AL’S FINEST
Left-hander third Astro to win top pitching award
Lefthander Dallas Keuchel caps off a dominating season by winning the AL Cy Young.
Astros pitcher Dallas Keuchel told his mother a week before the season that he would win the Cy Young award, a bold proclamation even for a man known for his competitive nature. Keuchel followed through on Wednesday night, taking baseball’s highest endof-year honor for a pitcher by a vast margin.
A 27-year-old Oklahoma native with a bushy beard, Keuchel is the third pitcher in Astros history to win the award, following Mike Scott in 1986 and Roger Clemens in 2004.
“Just to be in a class with them means the world to me,” Keuchel said. “That’s who I idolized, that’s who I grew up knowing. I can’t be more happy and more ecstatic.”
Combined with Carlos Correa’s AL Rookie of the Year award, the Astros have won two of the four
major American League awards for 2015, topping their amazing season with hardware for special individuals. They narrowly missed a third award when A.J. Hinch finished second in Manager of the Year voting Tuesday.
“Everything that the (Cy Young) award’s about, Dallas represented with consistency and dominance and obviously work ethic,” Hinch said Wednesday. “Start by start, he was the best.”
Keuchel led the AL in wins (20), innings pitched (232) and was second in ERA (2.48) and opponents’ batting average (.217). His 213 strikeouts gave him the most for an Astros lefthander in a single season. He didn’t lose a game at Minute Maid Park all season and developed his own following of fans who sat in “Keuchel’s Korner” during home games and donned fake beards.
Thirty members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted on the award prior to the start of the postseason. Keuchel, who was considered a favorite despite competition from better known names, won with 186 points, 43 more than second-place finisher David Price. Price, an ace himself, pitched for the Detroit Tigers and the Toronto Blue Jays.
Keuchel received 22 firstplace votes to Price’s eight. Voters ranked five pitchers and first-place votes counted for seven points.
Although Keuchel’s performance in the winor-go-home AL wild card game against the Yankees did not factor into the voting because it came hours after the deadline for ballots to be submitted, the six shutout innings he threw at Yankee Stadium to propel the Astros to the AL Division Series after a 3-0 win was his signature moment in 2015.
The sarcastic and routine-oriented pitcher’s ascension to the circle of elites came rapidly in the last 19 months, but was predicated on a work ethic he’s long held, dating to the days Keuchel was mowing his late grandfather’s lawn and working at HoneyBaked Ham around the holidays as a kid in Tulsa, Okla.
“My most fond memories (growing up) is in the backyard with my parents, practicing, and them being there for me,” Keuchel said. “Because without them, I wouldn’t be in the position I am, and I truly owe them everything I have.”
Keuchel was in Houston for the award’s announcement and later got a standing ovation at the Rockets game against Portland.
A pair of friends entered the televised shot when he won the award, including his college teammate at the University of Arkansas and a fellow big league lefty, Drew Smyly.
Keuchel’s parents, Dennis and Teresa, and his sister Krista were in Oklahoma at a small viewing party.
“Hell yeah!” Dennis said Wednesday when asked if he believed Keuchel would follow through on what he said in March about winning the award.
Keuchel won the team’s final rotation spot out of spring training in 2014 before putting together a breakout year, winning 12 games and putting him on the map. Some wondered if that season was a fluke, however.
All doubts are gone. Three times in 2015, Keuchel was named the AL’s Pitcher of the Month, in April, May and August. He also was the starting pitcher for the AL in July’s All-Star Game.
Although Clemens and Keuchel throw with different styles — the former’s fastball-splitter combination was overpowering for decades — Keuchel’s 213 strikeouts were the most for an Astros pitcher since Clemens’ 218 in that ’04 Cy Young winning season.
Keuchel is an outlier, of sorts, when it comes to pitching. He doesn’t rely on overpowering pitches and breath-taking velocity.
Instead, he’s a workhorse and a groundball pitcher who induces weak contact with his sinker and strikes out batters with a late-breaking slider.
Consistency may be where Keuchel draws his highest sense of pride. From July 25, 2014, through Sept. 11, 2015, he went at least six innings in 40 straight starts, a franchise record, and the longest in the majors since Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander went 63 straight starts in a stretch that started in 2010 and ran into 2012.
More than once Wednesday, Keuchel made sure to highlight the efforts of Astros pitching coach Brent Strom and bullpen coach Craig Bjornson.
Strom was on a plane when the award was announced.
“I had messages all over the freaking place,” said Strom, who had never coached a Cy Young winner before. “For me to be just a part of it, I think it’s kind of fun if I made a little bit of an impression.” evan.drellich@chron.com twitter.com/evandrellich