From Tom Tango:
I’m not 100% sure wins are dead in the eyes of the voters, or if we just haven’t seen an outstanding win total in a while. We need to have a season where a pitcher goes 22-5 with a 3.00 ERA and another goes 11-10 with a 2.10 ERA in about the same number of innings. I’m guessing that vote would be a lot closer than the NL in 2025.
While we like to think that writers are more statistically aware than in the past, strategy killed the starter win:
| Decade | % Wins by Starters |
| 1920 | 81.4 |
| 1930 | 79.3 |
| 1940 | 78.8 |
| 1950 | 73.9 |
| 1960 | 72.9 |
| 1970 | 74.3 |
| 1980 | 71.5 |
| 1990 | 70.1 |
| 2000 | 70.3 |
| 2010 | 66.7 |
| 2020 | 58.2 |
Only two decades in this eleven decade span saw upticks in starters getting wins. The 1970s saw the adoption of the five man rotation, which might have allowed starters to go deeper in games. The 2000s saw the end of the steroid era, so maybe fewer starters got pummeled early.
A big drop happened in the 1950s, and things were generally declining until the 2010s. We then see two big drops. Teams started using openers in the 2010s, and the 2020s brought about the strategy of not letting a starter pitcher to batters once he went through the order twice.
Strategy spent 15 years taking away starter wins, and the voters responded accordingly.
Update: Here is Tango’s post on possibly updating the Cy Young predictor.
The 1970s also brought the designated hitter in the AL, which meant pitchers never had to be pinch-hit for. Was most or all of the uptick in the ’70s in the AL?
Yes, I should have thought of that.