Bret Saberhagen Marquee

He won the Cy Young Award in 1985, at twenty-one, and again in 1989, when he led the American League with 23 wins and won a Gold Glove. He was also the most valuable player of the 1985 World Series, which Kansas City won. Sixteen seasons gave him 167 wins against 117 and a 3.34 earned run average over 2,562 innings.

The two award years are four seasons apart and the seasons between were not like them. He was named Comeback Player of the Year twice, in 1987 and 1998, which is an award nobody wins unless something has gone wrong first. Three All-Star selections in sixteen years, for a pitcher who twice was voted the best in his league.

He pitched for Kansas City, the Mets, Colorado and Boston and threw his last pitch at thirty-seven. The writers gave him seven votes out of 545 in 2007 and he came off the ballot after one appearance. The gap between two Cy Young Awards and 1 percent of the vote is the distance between how good he was and how long he stayed that good.