Bryce Young, Alabama’s Sophomore Star, Wins the Heisman Trophy

Still, for one of American sports most cherished awards, there has been little evolution in how selectors make their choice. Over the last decade or so, more sophisticated statistical analysis has dramatically changed how baseball awards are determined, with old standbys like batting average and pitcher wins being diminished in favor of other metrics that may even take ballparks into account.

And in basketball, points and rebounds have been put into greater context to detail the efficiency with which they were compiled.

“The guys who are inefficient and put up highlights, it was easier to make a case for them 10 years ago,” said Ryan Jones, a former editor of SLAM magazine, noting that high volume shooters, like Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant, would be appraised somewhat less favorably today.

“You don’t have to be a hard core analytics guy to appreciate Steph Curry, or what Jokic has done. Or Giannis,” he added, referring to the N.B.A.’s best shooter and its past two most valuable players who have well-rounded games, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo. “Some of it is real obvious, but the advanced stats sometime tell you in a different way how impressive some of that stuff is.”

There has been an even greater reconsideration in baseball.

In 1990, Bob Welch, who posted a 27-6 record for the Oakland Athletics, won the American League Cy Young Award, comfortably outdistancing Roger Clemens, who was 21-6 for the Boston Red Sox. But Clemens registered a league-best 10.4 in wins above replacement, or WAR, a more recent metric that evaluates a player’s value to the team based on more detailed data. Welch, who recorded far fewer strikeouts and allowed far more home runs, had a modest 2.9 WAR, the lowest among the top seven vote-getters that season.

Nowadays, wins have been so discounted in favor of other measures that Jacob deGrom won back-to-back Cy Young for the Mets despite compiling a pedestrian 21-17 record over the 2018 and 2019 seasons.

A more nuanced lens has also changed how baseball Hall of Fame voters have given new life to candidates like Tim Raines, Edgar Martinez and Larry Walker who were passed over because they fell short of milestones like 3,000 hits, 500 home runs or 300 victories.