Jacob deGrom won 29 of a possible 30 first place votes as the New York Mets ace won the NL Cy Young Award following a dominant season for the 30-year-old pitcher.
DeGrom won the award despite only compiling a 10-9 record, a sign that the days of evaluating starting pitchers by their win total are now long in the past.
deGrom Dominant Despite Lack of Wins
With a MLB-leading 1.70 ERA and a sparkling 0.91 WHIP, there was little doubt that deGrom had been the best pitcher in the National League this year. But the fifth-year hurler got a shockingly low amount of run support, even considering the struggles of his team.
While the Mets did not have a good season, they only finished eight games under .500 – a mark that would normally still allow a great starter to compile a healthy number of wins and an excellent record. But New York scored just 3.57 runs per game for deGrom, whose 10 wins are the lowest ever for a Cy Young winner in a full season.
Nonetheless, voters gave deGrom the nod, adding his name to the list of dominant Mets pitchers that have defined the franchise’s history.
“I want to thank the baseball writers for this honor,” deGrom said. “I’m extremely humbled to win this award along with some other great former Mets such as Tom Seaver, Dwight Gooden and R.A. Dickey. I’d especially like to thank my teammates, coaching staff and my family.”
Given the lack of run support, one could wonder why deGrom would thank his teammates. But the pitcher said that he never worried about what his offense was doing while he was on the mound.
“My thought process was, ‘Hey, take the ball every fifth day and try to put this team in a position to win and control what you can control,’” deGrom said.
Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer picked up the only other first place vote and finished a distant second overall, while Aaron Nola of the Philadelphia Phillies took third place in the voting.
Snell Beats Out Verlander for AL Cy Young
The American League Cy Young Award went to Tampa Bay Rays southpaw Blake Snell, who compiled an impressive 21-5 record and a 1.89 ERA in his first full season in the majors.
Snell may have pitched just 180.2 innings on the season, but his level of dominance was enough to push him past Houston’s Justin Verlander for the award. Snell received 17 first place votes, while Verlander picked up 13.
Verlander had a 16-9 record and a 2.52 ERA in 214 innings on the mound. After seeing the results in both leagues, Snell suggested that voters went strictly for quality over quantity.
“You look at deGrom, and he had a great ERA, and he was going deeper into ballgames than me,” Snell said after the awards were announced. “So you can’t put the wins and losses on him as heavily. Just looking at it, I feel like it’s turning more into quality of work and what did you accomplish in those innings? I think that’s the way it’s going.”