But even considering all that, trading away the 2024 and 2025 Cy Young Award winner couldn’t have been easy. — David Cone, Kansas City to Toronto to New York Yankees, 1995: Cone was actually traded twice the year after his Cy Young season in Kansas City. — Cliff Lee, Cleveland to Philadelphia, 2009: Yes, that’s two straight seasons Cleveland traded away the previous year’s Cy Young winner — and Lee wasn’t even a pending free agent. Then New York traded him back to Houston in the middle of the 2023 season. Trivia timeWhich 1974 Cy Young winner was able to switch teams for 1975 after an arbitrator declared him a free agent?