1905 Cy Young Awards

1905 American League - Rube Waddell, Philadelphia Athletics

27-10, 1.48 ERA, 287 K

Not much doubt about this one; after several years of being one of the best pitchers in the game, the future Hall of Famer easily won the Triple Crown, leading by 3 wins, nearly a third of a run in ERA, and 77 strikeouts.  He also had an ERA+ of 179, and a WAR of 8.8, and it was the fourth year in a row that he led the league in strikeouts.  He would go on to lead the league in strikeouts for the next two years, but would be out of the majors by age 33, largely because of alcohol problems.  He was known to have a bit of an erratic personality; he was known to (no joke) get distracted while pitching by puppies and shiny objects, and he would often run out of the dugout to chase after passing fire trucks.  Also, during a time period when most MLB players would return to work on the family farm in the offseason, Rube Waddell wrestled alligators, something that I'm sure most professional sports contracts forbid nowadays.  In any case though, he was certainly one of the best pitchers of the decade, and definitely the AL's best of 1905.


1905 National League - Christy Mathewson, New York Giants

31-9, 1.28 ERA, 206 K

This season was a relatively uncommon double Triple Crown season, with a pitcher in each league winning it.  In the NL, it was 1903 retroactive Cy Young Award winner Christy Mathewson.  As I mentioned in the 1904 post, ERAs were lower across the board in the early 20th century, but Mathewson's was incredibly low even by those standards.  His ERA+ of 230 remains the 11th-highest of all time, and the closest comparable modern-day season in terms of ERA+ would be Dwight Gooden's 1985 season, when he had an ERA of 1.53 and an ERA+ of 229.  In the end though, Mathewson's 1905 season was only one of his greatest; that's how good of a pitcher he was.  Along with winning 31 games, having an ERA of 1.28, and striking out 206 batters, he also pitched 8 shutouts, had a WHIP of 0.933, and a WAR of 10.1.  Amazingly, although he led the league in all of those categories, none of them were career highs for Mathewson.