1926 Cy Young Awards

1926 American League - Lefty Grove, Philadelphia Athletics

13-13, 2.51 ERA, 194 K

Like in 1925, the best pitcher in the league didn't exactly have the best win-loss record.  In this case, I gave Lefty Grove the award despite him having just 13 wins.  Like I said in the previous post for Dolf Luque's NL win, pitchers don't have a whole lot of control over wins and losses.  In Grove's case, he pitched for a team that finished second to last in runs scored and batting average.  It was only his second year in the majors, but it was already his second time leading the league in strikeouts (with 35 more than anyone else), and his first of many ERA titles.  It wasn't his best season, but he did lead the league in several other categories, including ERA+ (167) and hits per 9 innings (7.919), and he finished second in WHIP (1.271) and WAR (6.1).  The only other pitcher who really competed with Grove was Cleveland's George Uhle, who had more than twice as many wins.  Still, his ERA was a distant second to Grove's, and even their contemporaries agreed  Grove had a better season; Grove finished 8th in the MVP voting, and Uhle wasn't even in the top 26.  One pitcher did finish ahead of Grove in the voting; New York's Herb Pennock.  Pennock, however, had a mediocre 3.62 ERA and had the advantage of getting run support from players like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bob Meusel, and Tony Lazzeri.  In any case, it was the first of many great seasons for Grove.

1926 National League - Ray Kremer, Pittsburgh Pirates

20-6, 2.61 ERA, 74 K

I don't like to just use MVP voting as my basis for making a decision on who was the best pitcher in a given year, but it's sometimes helpful to not just look at the raw numbers but also to see how contemporary sportswriters viewed each pitcher's contributions and abilities.  In this case, both the raw numbers and the MVP voting point to Kremer, who led the league in ERA and tied for the lead in wins, and also finished third in MVP voting, as the highest-ranked pitcher.  Other than ERA+ (150) and winning percentage (.769), Kremer didn't lead in any other categories, but he finished second in WHIP (1.176), WAR (5.5), and fourth in shutouts (3).  If one thing can be held against him, it's that he only finished 10th in innings pitched, but the fact that he was able to lead the league in wins despite pitching fewer innings than 9 other pitchers says something about his abilities.  Along with that is the fact that the ERA runner-up, Charlie Root of the Cubs, finished 0.21 runs behind him, indicating that Kremer was definitely the best pitcher in the NL in 1926.