The Cleveland Indians have had four pitchers since 2007 win five Cy Youngs and we’re going to rank each of them for you!
The Cleveland Indians have been one of baseball’s most consistent producers of talent in the last twenty years. Their key export though, pitching. They’re not just known for their Cy Young winners, though they’ve had four, winning five different awards, they’re known for their ability to create, cultivate, and at times rejuvenate pitching careers.
There have been the aces that the team has loved and lost. Your C. C. Sabathia’s, Cliff Lee’s, Bartolo Colon’s, and your Corey Kluber’s (all Cy Young winners by the way). There have been your rejuvenation projects; your Kevin Millwood, Scott Kazmir, Oliver Perez, and Ubaldo Jimenez types. Of course, the Indians have produced some great relievers like Cody Allen, Chris Perez, and Joe Smith types. There’s even your unsung heroes, your Justin Masterson, Danny Salazar, Josh Tomlin types.
The Indians, at least since the end of the Jacobs era, have been known for their pitching. This is rather ironic, considering the Indians of the ’90s rarely had pitching and often traded away their better, young players for relievers.
An annoying practice that continues to this day.
That isn’t to say those ’90s squads didn’t have any talent but when Charles Nagy, a man with a 4.51 ERA is your Ace, you know you’re struggling. The team did have a young Colon and young Ace-in-the-making Jarrett Wright but that was a disaster waiting to happen.
So looking at the last 13 years, it’s good to take stock of how far the organization has come. These Cleveland Indians are always able to put out a competitive product and it starts with scouting and ends during the award season.
These are all four Cy Young winners ranked.
2007 – C.C. Sabathia
Stats: 19-7 W/L, 3.21 ERA, 4 CG, 241 IP, 209 Ks, 37 BB
C.C. Sabathia was really the start of the line of great pitchers in Cleveland. Sure, the Indians still had Jake Westbrook, and Roberto Perez (aka Fausto Carmona) was on that ’07 team, but that wasn’t a very deep rotation. Paul Byrd was the fourth starter at the time. Cliff Lee was there as well, but he was wildly inconsistent since he got called up in 2004, having an ERA of nearly 5.00 over those four years combined. Sabathia was a man unto himself.
That’s what made his run in 2007 so special, it set up the Indians as a real destination for front line pitching prospects to develop at. It wasn’t just that, but Sabathia’s season culminated in one of the best runs in franchise history, a mad dash to the ALCS, where the Indians were up 3-1 against Boston, with a date with destiny (and Colorado) in the World Series. Yet, fate would be cruel and would begin the stretch of linking the city of Cleveland to a 3-1 series in multiple sports. The Red Sox came back, winning two in Cleveland, before taking the series, and their second World Series ring in four years.
Sabathia’s season made him a big-ticket trade piece to boot, fetching the Indians a true franchise icon in Michael Brantley, and some other bums. The funniest part is, those other “bums” were actually the main pieces of the trade, while Brantley was the throw-in. That’s one hell of a “throw-in”.
2008 – Cliff Lee
Stats: 22-3, 2.54 ERA, 4 CG, 223.1 IP, 170 Ks, 36 BB
Cliff Lee’s season tops C.C. Sabathia’s season for just one major reason, Lee gave up fewer runs than Sabathia. Sabathia was the flamethrowing lefty, while Lee was the perception lefty; finding his place and drilling it time and time again.
As mentioned before, Lee was coming off of four really up and down seasons. This was the first year Lee would look like an All-Star and franchise Ace. He’d put up remarkable numbers and a great winning percentage, and he single handily made up for 27% of the teams 81 wins that year. The team fell off from their ALCS appearance the year before, mostly due to injuries of three of the team’s best offensive players; Victor Marinez, Casey Blake, and Travis Hafner.
While the team didn’t make the playoffs, and would not make the playoffs again for five more years when Terry Francona took over the team in 2013, Lee was instrumental in setting up the team for success. See, after his Cy Young-winning year, he was traded away for a bunch of bums again and a kid named Carlos Carrasco. A player who would be a Cy Young candidate in 2017 for the Indians.
Carrasco and Lee also share other honors, they’re both former Comeback Players of the Year. The only two Indians to win the award (Carrasco won it twice).
2020 – Shane Bieber
Stats: 8-1, 1.63 ERA, 0 CG, 77.1 IP, 122 Ks, 21 BB
Adjusted Stats (across a projected 223 innings)
Stats: 29-4, 1.63 ERA, 0 CG, 223 IP, 353 Ks, 63 BB
Now this one will be controversial. While some people will want to discredit Shane Bieber’s 2020 season because it was only 37% of a regular baseball year, that doesn’t change just how dominant he was. You can see his numbers from this year, and they’re brutal. 122 strikeouts in 77.1 innings? He had a K/9 of 14.2 for crying out loud. So to put his season in proper perspective, we took his rate of production, found the average inning’s pitched between Corey Kluber, C.C. Sabathia, and Cliff Lee’s Cy Young seasons, while also adding in Bieber’s 2019 for good measure, and found an average of 233 innings pitched.
So we took that average, multiplied it by the rate of production, and bam; you have Nolan Ryan numbers. Those are a rough estimate, mind you, but it gives you an idea of what his season would’ve looked like if he had pitched more than just a third of the season.
Now to be fair, he didn’t throw 233 innings, he threw 77.1, so that is being taken into consideration. His efficiency has him at No. 2 and it’s easy to see why. His stats are what they are, however, and no projection will take the place of two Cy Young wins.
2014 – Corey Kluber
’14 Stats: 18-9, 2.44 ERA, 3 CG, 235.2 IP, 269 Ks, 51 BB
’17 Stats: 18-4, 2.24 ERA, 5 CG, 203.2 IP, 265 Ks, 35 BB
Total: 36-13, 2.34 ERA, 8 CG, 439.1 IP, 534 Ks, 86
This isn’t even a bold claim, Corey Kluber was super dominant for the Indians. He was a two-time Cy Young winner, a four-time Cy Young finalist, and frankly, he should’ve been a four-time Cy Young winner. There was no denying his abilities. While some will lament that he couldn’t get the team over the hump in 2016, when the Indians had that 3-1 advantage over the Cubs, and others will claim the Indians traded him too late, frankly that’s all nonsense. A player and a team aren’t just defined by a World Series. That’s narrow-minded, myopic thinking. It’s a sign that you don’t know how to appreciate what you have. There are 29 teams that won’t win it all every year, but that doesn’t mean that a team’s season was a failure just because it didn’t win a World Series.
Watching Corey Kluber come out of obscurity as a middling prospect, and have five of the best pitching seasons the Indians have ever seen will be a memory that will last me a long time. Championships are nice, but we fans thrive off of memories. Kluber was a memory maker and his nightly outings, his stone-cold face as he drubbed out hitter after hitter, and his teammates dubbing him the King of the North will forever make Kluber’s two Cy Young wins mean so much more than they really should.
Kluber was a true Ace, here’s hoping Bieber can live up to that.