The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Tribe ace Shane Bieber wins AL Cy Young
Tribe ace wins AL Cy Young; ex-teammate Bauer takes NL award
Shane Bieber didn’t just win the most prestigious trophy awarded to pitchers, he won it unanimously.
What do you give a pitcher who already has an All-Star Game MVP trophy and a year later leads the American League in victories, strikeouts and ERA?
Simple. You give him the Cy Young Award.
Indians’ right-hander Shane Bieber on Nov. 11 didn’t just win the most prestigious trophy awarded to pitchers in Major League Baseball. He won it unanimously in a vote by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Bieber’s good friend and former teammate with the Indians, Trevor Bauer, won the Cy Young Award in the National League. The Indians traded Bieber to Cincinnati at the trade deadline in 2019. Bauer is a free agent.
The announcement made on MLB Network that Bieber was the winner was a formality. As the season rolled on and he kept piling up impressive numbers, no one else was really in the running, yet Bieber said he didn’t keep track of the race unless a reporter asked him about it.
“I don’t know if it’s just me or if I’m different than other cats, but that’s just how I’ve been,” Bieber said on a Zoom call.
“That’s how I was in college once I started learning about the mental side of the game. Part of that was not paying attention to outside noise.
“It doesn’t matter how good or bad you did on your last start. What matters is what you do on your next one. I know it’s cliche, but it’s the absolute truth.”
Bieber celebrated the event at home in California surrounded by family and friends. No one in the MLB Network camera shot was a good enough actor to feign surprise.
“Today is a happy day regardless whether it was unanimous,” he said. “It’s good to be here. I have my family and friends. We’re hanging out. We’re having some beers and playing corn-hole and enjoying each other’s company. I guess it just makes it that much better that we were able to take this thing home and that is was unanimous.”
Bieber, 25, is the fifth Indians’ pitcher since 2007 to win the Cy Young Award. CC Sabathia won it in 2007 when he finished 19-7 and Cliff Lee won it a year later when he finished 22-3. Corey Kluber won it in 2014 (18-9) and again in 2017 when he finished 18-4.
Bieber, named the AllStar MVP in 2019 when the game was played at Progressive Field, was virtually untouchable in the 2020 regular season, which was shortened to 60 games because of the novel coronavirus. He was 8-1 with a 1.63 ERA. He struck out 122 batters in 77 1/3 innings. Opposing batters hit .167 off Bieber. The Indians were 10-2 in his 12 starts.
He is the youngest pitcher to win the Cy Young Award in Indians history. He isn’t even eligible for arbitration until 2022.
“I don’t know — you tell me,” Bieber said asked what comes next for him. “That’s the whole thing I was talking about. That’s my mental state. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past.
“I’m obviously going to reflect on this and enjoy it as much as I can, but you just have to keep moving forward and continue to get better. That’s what I’m going to focus on. I’m going to put in the work this offseason and we’ll see what next year brings, but for tonight I’m going to enjoy this one.”
Leading i n victories, ERA and strikeouts is the pitching version of the Triple Crown. It has been done only nine times in baseball history and only one other time i n Indians history when Bob Feller accomplished the feat in 1940.
The last pitcher for any team to win the Triple Crown was in 2006 Johan Santana did it as a member of the Minnesota Twins.