We Have 2, 2-Time Winners

13 Nov, 2019

The Astros’ Justin Verlander and the Mets’ Jacob deGrom are the 2019 winners of the American League and National League Cy Young Awards, as announced on Wednesday night on MLB Network by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. And these two-time winners of baseball’s biggest pitching prize took two very different paths to this point.

For Verlander, who won the 2011 AL Cy Young with the Tigers, this award is well-deserved relief after three second-place finishes in 2012, 2016 and 2018. This time, he had to edge out his own equally deserving teammate, Gerrit Cole, to win one of the more interesting Cy races in recent memory.

“It’s just truly incredible,” Verlander said on the MLB Network announcement show. “2011 was just a magical season. I didn’t have to grind through much at that point in time. A lot has changed since then, personally and professionally. It just makes it that much sweeter. Having come so close a couple other times, all that this means, it’s just such an incredible feeling.”

Verlander received 17 first-place votes to Cole’s 13, giving him 171 voting points to Cole’s 159. It was just the fifth time overall — and the first time in the AL — that two teammates finished 1-2 in the Cy Young voting. What’s more, their former teammate, Charlie Morton of the Rays, finished third.

For deGrom, this is another victory sans victories. While Verlander won 21 games in 2019 alone, that was deGrom’s combined total for 2018 and ’19. But deGrom’s unmistakable excellence in the areas of the stat line over which he had more control earned him the honor of becoming just the 11th pitcher to win this award in back-to-back years.

“I said it was a dream to win one,” deGrom said. “But to win back to back? Honestly, I’m kind of speechless right now.”

deGrom did it with the exact same voting point total as 2018, once again appearing at the top of 29 of 30 ballots, with one second-place vote. The Dodgers’ Hyun-Jin Ryu received the other first-place vote and finished in second place ahead of the Nationals’ Max Scherzer. The Cy Young results were revealed on the penultimate night of the BBWAA announcements. Awards week wraps with Thursday’s 6 p.m. ET unveiling of the AL and NL MVP honors on MLB Network.

Here’s a look at why the Cy suited Verlander and deGrom:

Verlander’s losses to David Price in ’12 and Rick Porcello in ‘16 were particularly, agonizingly close, as he finished within five voting points both times and actually received six more first-place votes than Porcello.

But at age 36, Verlander finally got over the hump again. He put together one of the best seasons of his Hall of Fame-caliber career.

Verlander led the Majors in wins (21), innings (223), batting average against (.171), WHIP (0.80), Win Probability added (5.6) and was tied for first in starts (34). He also tied the Rangers’ Mike Minor for the lead in Baseball Reference’s WAR calculation (7.8).

His WHIP was the second lowest by a qualified pitcher in the past 100 years, bested only by Pedro Martínez’s 0.74 mark in 2000. The batting average against was the seventh-lowest since 1900.

Verlander threw his third career no-hitter on Sept. 1 in Toronto, making him just the sixth pitcher in history with at least three no-nos. The others: Nolan Ryan (seven), Sandy Koufax (four), Bob Feller (three), Larry Corcoran (three) and Cy Young himself (three).

MLB.com

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