1912 Cy Young Awards

1912 American League - Walter Johnson, Washington Senators

33-12, 1.39 ERA, 303 K

The man who is arguably the greatest pitcher ever was one win away from winning his first Triple Crown in 1912; instead, Boston's Smoky Joe Wood had 34 wins to his 33.  But, although Wood had a great season, Johnson's was even better.  His incredibly low ERA was over a half a run better than Wood's second place 1.91, and his ERA+ of 243 is 9th all time, which, to put it into a modern-day perspective, is tied with Pedro Martinez's 1999 season.  He also led in WHIP (0.908), fewest hits per 9 innings (6.317), strikeouts, and WAR (11.8).  Just like in 1910, Johnson's Senators finished third to last in batting average though, which leaves open to speculation just how well he could've done with more run support.


1912 National League - Christy Mathewson, New York Giants

23-12, 2.12 ERA, 134 K

Nobody has ever won five consecutive Cy Young Awards (Greg Maddux and Randy Johnson have each won four in a row), but Christy Mathewson would've, had it existed during his playing career.  This was also the seventh time that he would've earned the award in his career; as many times as Roger Clemens won it.  In this case, there was no single pitcher who was clearly dominant in the AL, but Mathewson was overall the best.  He had the second-best ERA (behind someone who pitched far fewer innings), fourth most wins, second lowest WHIP (1.113), second highest ERA+ (161), and second highest WAR (7.2).  Interestingly, Mathewson finished 12th in MVP voting in 1912, second among all pitchers.  Only Rube Marquard finished higher than he did, although the stats seem to suggest that Mathewson was better; he led Marquard in almost every major statistic except wins.  Interestingly, it was a career year for Marquard, who is featured in this blog post of mine as being the worst pitcher in the Hall of Fame.  The same cannot be said for Mathewson.