Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara has won the National League Cy Young award, the Baseball Writers Association of America announced. It was a unanimous victory, with Alcantara receiving all 30 first place votes. He was followed in the voting by Max Fried of the Braves and Julio Urías of the Dodgers.
Alcantara has been the presumptive favorite for quite some time, and the unanimous voting serves as a particular testament to the caliber of season he put together. The right-hander easily lapped the field in innings, soaking up 228 2/3 frames that cleared second-place finisher Aaron Nola by 23 2/3. Alcantara and Nola were the only Senior Circuit pitchers to throw multiple complete games; Nola went the distance twice, while Alcantara did so six times. He also faced a league-leading 886 batters, with Nola’s 807 batters faced an extremely distant second.
That kind of throwback, workhorse mentality was part of what set Alcantara apart from the rest of the league, but he continued to perform brilliantly on a rate basis. Among NL starters with 100+ innings, he ranked fourth in ERA (2.28) and sixth in ground-ball percentage (53.4%). His 23.4% strikeout percentage was more good than elite, but he rarely issued free passes and kept the ball on the ground while consistently going deep into games.
Along the way, the 27-year-old earned the second All-Star nod of his career. Alcantara had posted an ERA between 3.00 and 4.00 in each of his first four seasons with the Fish to emerge as a top-of-the-rotation caliber arm. Miami inked him to a $56MM extension last offseason, a deal that extended their window of control through 2027. That seemed a strong move for general manager Kim Ng and her staff at the time, and it now stands as an absolute bargain with Alcantara cementing himself upon the game’s top handful of pitchers.
It’s the first Cy Young nod for the native of the Dominican Republic, who’d never previously appeared on an awards ballot. Fried and Urías each picked up some support for the second time. The Atlanta southpaw finished fifth in Cy Young balloting in 2020, while the L.A. hurler placed seventh last year. Both earned a top-three placement for the first time this year, with sub-2.50 ERA showings. Fried twirled 185 1/3 innings of 2.48 ball, while Urías led qualified starters with a 2.16 ERA.
Fried picked up 10 second-place votes, and Urías was the runner-up on seven ballots. Nola, Zac Gallen, Carlos Rodón, Corbin Burnes and Edwin Díaz were the other players to receive at least one second-place vote. Nola and Gallen placed fourth and fifth, respectively. Rodón, Burnes, Díaz, Yu Darvish, Kyle Wright, Logan Webb and Ryan Helsley were the other players to appear on a ballot.
Full voting breakdown available here.
Congrats to Alcantara. First Marlin to win the award and even threw 6 complete games, which was more than several whole teams
That guy is a monster! Golly I wish he was still a Cardinal, nobody throws 3 complete games in a year anymore let alone 6 and he probably got the loss in a few of them?
He went 5-1 in his 6 complete games losing his last start of the season to the Brewers
He also had a couple of games where he pitched 9 innings, but the game went into extras, and a couple of others where he got taken out mid 9th, plus the 27 or 28 games of 7 innings or more
Correction: His 6 complete games were more than every other MLB team – first time achieved in MLB history that one pitcher did that.
Which honestly makes him that mich more deserving
Yes, he was ‘ole school’ good this season. A joy to watch. Loving it as a Marlins fan and hoping he continues doing this from this point forward. It’s be so pleasant to see him develop into this and to see how our entire rotation works together with Stottlemyre to develop the same results with low-pitch innings, pitching to contact, etc.
While I wish that Julio Urias would win it. Alcantara absolutely deserves this award. He was a ton of fun to watch this year and I’m looking forward to seeing more of him in the next few seasons.
Well earned, dude had a special year, he will be scary for a while.
A while is right, but how much of that time will be on the Marlins? They might trade him this offseason if he gets a Cy Young bonus that’s too big. His contract is so team-friendly he’d probably bring back the biggest haul in decades if they trade him this month.
I can 100% see them doing that.
The Marlins arent other organizations that are capable of getting value in trades
If the Marlins deal him, that’s an admission they never intend to contend unless they get very, very, very lucky with a bunch of pre-arb players.
Julio Urias is asking himself right now, ¿Qué más necesito hacer?
Be better than Alcantara.
