Keeping Score - Winning After a Cy Young Winner Leaves R. A. Dickey is the seventh reigning Cy Young Award winner who changed teams through a trade or free agency before the next season, and doom and gloom was predicted for the Mets after they sent him to the Toronto Blue Jays. Vida Blue filled in admirably for Oakland after Catfish Hunter left for the Yankees. But does losing the league's best pitcher really spell catastrophe? An examination of statistics from the teams involved in those seven situations showed the effect was much less one-sided than one might suspect. The Mets" No. 1 pitcher this year is Matt Harvey, 24, a right-hander who has exceeded expectations. He is 4-0 entering his eighth start on Sunday. Entering the weekend, he led the majors in earned run average (1.28) and the average number of walks and hits per inning, or WHIP, (0.69). Harvey ranked second among all players (not just pitchers) in Wins Above Replacement (2.7). Dickey, however, has struggled, losing five of seven decisions with a 5.06 E.R.A. His strikeouts-per-walk ratio has fallen to 1.73 from 4.26, which was third-best in the National League last season; that figure was 2.26 for his mostly rocky career entering 2013. His WAR value is minus 0.2. The first Cy Young winner to leave his team the next season was Catfish Hunter. He went 25-12 with a 2.49 E.R.A. and won the World Series with the Oakland Athletics in 1974, then signed a five-year, $3.5 million contract with the Yankees. The next season, he was 23-14, but the Yankees failed to make the playoffs. In Oakland, Vida Blue, the American League's Cy Young winner in 1971, filled the void left by Hunter by winning 22 games, a five-victory improvement over his previous season. The Yankees and the Blue Jays figured prominently in two more departures by Cy Young winners, starting with the 1994 recipient, David Cone, then with the Kansas City Royals. He was traded twice in 1995, ending up as a Yankee via Toronto. With the Royals that year, Kevin Appier nearly matched Cone's overall output, as each had at least a .600 winning percentage and a sub-4.00 E.R.A. After he won the 1998 A.L. Cy Young with Toronto, Roger Clemens was traded to the Yankees for David Wells. Statistically, Wells probably had a better 1999 season with the Blue Jays than Clemens did with the Yankees. Wells won three more games, with a superior strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.73 to 1.81) but a slightly higher E.R.A. Also in the 1990s, two journeymen, Greg Hibbard and Dustin Hermanson, excelled when called upon to lead their depleted staffs. After the Chicago Cubs" Greg Maddux won the first of his four consecutive N.L. Cy Young awards in 1992, the Atlanta Braves signed him as a free agent. In Maddux's absence, Hibbard posted a career-high 15 wins and a career-low 2.2 walks per nine innings for the 1993 Cubs. After Pedro Martinez was traded to the Boston Red Sox after winning the N.L. Cy Young with Montreal in 1997, Hermanson responded with his best year as a starter, with 14 wins, a 1.17 WHIP and 154 strikeouts for the Expos in 1998. The only reliever among the seven Cy Young winners, Mark Davis, was virtually unhittable in 1989, racking up 44 saves for the San Diego Padres. Although Davis joined forces through free agency with his A.L. Cy Young counterpart Bret Saberhagen in Kansas City, he flopped. Davis's replacement in San Diego, Craig Lefferts, had 23 saves in 1990. Davis totaled 11 saves with four clubs over his four-year, $13 million contract, a large one at the time. The Mets are 6-1 this season in starts by Harvey, who is earning less than a tenth of Dickey's $5 million. He went at least seven innings, allowing no more than one earned run, in each of his first four starts, all victories. No Mets pitcher had ever begun a season in such dominating fashion. Only time will tell if Harvey has Cy Young potential, or if the Mets will hang on to him.