The longest MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the Year droughts in baseball

Before Jose Abreu won the 2014 Rookie of the Year award, the White Sox hadn’t had a player win that particular trophy award since Ozzie Guillen in 1985. That’s a fairly long drought, but that wasn’t all for the White Sox. They haven’t had an MVP since Frank Thomas in 1994, and they haven’t had a Cy Young since Jack McDowell in 1993. Before Abreu, it had been 20 years since a White Sox player has won a major award.

Is that the longest major-awards drought for a team, though? To the stat cave! Dammit, my mom’s doing laundry in there, again. To Baseball-Reference, then!

Deciding which teams have had the longest drought between awards depends on how much leeway you want to give the recent expansion teams (Rockies, Marlins, Rays, Diamondbacks). I err on the side of “plenty of leeway,” which means the longest major-awards drought in baseball belongs to the...

Baltimore Orioles. Since Cal Ripken won the award in 1991, the Orioles have been shut out of the MVP, Cy Young, and Rookie of the year. That’s 66 chances to win an award, 66 awards that went to another team. It’s the Orioles, everyone. Get your crap together, Ori ... for the last time, don’t show me that stupid Manager of the Year award. Nobody cares.

One mystery solved. But there’s so much good stuff in there. Let’s tackle it by award.

What’s more impressive: The Indians not having had an MVP since 1953, or the Mets not having one at all?

It feels like the Mets’ shutout should be one of those omnipresent fun facts that you hear about three times a week, like it used to be with no-hitters before Johan Santana broke through. Part of the problem for the Mets was Shea Stadium messing with hitters before voters knew how to quantify that. I mean, they don’t now, but they really didn’t before Bill James. Another reason is that the Mets have been short islands of excellent in the middle of lagoons of lousy. Another problem is that they’ve been around since 1962, so while they aren’t exactly new, they still missed out on over 50 years of MVP awards.

On the other hand, from 1977 through 1982, the Mets didn’t get a single MVP vote. Not one. That’s really hard to do. The streak was broken by four votes for Jesse Orosco in 1983, so ...

Here are the notable close finishes in MVP history for the Mets.

1969
Tom Seaver tied Willie McCovey with 11 first-place votes, even though Seaver had just six lousy RBI on the season. He finished 22 points behind McCovey, possibly because of pitcher fatigue (Bob Gibson won the previous MVP, which was the last time a pitcher won in the NL until Clayton Kershaw on Thursday.)

1984
Keith Hernandez finished second, but Ryne Sandberg blew away the field with 22 of 24 first-place votes. According to WAR, the voters were right on -- Sandberg was clearly the best player in the league that year. It always freaks me out when old-timey writers mirror the WAR results closely, as if the thin tendrils of time reach back and deliver information, like a cosmic coaxial cable. Or maybe sometimes the stats tell us what’s pretty danged obvious.

No, no. It’s probably the first one.

1985
Dwight Gooden had one of the best seasons in modern history, pitcher or otherwise, but he finished fourth with just one first-place vote. Forget all of that stuff I wrote up there about time tendrils or whatever.

1988
Darryl Strawberry finished second and Kevin McReynolds finished third, but Kirk Gibson won in a landslide, which isn’t surprising when you consider he was the only person on that Dodgers team who knew which end of the bat to grab. Well, him and Orel Hershiser.

1990
Darryl Strawberry finished third, but Barry Bonds won the MVP handily, which he would do more than a few times.

2000
Mike Piazza finished third, behind Bonds and Jeff Kent, who was a former Met. That kind of counts.

Seaver had the best shot at the award; Gooden had the best claim. If the vote were retaken today, the nerds would create an echo chamber you could see from space, and Gooden’s historic season would be recognized.

Now to the Indians:

1954
After Rosen won unanimously the previous year, the Indians had four of the top six finishers in ‘54: Larry Doby, Bobby Avila, Bob Lemon, and Early Wynn. Doby and Avila barely missed the top spot, but that’s alright. Cleveland would have another chance next year, right?

1955
Al Smith tied the winner, Yogi Berra, in first-pace votes, but finished third.

1958
Rocky Colavito finished third, and while he likely had better seasons than the two players ahead of him, Mickey Mantle finished fifth for no good reason, even though he was almost certainly better at baseball than anyone in the league in ‘58.