2.28 ERA in 228 IP is better than 2.16 ERA in 175 IP and if you disagree then you just dont get how these work and never will and its best for you to sit out of these convos because you will never add anything to them or change anyones mind.
Look at Urias’ FIP…
If you think ERA is the only pitching stat that matters, then you need a lobotomy
@A’sfanUK, as usual you jump on another poster, with little cause. @blueskies is a respectful, informed, and appreciated member of this board who only posts positive and informative pieces. You on the other hand…..
agreed. I hold the same assessment/valuation
A’s fan
You are reading Blue Skies post different than me.
He is not saying Julio deserves to win. He is saying Julio had two incredible seasons in a row where he was passed up for All Star and Cy Young honors with stats that might have been good enough many years.
I would argue that Julio was better than Max by a hair, by this was Sandy’s award no dispute from me.
Best pitcher for 2021-2022 combined is not an award, but if it was, Julio would be on the top line.
@giantsphan Thank you. I’ll never understand why so many people here go immediately for hostility. Strange thing is, I didn’t even say that Urias should have won. I know only since I follow the game that he justifiably felt snubbed by the AS selections. He’s been quietly terrific for a while now but hasn’t gotten the recognition that usually goes along with excellence.
@Blue, you’re one of my favorite Dodgers’s fans and my sentiment was sincere. I agree about those who post who immediately respond with such vehement hostility. I wish the world we live in was less supportive of such action. That said, I agree with you about Julio. He’s very Very good and I agree, he should’ve received an AS spot. Enjoy the offseason my SoCal amigo!
Yeah, probably because he pushes women around.
Ask Madison Bumgarner about putting up several great seasons in a row just to play “runner-up” in all of them…
Rent free, idiot.
@giantsphan12 this isnt social media, none of these posters are real people, its just anon takes, stop letting me live rent free in your head, I dont care about fake posters man, you shouldnt either.
I post nothing but informed takes on here, delusional homers hate hearing reality and take shots at me, I fire back, you then blame me for inciting personal attacks because these mentally ill sports fans on here cannot handle real life.
Get a room you dorks
“Anon takes” and “fake posters”…good grief dude.
I don’t care if you vote blue, red, or purple but please educate and do your own research over believing everything that one person says.
We roast A’sfaninLexington over on the basketball site as well. He doesn’t escape unscathed.
It’s adds a remarkable 2.68 ERA in 53.2 innings.
Geez A’s fan…You seem filled with vitriol. Comments section on MLBTR is not a very effective outlet for your rage.
@Gary….Anecdotally, it seems that being an A’s fan is not conducive to a healthful well-being.
Julio is a FA at end of 2023. His award will have nine digits.
Entradas, señor. Necesitas tirar mas entradas.
Specifically, go deeper into games. I’m also assuming the Dodgers have a better defense behind Urias (based on their spending) but I don’t really know how the teams compare defensively. Those are the only two factors I can think of that deserve to be in the same sentence as ERA.
Fangraphs has the Dodgers with the 6th best defense in Baseball while the Marlins ranked 10th (which admittedly is surprising).
As you said though “go deeper into games” would probably help as Urias had the fewest innings pitched of the 3 NL candidates and only averaged 5.2 inninga per start
Urias was only turned into a full time starter over full seasons in 2021, though. LAD only let him get past 99 pitches once, and he went on 5 and 6 days rest 22 times compared with 8 times for 4 days rest.
Really interesting, how cautious they’re being with him, particularly given how he never went more than 87 innings in 6 minor league seasons, despite being almost exclusively a starter.
Which is strange considering he has no history of injuries, yet they rode Walker Buehler into the ground resulting in a second Tommy John surgery
@Rsox The only thing I can think of is that Buehler was among the fairly rare college guys who threw over 100 innings in a season (115 ip overall in 2014), then close to that in 2015 and 2016, so they thought they could build from there. I think they thought confining the bump each season to about 50 innings was taking care of him.
beat more womens ?
As a Padre fan, I’ve seen Urias pitch a lot and I always hated facing him. I was always hoping they could scratch a few runs across. That said, I think it comes to managing. Roberts and his staff do not like to go through the lineup three times with a starter, no matter how well he is doing. That helped the Padres in game 4 where Anderson was dominant and got pulled.
