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 Rick Sutcliffe!
Sutcliffe was called "The Red Baron" in his playing days, and pretty much just goes by "Sut" now as a broadcaster. That seems to me a kind of sad commentary on the progression of our society. Or maybe it just tells you what people think of him as a broadcaster.
It was about this time 26 years ago that the best thing that has ever happened (professionally), to Rick Sutcliffe happened, all because both he and his team had gotten off to a poor start. On June 13, sitting at 22-34 and already 20 1/2 games out of first place, Cleveland shipped Sutcliffe, a former Rookie of the Year and one-time All-Star who was set to be a free agent for the first time after the season, to the Cubs for a package that included young outfielders Joe Carter and Mel Hall (actually a pretty nice package for Cleveland).
For the rest of that 1984 season, Sutcliffe pitched very, very well. Coming in with a career K/9 of less than 5.5, Sutcliffe was suddenly striking out more than a batter per inning while walking just 2.3 batters per nine, a better than 40% reduction from his career norm of about 4.0. In 150 1/3 innings with the Cubs, he put up a 2.69 ERA (and pitched better than that, with a FIP of 2.28). The Cubs won 18 of his 20 starts, and Sutcliffe himself went 16-1. On June 19, the day of Sutcliffe's first start, the Cubs were half a game behind the Mets and two behind the Phillies, at 34-29. From then out, they played .633 ball from then on out and buried the rest of the division, finishing 6.5 games ahead of the Mets, who'd been a half game ahead of them in second place pre-Sutcliffe.
To the baseball media's way of thinking, what this meant was that Rick Sutcliffe was solely responsible for the Cubs winning the division. 16-1, right? The Cubs turned their fortunes around by 7 games (vis-a-vis the Mets), and Sutcliffe himself was +15 games!
Sutcliffe didn't just win the Cy Young Award; he won the Cy Young Award unanimously. 19 year old Rookie of the Year Dwight Gooden threw 68 more innings than Sutcliffe in the NL, yet gave up two fewer home runs (7 to 9). He also posted a lower ERA (2.60/2.69), struck out an eye-popping 276, won 17 games, and put up a crazy 1.69 FIP. Yet Gooden didn't get a single first-place vote. Bruce Sutter threw 122 2/3 innings (just 28 fewer than Sutcliffe's NL total), posted a 1.54 ERA and saved a then-record 45 games; didn't convince a single soul that he was better than Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe seems like a pretty good guy (if a rather uninformative broadcaster and once kind of an embarrassment), and I don't mean to disparage him on his birthday...but then, he did his job brilliantly. It's not his fault the writers who voted on the award had no idea what they were looking at. Sutcliffe had a great three and a half months, but there's just no way you can look at his numbers next to Gooden's (or Sutter's, or one or two other guys) and think Sutcliffe was the best or most valuable pitcher in the National League. The various WAR systems disagree on how much the pitchers were actually worth, but they all come out to about the same result: by FanGraphs' WAR, Sutcliffe's 5.1 NL WAR (and 6.4 overall) falls well behind Gooden's 8.6; by BBREF's WAR, Sutcliffe is 11th in the NL at 3.7, behind not only Gooden's 5.4 and Sutter's 4.7 but Mario Soto, Alejandro Pena, and Ricks Rhoden and Mahler, among others.
This was brought up a few times back in 2008, when CC Sabathia went 11-2 in 130 innings for the Brewers and finished 5th in the Cy Young balloting, including one first-place vote. The difference, though, is that Tim Lincecum's 2008, while excellent, was not Dwight Gooden's 1984. If you combine his time with Cleveland (and I don't know why you would for an NL award, but whatever), Sabathia really was the best pitcher in baseball that year. In 1984, by contrast, a good pitcher moved to the NL and had 150 really, really good innings...and was allowed to steal the award from one of the most talented young pitchers the game has ever seen, who had had a phenomenal full season. The voters have made worse decisions in terms of player quality -- Morneau and 2006 and Dawson in 1987 were further away from being the MVP than Sutcliffe was from being the best pitcher here -- but this might be their single most obvious miss. Dwight Gooden was your 1984 Cy Young Award-deserving pitcher. That's all there is to it.
Sutcliffe had three or four really good seasons (including his Rookie of the Year campaign of 1984, an ERA title in 1982, and his league-leading 18-win season in 1987) and a lot of pretty poor ones. It all added up to a guy who was right around an average starting pitcher in nearly 400 starts, which is awfully valuable (30.0 WAR). But with three All-Star appearances, a Rookie of the Year Award, a Cy Young Award, two other top-five Cy Young finishes and a top-five MVP finish, he very well may be the most highly decorated average pitcher who has ever lived.
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