When I was young and I watched This Week in Baseball with Mel Allen on Saturday mornings, the program included TWIB notes. Here’s a 21st century version.
Many of these notes were originally tweeted in reference to other tweets or articles, sometimes driving the context of the note. Some have been lightly revised compared to the Twitter version for clarity.
Dan Quisenberry deserves much more Hall of Fame support. His career share of Cy Young Award voting is the highest among all relievers in the Cy era. His career advanced metrics place him at least as good and in some cases better than Sutter, Fingers, Hoffman, Smith – all in HOF.
Don Gullett placed 7th in NL Cy Young Award voting in 1974 and 5th in 1975. He pitched in 5 different World Series for the Reds (’70, ’72, ’75, ’76) and Yankees (’77). Gullett is one of 7 pitchers since 1900 who had at least 100 wins and 2x more career wins than losses (.686%).
An awesome moment (referencing Jim Abbott’s no-hitter). A couple years before, pitching for the @Angels, Abbott placed third in A.L. Cy Young Award voting in 1991. He had career bests in wins (18), WAR (7.6), innings (243) and strikeouts (158). It was his only season receiving a Cy vote in a 10-year career.
Al Hrabosky finished 5th in N.L. Cy Young Award voting in 1974 and 3rd in 1975. In 185.2 innings over those two seasons in relief for the @Cardinals, he allowed just six home runs.
Jim Bunning deserved the NL Cy Young Award in 1967. He was better than winner Mike McCormick in: WAR 7.8 v 4.4 ERA+ 149 v 118 ERA 2.29 v 2.85 WHIP 1.04 v 1.15 IP, K, CG, SHO, BB … but not wins (22 for MM). Bunning went 17-15 and finished 2nd, having received one 1st-place vote.
Gary Nolan finished 6th in N.L. Cy Young Award voting in 1970 and 5th in 1972. He was one of 10 different @reds pitchers to earn Cy Young votes between 1970 and 1980.
Randy Johnson is one of only two pitchers to win four consecutive Cy Young Awards (1999-2002). Before that, he earned the Cy with Seattle in 1995. He deserved at least one more in 2004 when he was better than Clemens in WAR, WHIP, ERA, K, but won only 16.
A re-vote today would probably give the 1970 Cy Young Award to Sam McDowell. He was one of 7 pitchers to receive first-place votes that season. (He received 4 and finished in 3rd place.) McDowell is one of 9 pitchers in @mlb history with two 300-strikeout seasons
In the Cy Young Award era (1956-2020), there have been 172 no-hitters. Of those, 38 were pitched by Cy Young Award winners. But only nine were pitched during the season that the pitcher won the Cy Young Award. See the list here: cyyoungpitchers.com/no-hitters-and…
Dock Ellis finished 4th in N.L. Cy Young Award voting in 1971. It was the only season he received a vote for the Cy.
Clyde Wright would be a good fit in our series of obscure Cy Young Award contenders. In 1970, he placed 6th after 22 W, 2.83 ERA for the @Angels. He received one first-place vote for the Cy. It was his only season receiving votes in a 10-year career that finished 100-111.
Luis Tiant received Cy Young Award votes in 1972, ’74 and ’76, topping out with a 4th-place finish. He would have received votes in 1968 if they voted for more than just 1st-place then. Denny McLain took all the 1st-place votes with a 31-win season in ’68 for the @Tigers. Felix Hernandez‘s 7-year WAR peak was 38.6, right with HOFers John Smoltz, Bob Lemon and Early Wynn but well behind the average of all 65 HOF starting pitchers, WAR7 of 49.9.