This is something I found out as a result of a discussion going on in the MLB forum about closers winning the Cy Young, which naturally resulted in some talk about Eck.  Check out the 1990 Award voting.  Bob Welch won the AL Cy Young.  Now, with the general public thinking at least a little sabermetrically, it may seem silly that Clemens didn't win (one guy in the MLB forum said Eck should have won; I don't agree with this, although he obviously did have a ridiculous year).  But you can understand why the guy with 27 wins would win the award at the time.  What really seems confusing, though, is that in spite of the fact that the voters felt that Welch was most deserving of the Cy Young, he's 5th in the MVP voting amongst pitchers.

Also, two pitchers (Nolan Ryan and Doug Jones) picked up bottom of the ballot votes for MVP but not the Cy.  That feels odd as well.

I'm wondering if people who are older than me have any insight into the thinking of the 1990 BBWAA voters that put pitchers on their MVP ballots but not the Cy, or rank them significantly differently in terms of value as an MVP or Cy candidate.

I don't know if this is a "good" answer but I would wager the reason Welch did so poorly in the MVP balloting was the general consensus that he wasn't even the "Most Valuable" or "best" player on his team.

Canseco, McGwire, Stewart, Eck, at least one of the Hendersons were probably all considered better than Welch.

He won a lot of games that year, it means something, people probably thought him Cy Young worthy but not MVP worthy.

The human mind is an upside-down spaghetti bowl... Itsa' 3-D map of vastly diverse 'highways' of directional thought...

Unfortunately, it's not the checkmark on the ballot, nor the hand that made that mark, ---rather, itsa' human-brain that
creates the vote... My point is that the previous seasons of HAaron, or Mays, were not obliterated or deleted from the
'brains' of the BBWA, prior to the seasons when HAaron/WMays actually won an MVP award... Nobody voting in 1957
(4 example) could've possibly erased those wonderful seasons, beforehand, from their memory banks...

That particular season of BWelch's great career, was full of spoken & written reminders of his previous Dodger years...

Nobody's brain votes with an entirely clean-slate of THIS YEAR ONLY... In my lifetime, the only exception to such theory
was 1975, & Fred Lynn... His previously average college days @ USC only seem'd 2 matter 2 voters in So. Cali-4-nia... 

TJ, it's tough to make that argument given that 2 of the guys that leapfrogged him were from the same team.  How can he be a better pitcher but not a better player?  Pre-interleague, so hitting didn't play a role.

I would be willing to bet that people felt compelled to vote for him for Cy Young because of the wins.   No one had one 27 since Carlton.

I am also pretty sure he didn't start game one of the playoffs.  Stewart was considered the ace of that staff, when was the last time a pitcher won the Cy Young but didn't start game one of the playoffs?  

My argument is that Welch wouldn't have won 27 games if it hadn't been for Dennis Eckersley.  I'm going to look at Welch's 1990 game log & see how many games Eck saved for him!

So he would have won 25 games.  Still would have comfortably led the league.

Ultimately, my point was that a reliever shouldn't win the Cy Young unless they have a phenomenal year like 1990 Eckersley, 2003 Gagne, etc.  Hell, I think 1998 Trevor Hoffman should've won the Cy Young.

You can't really isolate Eck because he threw 2 shutouts and only went 8 innings and left a save situation 9 times.  Couple of bigger-lead 8 inning wins still leave over a dozen wins in which other bullpen pitchers had to get involved.  Only had 2 NDs all season and the team won both of those games, so the bullpen didn't blow a lot of leads for him (they could have in those 2 games, I didn't look into it, but at least the team won...)

It's kind of funny how none of these pitchers other than Eck, do we ever really use in a SIM league!

That feels kind of irrelevant...

I think it boils down to the interpretation of the award.

I think the general consensus is that the Cy Young goes to the "best" pitcher.  You can argue Welch wasn't the best pitcher in the AL that year but he was at least deserving of significant consideration.  Wins were still considered meaningful statistics in 1990.

The MVP is more subjective.   Most "valuable" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.   Like I said earlier, Welch probably didn't gets votes for this because he wasn't the best player on his team.   He finished third on the A's in MVP voting and two more A's were right behind him.   I think he wasn't considered crucial to the A's success.

I don't think he was perceived as being particularly "valuable".  Clemens, Thigpen, Eck, and Stewart were probably all considered more valuable to their franchise's success.  It's probably a case of not earning "respect".

On a side note, Thigpen did better in the awards than Eck that year.  Saves held a lot of sway before the advanced statistics devalued them.

You kinda missed the point though, Trentonjoe. Stewart was deemed "more valuable" to the A's in the mvp voting, but Welch was deemed the 'better pitcher' by winning the CYA. Given the fact that they were on the same team, played the same position (SP), and that their only contribution to the team was pitching, that is mind-boggling.

While the awards were awarded by a collection of voters (not one person), their collective consensus was that Welch was the better pitcher, but Stewart was more valuable to his team--despite the fact that they did exactly the same thing (pitch as starters for the A's). That is as strange/nonsensical as it gets. With Eck, for example, their collective voice implies that his performance in the closer role was more important to the A's than Welch's prowess as a SP, even while they deemed Welch to be the 'better pitcher.' You can't make an argument like that for Welch/Stewart, though--they had the exact same job.

edit: OP didn't say it, but Welch won the CYA, but finished behind Stewart in the mvp vote. I imagine that many who voted Welch for CYA voted for someone else for mvp, and voted way down for Welch in the mvp, and Stewart got more middle-of-the-road votes. I still find it strange though.

My point was "better pitcher" and "most valuable" mean different things.  It isn't apples to apples because the criteria is different.  You rate Welch better one way and Stewart the other.

Maybe this makes sense....Welch had a better year (if you value wins significantly) but Stewart was seen as the ace of the staff.  More people thought Stewart was "more valuable" to the A's than Welch.  

I am not saying it makes a ton of sense, I was just trying to provide some insight on why I thought it happened, and how I remembered it happening.

Just because it seems like silly logic doesn't mean it isn't the logic the voters were using.