Three times Arizona Diamondbacks players were robbed of awards
By Noah Wright
Randy Johnson
2004 Cy Young
Randy Johnson won four straight Cy Young awards from 1999 to 2002 while playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Those were the only four he would win while wearing a Diamondbacks’ uniform. But when looking back at it, Johnson truly deserved a fifth Cy Young award in the year 2004 over Roger Clemens.
Johnson pitched in 245.2 innings, working to a 2.60 ERA, 2.30 FIP, and 0.90 WHIP. The Big Unit struck out just over 30% of the batters he faced with a 30.1% K-rate, and in total, struck out 290 batters. Johnson paired that with extremely good control, having just a 4.6% walk rate. Plus, he was great at limiting home runs with a 0.66 HR/9 rate. There was only one stat Johnson didn’t rank in the top five in, and that was HR/9 at seventh in the NL.
Now, it’s not as if Clemens didn’t have a great season. He pitched 214.1 innings, working to a 2.84 ERA, 3.11 FIP, and 1.16 WHIP. Those are good numbers, and his 24.8% K-rate, 0.63 HR/9, and 9% walk rate were also great. Clemens also ranked in the top five in multiple stats, including ERA, FIP, and home run rate.
But there's no comparison between the two legendary pitchers in 2004. Johnson had the better ERA, FIP, WHIP, innings pitched, K%, BB%, fWAR, and bWAR. Clemens's only edge over Johnson was home run rate, and even then, we are talking about a difference of 0.03.
This was, unfortunately, another instance where a pitcher's win-loss record swayed the vote way too much. Clemens finished the season 18-4, while Johnson was 16-14. Meanwhile, the Astros had 92 wins, while the D-Backs had 111 losses. Is it unfair to vote for Clemens because the Astros gave him 4.81 runs of support on average, while Johnson’s Diamondbacks only averaged 3.51 runs of support in his starts? Absolutely, but it’s just how voters of the time choose their winners. Luckily, voters have wisened up for the most part have gotten better at leaving the pitcher's personal W/L record out of the equation.
In my opinion, the voters this year in general were just completley out of their minds. The NL ERA leader Jake Peavy didn't even recieve one vote. While Johnson was still more deserving than Peavy, the fact Peavy didn't get a single vote is insane.