Will Bartolo Colon give back that Cy Young Award now?

The Twins signed veteran pitcher Bartolo Colon to a minor league contract on Friday, which is a huge deal because Bartolo Colon is physically large. At 44-years-old, he’s also physically old (by baseball standards). He debuted with the Indians 20 years ago, and even pitched against current Twins manager Paul Molitor in Molitor’s final MLB game.

Colon has stuck around for such a long time because he’s been a pretty successful pitcher. For all you young’ins who can’t remember, he even won a Cy Young award back in 2005—A CY YOUNG AWARD HE SHOULD ABSOLUTELY GIVE BACK TO THE TWINS, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, JOHAN SANTANA!!!!!!!!

Sorry about that outburst.

Except not sorry.

See, sure. Whatever. OKAY. Bartolo Colon had a nice year in 2005—but Johan Santana was better. Objectively. Santana led all of MLB that year with 238 strikeouts (which was over 80 strikeouts more than Colon had, by the way). Santana also lead the league with a 155 ERA+, and a freakin’ 0.971 WHIP. That’s crazy! Insane! Nuts!

Santana even pitched more innings than Bartolo that year.

The only category Santana didn’t clobber Colon in? Wins. You know, the pitching statistic that says more about the team’s overall offense than anything the pitcher actually did.

Yet... Colon won the Cy Young award, an award for pitching—not Johan Santana.

Because of the wins.

I brought up this point to some of my SB Nation MLB colleagues, and one young fart had the gall to suggest that Cy Young award was probably “just, like, a lifetime achievement” thing for Bartolo. Excuse me, but Colon was only 32 years old at the time, which is like 24 years old in Bartolo years. And if people get lifetime achievement awards at age 32 then WOOHOO, where’s my award? Get off my non-existent-lawn-because-a-perfectly-timed-recession-ruined-my-damn-career-and-I-just-live-in-a-small-ass-studio-with-no-lawn, damn it!

Bartolo got the Cy Young award in 2005 because sabermetrics were still trying to gain steam and baseball writers are stupid. Still, even when the Colon victory was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, writers pointed out how stupid it was. Jayson Stark wrote about it for ESPN. David Appelman wrote about it for Fangraphs. If I had a baseball blog back then, I’d probably have written a post about it titled, “FUCK YOU BARTOLO COLON JOHAN SANTANA RULEZ 4 LYFE!!!!! WAZZZ UPPP?” (That Budweiser commercial was still funny around then, right?)

I know you’re probably like, “Myjah, build a bridge and get over it,” but no, I won’t, and not just because I only passed 8th grade wood shop when I gave up trying to make a box and decided to glue scraps of wood together and call it an abstract sculpture. I’m still upset about this because of one fun little factoid: Every pitcher who has won three Cy Young awards is in the MLB Hall of Fame (except Clayton Kershaw, for obvious reasons).

Johan Santana only won two Cy Young awards. He SHOULD have won three Cy Young awards, but he didn’t, because BARTOLO COLON and winzzzzz!!!

There’s an outside chance Johan could still make it to the MLB Hall of Fame, but I personally doubt it. He just didn’t pitch long enough. There’s an even more outside chance Johan Santana will make an MLB comeback, pitch more, and THEN be a shoe-in for the Hall of Fame—but yeah, and monkeys are going to come flying out my butt.

It would be a lot easier if Bartolo Colon would just give that 2005 Cy Young award to Johan Santana.

/end rant