Toronto’s Ray wins AL Cy Young and Brewers’ Burnes takes NL
In this Year of the Pitcher, both Robbie Ray and Corbin Burnes completed their own kind of comebacks.
Ray rebounded from a dismal season that saw him take a rare pay cut to win the AL Cy Young Award with Toronto while Burnes returned from an early bout of COVID-19 with Milwaukee to win the NL’s top pitching prize Wednesday.
“Everyone has their story,” Burnes said during a conference call.
Burnes led the majors with a 2.43 ERA and edged out Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler. They both got 12 first-place votes from members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, but Burnes drew 14 seconds to Wheeler’s nine.
Burnes pitched 167 innings, the fewest for a Cy Young-winning starter in a non-shortened season, and the right-hander struck out 234. Wheeler fanned 247 — one shy of Ray’s big leagueleading total — and topped the majors with 213 1/3 innings.
“Everyone’s case,” Burnes said, “was different.”
Ray was best in the AL with a 2.84 ERA and 193 1/3 innings. That came after a pandemic-shortened 2020 when the lefty went a combined 2-5 with a 6.62 ERA for Arizona and Blue Jays
and issued the most walks in the majors.
“I knew ... I was going to have to put in some hard work,” Ray said, adding, “I knew I wanted to make changes.”
And in a sign of just how
much voters have moved past simply win-loss records while crunching new-era stats, Dodgers lefty Julio Urías posted the most victories in going 20-3, but finished a distant eighth and didn’t get a single top-four nod.
Max Scherzer, who pitched for Los Angeles and Washington, finished third in the NL and Dodgers ace Walker Buehler was fourth.
Burnes became the first Brewers pitcher to earn the NL honor — Pete Vuckovich in 1982 and Rollie Fingers in 1981 won the award when Milwaukee was still in the American League.
Ray got 29 first-place votes and became the first Toronto pitcher to win since the late Roy Halladay in 2003. Yankees ace Gerrit Cole drew the other top vote and finished second and Chicago White Sox righty Lance Lynn was third.
Ray went 13-7 in 32 starts and helped keep Toronto in playoff contention until the final weekend.
Having turned 30 last month, the award sets him up well — a free agent, he turned down an $18.4 million qualifying offer from Toronto earlier Wednesday.
“I’m enjoying free agency,” he said. “The process is a lot of fun.”
Ray said Toronto is “still in the conversation.”
“Obviously, I love Toronto, but we’ll see where things go,” he said.
Burnes was 11-5 and an All-Star for the NL Central champion Brewers. His innings count was lower than his competitors, owing to him missing two weeks in early May after testing positive for the coronavirus.