1972
Gaylord Perry threw 342⅔ innings (!) with a 1.92 ERA (!), which is nothing to spit at. Alas, he lapped the world in WAR, a stat that hadn’t been invented yet, and he finished in seventh place. Perry finished behind Sparky Lyle, who had an identical ERA, but threw 245 fewer innings.

1994
Albert Belle finished third; Kenny Lofton finished fourth. Thus begins the long slog of ‘90s Indians who got close, but never won the award

1995
Mo Vaughn won the award by eight points, barely finishing ahead of Belle, who topped Vaughn in average, HR, RBI, runs, games played, walks, on-base percentage, and slugging percentage. Belle had an OPS advantage over 100 points. But he had low NICE+, which was apparently the stat of record back in ‘95.

1996
Belle finished third. Jim Thome, who had a 1.062 OPS, finished 15th. That’s because everyone had an OPS over 1.000 back then. I think there’s a ‘96 Indians game that’s still going on in an alternate universe. It’s 549,393-549,393 in the 89,384,494th inning. Jose Mesa is warming up, though.

1999
Roberto Alomar finished third and Manny Ramirez finished fourth, and while they possibly had better seasons than the winner, Ivan Rodriguez, they also finished behind Pedro Martinez, who should have won unanimously.

2014
Michael Brantley had one of the best Indians seasons in recent memory, and he merited a top-three finish. His chances were slain by Mike Trout, though, which is something that will happen to other Indians players in the future, I suspect.

Four teams have never won the award: The Marlins, Rangers, Reds, and Rockies. The Marlins and Rangers had/have great shots with Jose Fernandez and Yu Darvish. The Rockies will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever win. Ever. Never ever. Like the old joke about how airplanes should be built out of the indestructible black box, unless the Rockies figure out how to make a pitcher out of humidor, it’s at least unlikely.

The Reds, though. They’ve been around since ‘56, when the award was created. They’ve won championships. They’ve had outstanding pitchers. They’ve never won a Cy Young. Here are the times they might have been hosed:

1962
Bob Purkey pitched 25 fewer innings than Don Drysdale, but nearly matched him in ERA. The difference between Crosley Field and Dodger Stadium was a big deal, but no one really new about park effects back then. No one had been on the moon, either. The Beatles were just a bar band in Germany. Different world, man.

Also, say his name a few times. Bob Purkey. Bob Purkey. Bob Purkey. Bob Purkey. Bob Purkey. It’s fun. I recommend it.

1965/1966
Jim Maloney was excellent. Sandy Koufax existed.

1983
Mario Soto finished second to John Denny, who probably deserved to win. Lower ERA, more starts, better ERA+. The only thing Soto had was an advantage in innings.

1993
Jose Rijo had a claim as strong as Greg Maddux’s, nearly matching him in ERA and leading the league in strikeouts. But the Reds absolutely refused to score for him, and he finished with only 14 wins. Maddux had eight complete games, though, whereas Rijo had just one, which probably led to some of the bullpen meltdowns that prevented a gaudier win total.

That’s about it. Other than Bob Purkey (Bob Purkey!), I can’t argue vociferously on behalf of any of the Reds pitchers. It’s not like they haven’t had good pitching seasons -- they’ve had plenty, including Johnny Cueto this season -- but there’s always been someone better.

The Diamondbacks stand alone, like so much cheese. A list of their players to get at least a vote:

Miley is the only Diamondback to get a first-place vote. But they also have that expansion excuse -- other teams have gone longer without a ROY. Neither the Padres or Orioles have had a ROY since the ‘80s, even though both franchises have graduated some excellent young players since then.

That’s a brief history of award droughts. I don’t know why, but this stuff fascinates me. All those great arms, and the last Cubs pitcher to win the Cy Young was Greg Maddux. Despite making the playoffs for most of the ‘00s, the Braves haven’t won an MVP or Cy Young in more than 15 seasons. And if it weren’t for Jose Abreu, the White Sox would be kind of depressing, at least in the sense of the major awards. Like the Orioles.

I keep telling you, get that Manager of the Year award out of here, Buck. It’s pointy. You’ll poke someone’s eye out.