saves, and he led the league
in 1981 with 28 saves.
So you always had reliefpitchers that would come in and close

(02:54):
out games, but it was reallyin the 80s where the idea of a specialist,
a closer that would come in inthese high leverage situations and
pitch that ninth inning iskind of when that came to be.
And Raleigh Fingers led theleague with those 28 saves that I
mentioned.
In 28 saves is like half ofwhat a great closer gets in A modern

(03:19):
season.
So you had those 28 saves over78 innings, a 1.04 ERA, which is
phenomenal.
And he pitched in 47 games.
So a lot of the games that hepitched in weren't even save opportunities.
So I'm looking at this seasonand I'm like, something just doesn't

(03:41):
add up here.
And then I'm look, I, I dosome more research and I realize,
oh, okay.
In 1981, Major League Baseballhad a strike shortened season.
So they played somewherebetween 102 and 111 games according
to the Internet.
But they had a break from June12 to August 10.

(04:05):
So basically two months of theseason, the players were on strike.
So they split the season intotwo halves.
The first place teams fromeach half and each division played
each other in a best of fivedivisional playoff series, which
now I'm looking at his statsand it adds up a little bit more
and it makes a lot more sensebecause I was like, oh, they, he

(04:28):
didn't do anything really allthat crazy.
But he was traded to Milwaukeethat season and led them to their
first playoff appearance.
So he was a monumental part ofMilwaukee success in a very weird
season.
But yeah, I was looking atthat and I was just like, how, how

(04:48):
did he win mvp?
And it makes a whole lot moresense looking at the context of that
season.
Now here's some crazy numbersthat I want to move on to, and this
is with Willie Hernandez withthe 1984 Detroit Tigers.
The Detroit Tigers won theWorld Series that year.

(05:09):
They've won 104 games.
So Willie Hernandez, firstoff, he pitched 140 innings as a
reliever, which is insane forto even think about that happening
in today's game.
There's a lot of starters thatwould be lucky to hit 150 innings.

(05:30):
So to think that back then youhad a reliever that clearly had a
major impact on his team'ssuccess, pitched 140 innings is insane.
He had 32 saves that year.
He had a 192 ERA and pitchedin 80 games total.

(05:52):
But clearly a workhorse.
And looking at WillieHernandez's career, he played from
1977 to 1989.
He had really a three yearstretch where he was great.
And it was from 1984 to 1986.
He was an All Star in three ofthose seasons and Cy Young and MVP

(06:14):
in 1984.
Now let's move on to Dennis Eckersley.
So Dennis Eckersley isinteresting because he started his
career as a starter and he wasa good starter.
Even threw a no hitter as a starter.
He was a Cy Young finalistmultiple times.

(06:35):
One or was in the All StarGame a couple times as well.
But late in his career, heended up being converted to a closer
and being one of the bestclosers ever.
And in 1992 with the OaklandA's, he was good enough to win himself
a Cy Young Award and MVP award.

(06:58):
So looking at his stats, moreof a traditional closer.
He threw 80 innings that year.
He had 51 saves, which is fantastic.
Led the league in that.
And he had a 191 ERA.
And in comparison to otherclosers that year, he was 10.

(07:20):
He had 10 more saves in thenext closest.
He threw 14 more innings inthe next closest closer and had significantly
better ERA as well.
So just top of the class froma relief standpoint.
And his strikeout to walkratio was 8.45.

(07:42):
So he had 10 and a halfstrikeouts per nine innings to 1.2
walks per nine and a WHIPunder one, which is where you want
to be.
League average is one.
And he was nine, 13 in WHIP.
The A's did make the playoffsthat year, but they lost to the Blue
Jays.
And the Blue Jays actuallyended up winning the World Series

(08:03):
over the the A's.
So I was looking at today'sgame, really over the last 15, 20
years, and just looking atsome relief pitchers that stood out
in my mind.
And I started with the early 2010s.
Craig Kimball with those.
I remember him with thoseBraves teams just being dominant

(08:24):
for multiple years in a row.
So from 2011 to 2014, 2011, 46saves, 42 saves in 2012, 50 saves
in 2013, 47 saves in 2014.
And all of those numbers heled the league in, where did he stand

(08:46):
in Cy Young award voting an MVP?
So in 2011, with the 46 saves,he had an ERA just over two.
But he was ninth in Cy Young,23rd in MVP.
He did win Rookie of the Year,so he did get his recognition there.
2012, Cy Young Award, he wasfifth, eighth in MVP.
So he's getting looks, he'sgetting votes.

