1903 Cy Young Awards

1903 American League - Cy Young, Boston Americans

28-9, 2.08 ERA, 176 K

This was a close call between Young and Cleveland's Earl Moore.  Moore led the league in ERA by a decent margin, 1.74 to Young's second-place 2.08, and led the league in hits per 9 innings.  However, Young pitched a league-leading 341.2 innings, nearly 100 more than Moore.  He also led the league in wins (28, 8 more than Moore), win-loss percentage (.757), complete games (34), and shutouts (7).  He also placed ahead of Moore in both WHIP (finishing second to Addie Joss with 0.969 walks & hits per inning) and strikeouts, and he helped lead Boston to victory against the Pirates in the first World Series.  This is now the third consecutive year that, in my opinion, Young has been the best pitcher in the league, and the fifth time in his career that I have retroactively gave him the award that is named for him.


1903 National League - Christy Mathewson, New York Giants

30-13, 2.26 ERA, 267 K

This year there was situation in the NL similar to what happened in the AL; one pitcher (in this case Pittsburgh's Sam Leever) had a fairly low ERA (2.06 to Mathewson's second-place 2.26), but also pitched nearly 100 fewer innings.  As I have said before, I believe that a pitcher with a slightly higher ERA but far more innings pitched is more valuable than the one with the slightly lower ERA but far fewer innings pitched.  In this case, future Hall of Fame pitcher Christy Mathewson had an impressive season, finishing second in ERA, hits per 9 innings (7.886), innings pitched (366.1), and WAR (8.9).  Although he did not lead in any of those categories, nobody else finished in the top three for each of them.  However, possibly the most impressive thing about Mathewson's season was his strikeout totals.  Normally, I don't like to put too much emphasis on strikeout totals; just because a pitcher is capable of striking out a lot of batters doesn't necessarily make him a great pitcher.  However, not only was Mathewson a great pitcher in 1903, but he also had extraordinary strikeout totals; his 267 strikeouts led the league by nearly 100, and he was by far the leader in strikeouts per 9 innings, averaging a little over 6.5 every 9 innings.  Overall, Sam Leever and other pitchers, such as the Giants' Joe McGinnity, had impressive seasons, but I believe that, even excluding strikeouts completely, Christy Mathewson was the best in the league.