Mattingly let Alcantra pitch deep into games and he was still effective in the late innings. How many times did Urias see anything beyond the fifth inning? To answer your question about what more he needs to do, I would say have his manager let him go deeper in games.
3rd in fWAR, 5th in xERA, outside top 20 in xFIP. K/9 below league average.
Big yikes
My god ! The guy was the best , no matters if his xwrofod+ was the 5th
Best at what, pitching?
Nah, sorry
Man I hope this is a troll job
Urias faced 689 batters
Alcantara recorded 686 outs.
But good luck with that argument…
@GMoney2850
In most cases I’d agree with you but the WAR’s were so close and he had 50 more innings than Rodon and 23 more than Nola.
You can make the case for Nola but not Rodon. I would have voted for Nola personally but it’s hard to be mad about the result.
2.28 ERA in 228 IP and you think that’s a bad pick? Well I think you are a bad baseball analyst!
Teams don’t care about ERA anymore, man.
Neither should fans or the goofy beat writers who vote on these awards
Maybe you should take some air. Soften your attitude.
ERA should still matter and be factored in, just not as much as it did decades ago
50 more innings but still half a win less lol. Value is value
Another piece of unequivocal poof that WAR is a useless stat
178 ERA+ 2.99 Fip. 6CG that all resulted in Wins. Replacement Level pitchers aren’t throwing CGs. That’s 6games alone that should be put towards his WAR. Nevermind the multiple 8inning games he pitched something Replacement level pitchers may achieve 0-3 times in 30 starts. Checks Urias’ game logs…. oh dang he had 0s of both. Only seen 7th inning 6! times all season. I’m not sure Urias should be top 5 with that stat. Covers 18outs and RPs cover 9? Vast majority of time. Vs 27 outs and 0 6 times?
CONGRATS TO Sandy, well deserved.
@gmoney – Thankfully the voters don’t cherrypick arbitrary stats when voting like you do and look at the pitcher as a whole.
You do realize that if Alcantara gave up just THREE fewer runs (0.1 runs per start, or 1 run every 10 starts), his ERA would be identical to Urias’s? So can you maybe realize that ERA is pretty useless when directly comparing two pitchers?
And if you’re going to list Alcantara’s stats, why exclude 6 freaking complete games (as some have mentioned, more than many teams) and 228.1 innings (more than 20 more than Nola), and pristine peripherals? A high K/9 is sexy, but I’d take Sandy’s 8.1 K/9 and the rest of his numbers all day long.
Alcantara also had a couple of late starts where I thought official scoring/defense hurt him, where they gave him earned runs that probably could have been unearned/were at least effected by terrible routes in the OF
FIP is not a good measure, especially when you pitch with a low era for a high scoring team like the Dodgers. If Julio is up 5-0 for Dodgers and gives a solo home run it is weighted to heavily because FIP only measures balls not hit to fielders.
FIP has also a bit unkind to Alcantara over his career, given its overemphasis (imho) on K’s and broad indifference to hits allowed.
About 40 more innings
Excellent new for Sandy. helluva year!
Front office needs to go out and and find some legit offense(across the board and a closer.
Congrats to Alcantara! Well deserved. One of the few brights spots for Marlins fans this year.
Best season by a pitcher in Marlins history or nah?
I would say so.
Jose Fernandez’s 2016 is up there.
Kevin Brown 96
Next up:
Dylan Cease for AL Cy Young Award!!!
SADLY, IT’LL BE jv WHO’LL WIN. THEN SIGNS WITH THE DODGERS
The Dodgers already have a legend who under performs in the playoffs.
And yet they both have rings.
If you don’t think Kersh and JV are teaming to form the best show in town, you are delusional! 100% its going down!!!
Very possible JV signs with the Dodgers. An already stacked team getting even more top end talent. They’ll win the most regular season games again.
Won’t matter in the playoffs (again).
Mmmmmmm Kate Upton roaming the stands at Chavez Latrine?
Well deserved and hats off to Urias and Scherzer for great years as well.
@HalosHeavenJJ Well said.
