Davis Is the Cy Young Award Winner; Will He Remain a Padre?

It was a celebratory occasion, but . . .

That was a very big three-letter word.

But.

But what if?

Hello, Cy Young.

But sayonara Mark Davis?

The ongoing negotiations between the Padres and their ace relief pitcher were very much on the back burner on the day he won the Cy Young Award. It was one of those rare moments when everyone preferred to look back rather than ahead, because no one knows where Davis will be pitching in 1990.

“It’s not contract talking time,” said Fred Lane, the Chicago attorney who is talking contract with Davis’ agents on the Padres’ behalf. “It’s baseball talking time. I’m here to give credit where credit is due.”

And that was the very specter hanging over the whole occasion.

Exactly how much credit is due?

It is impossible to imagine a more opportune time for a pitcher to have a Cy Young Award attached to his resume. Free agent is definitely a misnomer. This young man will be very expensive.

But money seemed to be a dirty word, as if it was something to be disassociated with an occasion such as the winning of a Cy Young Award.

Davis would be asked about the decision he must make, but he had no real answers.

“A lot of things will go into my decision,” Davis said, “but today is happy time for the Padres and myself.”

The Padres certainly did their bit to make this seem an organizational occasion. The whole front office stayed after hours to offer congratulations. Owner Joan Kroc, whose schedule usually keeps her away from such functions, was also on hand. What’s more, she sent her plane to Arizona to pick up Davis and his wife.

And Davis did his part by generously calling it an organizational award. He said “thank you” more often than he said “Cy Young.”

All things being equal, meaning offers being relatively close, Mark Davis would be quite comfortable continuing his career in this organization.

The problem, of course, is those offers and how silly they might get.

This guy, at 29, is prime time. This contract will take him through what should be the best years of his life. This guy is coming off a 44-save year in which he squandered only four save opportunities.

This guy has found his niche on the baseball field, but now it is a matter of determining which baseball field.

Davis could be the first Cy Young Award winner in history to start the following season in a different uniform. This is not an appealing thought to the Padres, who would go from contender to pretender without him.

A big concern, at this point, might be that the Cy Young Award is actually bad for the Padres.

Might Davis be even more attractive now? Might his already sky-high market value soar even higher?

I think not.

And I’m not alone.

“I had the same season whether I won the award or not,” Mark Davis said. “I can’t see where it would affect my market value because it doesn’t affect the stats.”

Indeed, the Cy Young Award is created by statistical criteria. The baseball writers who vote on the award looked at the fact that Davis allowed just 13 of 75 inherited runners to score, started the year with saves in his first 17 opportunities, finished the year with a string of 24 2/3 scoreless innings and had a 1.85 earned run average.

Davis is right. The value of his season stands on its own merit.

Half the teams in baseball will be chasing him because of what he did and the Cy Young Award doesn’t change what he did, but rather recognizes it.

Consequently, the Cy Young Award is of virtually no monetary value to Mark Davis.

Ironically, Houston’s Mike Scott picked up $50,000 for finishing second in the voting because of an incentive clause built into his contract. And the Cy Young bonus rolls over and becomes part of his base salaries for 1990 and 1991, making a second place finish worth a total of $150,000.

Mark Davis did not have any bonus clause for winning the Cy Young Award, mainly because it didn’t occur to him that he had a chance.

Until the last couple of years, in fact, there was little in his career to suggest that stardom was ahead. The first hint that there was something special ahead came in 1988, when he had 28 saves and a 2.01 earned run average. A star had been born.

Never again will Mark Davis have a contract without a Cy Young Award clause, and who knows how many other little lucrative twists and turns.

Never again will he think in terms of such accomplishments to be impossible dreams.

Mark Davis is a Cy Young Award winner.

He had the statistics to earn it.

And he will have the contract to reflect those statistics.

But where?