Right-hander Trevor Bauer, who led the National League with a 1.73 ERA, became the first Cincinnati Reds pitcher ever to win the NL Cy Young Award.
Bauer received 27 first-place votes and 201 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America announced Wednesday. Chicago Cubs right-hander Yu Darvish finished second with three first-place votes and 123 points. New York Mets right-hander Jacob deGrom, the NL Cy Young winner in 2018 and 2019, came in third with 89 points.
Bauer, 29, was the first Reds pitcher to lead the NL in ERA since Ed Heusser in 1944. He also topped the league with a 0.795 walks-plus-hits-per-inning-pitched ratio (WHIP) and led the majors with two shutouts. He went 5-4 in 11 starts during the 60-game, pandemic-shortened regular season. Bauer struck out 100 and walked 17 while allowing 41 hits in 73 innings.
“(It’s about) taking the ball on your day and pitching and not getting taken out,” Bauer said on the MLB Network broadcast in which he was revealed as the Cy Young Award winner. “As much as I’m a new-age, analytics guy, that’s kind of what I’m branded as, I still respect and kind of am in love with the nostalgia of baseball.
“I want to be out there as much as possible. I want to pitch every fourth day instead of every fifth. I love competing.”
Darvish, deGrom fall short in Cy Young bids
Darvish, 34, tied for the league lead in wins, finishing 8-3 with a 2.01 ERA. He fanned 93 and walked 14 in 76 innings.
deGrom, 32, went 4-2 with a 2.38 ERA and an NL-leading 104 strikeouts. He walked 18 in 68 innings. He was attempting to become the third pitcher to win three or more Cy Young Awards in a row. Randy Johnson won four straight for the Arizona Diamondbacks from 1999-2002, and Greg Maddux was the 1992 winner with the Chicago Cubs before winning three in a row from 1993-95 with the Atlanta Braves. Bauer, a former Cleveland pitcher, and Indians right-hander Shane Bieber became the third set of former teammates to win Cy Young Awards in the same year. The others were Rick Porcello (2016 Boston Red Sox) and Max Scherzer (2016 Washington Nationals), both teammates on the Detroit Tigers from 2010-14, and Greg Maddux (1992 Chicago Cubs) and Dennis Eckersley (1992 Oakland Athletics), teammates on the Cubs in 1986.
With Bauer’s honor, the only three major league teams that have never had a Cy Young Award winner are the Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies and Miami Marlins.
–Field Level Media (@FieldLevelMedia)