But they did earn three major nods from the Baseball Writers Association of America in as many days, capped off with Jake Arrieta winning the National League Cy Young Award on Wednesday night.
Advertisement
There’s no doubt it’s deserved.
The Cubs ace was dominant all season, finishing with a 22-6 record, a minuscule 1.77 ERA and 236 strikeouts. His ERA never rose above 1.95 and his 19-3 record led the majors.
Sure enough, Arrieta’s mark of 1.89 walks per nine innings in 2015 was about 20 percent better than his previous career-best mark of 2.36, set just last season.
Keuchel received 92 first-place votes (51.40%) and 956 points while being named on 175 of 179 ballots (97.22%). In his last 15 starts of the season, Arrieta went 12-1 with a 0.75 ERA, including a no-hitter on August 30th against the Los Angeles Dodgers. He was the Triple-A Pacific Coast League Pitcher of the Year in 2007, true, but he was a Rule 5 Draft pick the next year, and only got a minor-league pact with a spring invite in when he re-joined the Twins in 2009. And he didn’t utilize them almost as often, Arrieta’s curve and change both ranked seventh in all of baseball when adjusted for frequency.
It’s interesting that not only has Arrieta become one of the best starters in the game, but Strop is still a contributor in the CUbs bullpen.
The Cy Young Award is given to the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, one for each league.
Jake Arrieta of the Chicago Cubs and Dallas Keuchel of the Houston Astros were fringe major leaguers two years ago before making promising leaps last season.
Right-hander Bob Turley, who was an original Oriole who was among the holdovers from the old St. Louis Browns, was traded to the NY Yankees after the 1954 season and four years later he won the American League Cy Young award for the Yankees.
“I’m a little relieved honestly, to finally know how it played out”, said Arrieta after being showered with celebratory champagne.
There was no wrong choice in picking between the three finalists for the NL Cy Young Award. He was also recognized by league players who voted to select Keuchel as the recipient of the Players Choice Award for American League Outstanding Pitcher.
This race was supposed to be a lot closer with Greinke coming out with his second Cy Young Award.
Advertisement
Kershaw, a three-time NL Cy Young victor, was the first pitcher in 13 seasons to have 300-plus strikeouts (301) in a season. Those pitchers are 1981 NL winner Fernando Valenzuela (1993), 1984 NL winner Rick Sutcliffe (1994) and 1990 NL winner Doug Drabek (1997). So, yes, he’s a premium free agent.
