Maybe all he is trying to say is that no one even knew what the hell WAR was back then, and the best tools they had were things like ERA and batting average. This would have led people back then to draw different conclusions than we draw now, and criticizing those conclusions doesn't really make sense because they were simply doing the best they could with the tools they had available.
Obviously we can go back now and see who was objectively the best, but to argue that those guys weren't the right choice for the Cy back then because of WAR doesn't really make any sense - it's not like the voters were ignoring it back then like they do now. They honestly didn't know about linear weights and run values the same way we do now.