Scherzer was indeed terrific, but blast the Mets FO for failing to recognize at the deadline their desperate, impending need for a #3 (or better) starting pitcher, someone who could go down the stretch and in the playoffs in lieu of deGrom, Scherzer, or Bassitt, at least one of which was going to be hurt or ineffective.
Had they done this they could have given Scherzer additional time off in the second half of August and the first week of September. Instead they reverted to the Wilpon Mets, frittering away half a dozen useful players and interesting minor leaguers at the deadline on filler and spare parts. Had they been willing to add top 100 prospect Mauricio to that mix, someone they have no room or use for, they could have easily brought over the pitching they were certain to need.
Does he get a big bonus for winning the Cy?
He might have just wrote his ticket out of town! Expect a trade?
He’s on a very team friendly contract for the next four years. If the Marlins were to move him the haul would be massive.
Would it be though? The Marlins dont know how to get value in trades
Didn’t they get Alcantara in a trade?
Ya but at the time, it could have been better value, and Alcantara has exponentially improved. Back then, he was most likely a reliever with possible #3 upside. He changed so much to be what he has been the last 2 years. Regardless, that’s 1 of very few examples of something that worked in their favor.
So when the prospects underperform it’s another “bad move, Marlins,” but when they over perform it was just dumb luck?
Do you remember that they also got Zak Gallen in that trade, who they later swapped for Jazz Chisolm? The Marte for Jesus Luzardo trade seems to be doing fine as well.
Zac Gallen was someone I liked when he was in A ball, and would have been in my version of the trade as well. If you sW the other Marlins thread from a couple of days ago, you would have seen me talk about the times I was told toy face by the Marlins front office that they traded Gallen b/c they thought Neidert was better…
It doesnt matter what the eventual results of the trade was. I’m not arguing that. I’m saying what matters is the value at the time of the trade. The Marlins always give up way more for pieces, and get back way less for pieces. Thos is objectively true, and if you disagree, you havent paid any attention to them. Are there 1 or 2 exceptions? Yes, but they’re very, very few and far between
Also the Marte trade was still extremely questionable, at best. He wanted to stay for $40 million, but they refused to offer him a couple of extra million, and then they keep talking about adding a CFer, and they paid Avosail Garcia and Jorge Soler, who they dont need, $90 million. Thankfully Mel was able to fix Luzardo’s mechanics, but they still shouldnt have traded Marte, and if they did, they should have got more than they did, with what Luzardo’s value was at the time
I find it hard to believe Marte would have settled for $40 million when he received a $76 million contract from the Mets. Plus trading him in no way prevented the Marlins from resigning him at the end of the season.
I don’t see a problem trading a dude on the last year of his contract for a former top-20 MLB prospect who is under control until 2027. But whatever, agree to disagree.
Was widely reported, and mostly at least alluded to by Narte himself multiple times. They definitely could have still signed him, but obviously its mire difficult as a FA than an extension well before entering free agency where other teams could pay him what he clearly was going to get, and did get…from the Mets, in their division
The issue was the logic behind trading a guy giving them star value at a position of need, that wanted to stay on a multiyear extension for an extremely affordable price for someone that had lost most of his value and needed to be reclimated, alone, and then spending the next 2 years talking about needing a CFer and being willing to give up anything and everything to do so, while also spending more than double the money they refused to spend on 2 others they didnt need, and arent nearly as valuable together…and also dont play CF
There is no ticket out of town and even less a cy young bonus.
Sandy is on a mega friendly contract for anothe 4 years. Few current GM’s have balls let alone the major league ready talent to pull of such a trade for a player of sandys value.
We’ll deserved Sandy, hopefully the Marlins get good, or he gets traded to a team that is good.
Congratulations Marlins fans!
Next Year, Cat Man all the way!!!
Deserves it…..
More like Bob Gibson than anyone since Bob Gibson retired.
Hot take : Sandy Alcantara is a top 3 pitcher in MLB. Tell me how ridiculous I am in the comments.
That’s a room-temp take.
To have to go to begging, i’d say, you sir are ridiculous.
@cecil
Who’s begging? For wanting to have a genuine cordial debate about major league pitching? For asking for a varying take? If that’s begging sure pal, whatever you say. Lol
Cecildawg
The dude was asking a question, he wasn’t begging imo. You were just being an a$s for no reason.
