Top 30 Cy Young Award Winners of all-time
By Jason Evans
6. 1972 Steve Carlton
27 wins
310 strikeouts
The 1972 Philadelphia Phillies were not good. They won 58 games for the entire season. If they didn’t have Steve Carlton pitching for them, who knows how low that win total could go.
Carlton won 27 games. He earned 46.5% of the Phillies wins that season. Absolutely absurd.
Carlton had a WAR of 12.5, a full three wins higher than Joe Morgan who was second. He led the league in ERA with a 1.97. He had 310 strikeouts, also first. He threw a ridiculous 346.1 innings for the Phillies, 58 innings more than the second place finisher.
Of the 41 games he pitched in, he threw 30 complete games. He only led the league in hits allowed because he threw so many innings. In the season’s final month, he threw less than nine innings only once and that start was eight. He threw 11 innings twice.
Carlton still produced a FIP of 2.01 and a WPA of 8.3. Could you imagine the kind of numbers he could have put up if he was on the Reds that year? He may have been higher on this list.
Carlton won four Cy Young Awards and pitched into his 40’s. He was one of the great pitchers of his era, but that 1972 season was hard to match.