In 2005, the BBWAA awarded Bartolo Colon the AL Cy Young Award by a landslide over runner-ups Mariano Rivera and Johan Santana. Almost 20 years later, Colon playing in a new league at 50 years old, Rivera a unanimous HOFer, and Santana off of the ballot in his first year back in 2018, this particular year has come back into focus within the baseball community. Even though Rivera came in second place for voting with 8 first-place votes, many think that Santana was robbed of back-to-back Cy Young Awards, after winning unanimously in 2004. If he had, he would have joined a small group of people to do it in the AL; twice by Clemens (1986-87; 1997-98) and once each by Palmer (1975-76), Martinez (1999-2000) and Denny McLain (1968-69).
The Argument
Johan Santana was robbed in 2005 of a Cy Young Award, people say. The writers voted for Colon because he had the most Wins in the League. All of the other numbers, if you looked at them back then, and more so now, with advanced statistics, Bartolo was not deserving of the award, and Santana should have gotten more than just 3 first-place votes which was good for third place behind Mariano Rivera. If it were the StatCast Era, Santana would have easily won the Cy Young for a second time. The ONLY thing that Colon led in statistically back in 2005 was Wins, with 21; no ERA title, or Strikeout King, and by today’s numbers like ERA+, Santana had him beat with an ERA+ of 155 (leading the league) to Colon’s 122. Santana WAS the Strikeout king with 238 punch outs, and had a league leading WHIP of just 0.971.
If we go down the line, Bartolo Colon doesn’t have a leg to stand on compared to Johan Santana. An ERA of 3.48 is good, but not as stellar as 2.87. Santana threw one more Complete Game than Colon with 3 that season. Santana threw just over 230 Innings while Colon threw just over 222 Innings. Santana gave up less HRs than Colon did, so on and so forth. But with the advent of WAR, we can put these all into one simple number, bWAR. 2005 Johan Santana had a bWAR of 7.2 (leading all AL pitchers), while Bartolo Colon only had a measly 4.0 bWAR. If we’re looking at who else beat out Santana, the Sandman himself in Mariano Rivera, he also had a 4.0 bWAR in the 2005 season as a Closer.
Conclusion
If you look at 2004, when Johan Santana won the Cy Young Award, he had 20 Wins. Back in the early 2000’s, before advanced metrics and statistics, that Win-Loss record was a big marker, especially when you reached or surpassed 20 Wins. Now, almost 20 years later, we see WAR as the leading statistic, now. It’s the evolution of baseball, the history of baseball. Ohtani’s 2023 unanimous AL MVP was “easy” to predict as he led the league with a 10.0 bWAR. Gerrit Cole, the AL Cy Young Award winner in 2023 also had an astounding, and league leading, 7.4 bWAR. It’s not to say that WAR is the end all, be all when it comes to statistics these days, but it gives us a new point of view on the past, and how awards were handed out before now.
