How many 'Cy Young' awards would Cy Young have won?

In 1955, the greatest pitcher of all time passed away prompting Major League Baseball to create an award that would honor their fallen hero. The Cy Young award was first handed out in 1956 to Don Newcombe who also brought in the NL MVP award that season. There was only one award handed out per season in the first 10 years of its existence, but in 1967 each league started giving the award out to the best pitcher in their leagues. But how many 'Cy Young' awards would Cy Young have won?

Cy Young's career started in 1890 with the Cleveland Spiders, then in 1899 he went to the St. Louis Perfectos, 1901 to the Boston Americans then finished his career from 1909-1911 with the Cleveland Naps. It does not take a baseball historian to be able to determine that the game is vastly different now than it was 100 years ago during Young's days, but you still have to admire this guys stats. His 511 career wins are 94 better than Walter Johnson's 417, good for 2nd all-time. In 1911 the term "pitch-count" did not enter the lexicon of baseball managers which is evident in the amount of complete games that Young pitched. He pitched 40 or more complete games in 9 different seasons and averaged 34 per season. In comparison, Roy Halladay who is looked at as the best pitcher currently in baseball, has 49 career complete games while Young pitched 48 complete games in 1892.

Young posted the most wins in baseball 5 times, had 5-30 win seasons, had the lowest ERA twice and had 12 seasons with an ERA lower than 3.00. So when it comes down to the question of how many 'Cy Young' awards that Cy Young would have won, I would say he has a legitimate chance to win at least 4. In 1892 he led the NL with 36 wins an a 1.93 ERA. He also had 48 complete games and 9 shut-outs that season. 1901, he was back on top as the win leader with 33 to 10 losses and an ERA of 1.62 allowing only 6 home-runs and leading the league in strike outs with 158. 1902, he was again the leader with 32 wins and 11 losses, but 4th with a 2.15 ERA, 41 complete games and 160 strike outs. Finally, the last unquestioned season that he was the best pitcher was in 1903, again leading the league in wins with 28 and 2nd in the league with a 2.08 ERA.

So there you have it, the guy who has the award named after him for being the best pitcher in baseball would have won his award at least 4 times. Despite these dominating stats, he has some of the league records for some not so great reasons. He is baseballs leader in losses with 316 but the top 7 all-time career loss holders are all Hall-of-Famers. Young has allowed the most hits and Earned runs in history. To counter that, he also has pitched more games than anyone else and face 4,150 MORE batters than anyone else has ever faced. So......hes pretty freakin' good. And he also played first base for 5 games between 1896 and 1897. Thanks for reading.