Right? He only pitched in a division that finished with two 100 win teams and another team that made the World Series.
Don’t have a real issue with Alcantara winning, but I have a major issue with the unanimous voting. Nola, Rodon, Urias, Fried all have legitimate claims to the award as well.
Went 1-3 vs the NL Champs…….all good games
He only won 14 games. Meh.
Get off my lawn!
I hope you’re joking.
Gotta give a bigup to Derek Jeter for that contract.
Neon Cop, I think most people forgot about that incident. Or never were aware of it in the first place.
It’s debatable which is the strongest division, however, Alcantara, Pablo Lopez, Jesus Luzardo Edward Cabrera, all ERA’s under 3.75. In Alcantara’s case his W/L record would’ve been better, however Marlins didn’t give him and the other aforementioned pitchers a lot of run support, and also they didn’t have the greatest of bullpens.
Mets Scherzer, De Grom Bassitt, Walker Carrasco,
Phillies Nola, Wheeler, Suarez,
Braves Fried, Wright, Strider,
Maybe Manfred can create more wildcards so we get to see Alcantara in the post season, make it 4 wildcards, it’s already cheap to get into the post season with 3rd wildcards, so if the Marlins can win 15-20 more games make it 4 wildcards and shorten the regular season to 120-130 games, and make the play-offs longer because Manfred wants more money for greedy owners and more money for greedy MLB, TV execs will also be happy.
Alcantara can thank Marlins manager (ex-manager) Don Mattingly for all the complete games. Mattingly’s a “player’s manager” who puts his knowlege of the game ahead of analytics. Most managers pull a starting pitcher – even if he’s pitching well – after six or seven innings at the most, but Mattingly knows better and lets the guy pitch.
Mattingly also knew the bullpen sucked
True that, and also might explain why Mattingly is the ex-manager of the Marlins.
That is being kind to what that bullpen was. If they were just that bad, they would have won at least 15 more games, probably 20
Well deserved. I didn’t follow him that much this year but in 2021 on my fantasy teams, this guy was a beast.
Sandy pitched to a 1.92 ERA through 170 innings this year. Urias was great, but Sandy was better
Now his long new contract with Marlins seems pretty cheap I hope that doesn’t take away his motivation to play.
Yeah tough to get motivated with 55 million $$
Motivation is not something you need to worry about with Sandy. Dude is a monster and has a tremendous work ethic on his off day. He’s a leader to a few young Dominican pitchers in the system. He’ll be the ACE for the Dominican team in March during the WBC. I’d be worried about all the innings he’ll be pitching.
And if the gap for innings pitched wasnt wide enough already, you have to remember he was also withheld from starting his last game. Dude could have easily made it to 235 innings
I could be wrong, but it seems that all the action with the Blue Jays in manipulating players, is like planting a crop and pleading for rain. Sometimes the rain takes along time to come. Zimmer and Tapia seem to be hard workers, whereas I’ve noticed that the big boys like Vladimar and others, seemed at times, to come to work tired and without drive. I know it is rough on the famous and the privileged, but I hope the mindset of the privileged doesn’t stay the same or get worse. Possibly it is time to move Vladimar, set an example, and get the pitching Toronto will need to make it.
Jr.’s 2021 jumps out as the exception. Still, he picked up the GG this year, somehow, despite a negative 0.7 dWAR, and he always plays. They’d be selling fairly low, too.
He doesn’t look remotely like a guy who should be playing 99% of his team’s games. Maybe he just needs a game off every two weeks?
Congrats to Sandy! Great moment for the Marlins and our team history. Hopefully this is the start of the next era of Marlins baseball.
Hopefully…or it’s just another instance where they were at a certain point, and only needed a couple of things to push them over an edge, and instead went the wrong direction b/c of poor decisions, causing them to have to start over again in a couple of years
Either way, obviously congrats to Sandy. As I’ve said before, he will always have my respect for how amazingly he turned himself into what he did, and even if it never continues, and he goes back to what he was a couple of years ago, I would still remember how much h amazing work he really put in, and how his leadership has really shined through…especially in an organization that has been desperate for it in the wake of losing Jose