(09:07):
2013 with the 50 saves, CyYoung, fourth MVP, 11th.
And then in 2014, he had those47 saves and Cy Young Award, he was
ninth in voting there.
And it wasn't even consideredfor MVP.
So extremely difficult for areliever to get that recognition.

(09:32):
And if you look at, if youlook at Craig Kimbrell's 2013 season
where he had the 50 savesversus Dennis Eckersley's 1992 season,
now you can Say it was adifferent game, it was a different
time.
But it's really easy to makean argument that Craig Kimbrell's

(09:55):
2013 season was better than that.
1992 MVP Cy Young awardsseason Dennis Eckersley, 191 ERA
Craig Kimbrell, 121 ERA, 50saves for Kimbrell, 51 for Dennis
Eckersley.
I mentioned the strikeouts per nine.
Dennis Eckersley in 1992, 10.5strikeouts per nine innings.

(10:18):
Craig Kimbrell in 2018, 201313.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
Now, who won Cy Young in 2013?
Well, that was Clayton Kershawof the Los Angeles Dodgers.
He went 16, nine with a 183ERA, led the league with that 183
ERA.
He had three complete games,two of them were shutouts.
236 innings pitched, 232strikeouts, and he was seventh in

(10:44):
MVP voting.
So this was like, you're not.
You're not going to win theseawards as a reliever in Major League
Baseball.
Now, Craig Kimbrell or ClaytonKershaw, well deserved.
He won.
In fact, he won three Cy Youngawards in four seasons from 2011

(11:06):
to 2014.
So that same stretch of CraigKimbrell's dominance, you had Clayton
Kershaw out on the west coastjust dominating as a starter.
And in fact, Clayton Kershawwas so good in 2014 that he won the
Sighting Award and MVP as a starter.
Only him and Justin Verlandercan say that they've done that since
Dennis Eckersley.
As far as pitchers go, bigdifference is they were starters

(11:27):
when they did it.
Now, just for reference, thelast relief pitcher to win the Cy
Young Award was Eric gagnewith the 2003 Dodgers.
He had 55 saves that season.
And I wanted to look atMariana Rivera's stats because I

(11:48):
was thinking, who's the mostdominant closer that I can think
of over the last 20 years?
And it's the all time savesleader, Mariano Rivera.
And he never came close tobeing considered for MVP.

(12:08):
He got votes.
He was top 10 a couple times.
He was a Cy Young finalistmultiple times.
He was a Cy Young finalistfour times in his career.
But he had multiple multipleseasons where he had 50 or more saves.
And if the great MarianoRivera can't get a Cy Young Award

(12:32):
or MVP Award, then I don'tthink anybody can, because again,
2004, very comparable to whatDennis Eckersley accomplished in
1992.
53 saves over 78 innings, 194ERA strikeouts for 9 7.6.

(12:53):
So very very similar, justdifferent era where the relief pitchers
just weren't going to get that recognition.
Last player I wanted to lookat was Wade Davis and his 2015 season
because I remember him beingso dominant in the Royals bullpen,
just in general being dominant.
And I think the reason that alot of people build their bullpens

(13:16):
the way they do right now isbecause of the 201415 Royals.
But I remember away Davis in14 and 15 just lights out automatic
out machine.
In 2015 he took over as thecloser for an injured Greg Holland,
had an ERA under 1 at 0.94,only had 17 saves over 67 innings,

(13:41):
but just had such an impact onthe success of that team.
Was good enough to be top sixin Cy Young Award voting and he even
got MVP votes as well.
So people think about you, butthe odds of you winning these awards

(14:03):
as a reliever is pretty muchslim to none at this point.
And that is why they have therelief pitcher award now.
But that's my episode for today.
Thank you for tuning in.
If you enjoyed the show, leavea review.
That helps a lot in reach for me.
So if you can leave a fivestar review or a rating, I'd appreciate

(14:24):
it.
I will see you in the next one.