Ex-teammates Bieber, Bauer win Cy Young Award
In 2014, Shane Bieber wasn’t considered good enough to earn a scholarship at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He instead earned a spot as a walk-on. His fastball sat in the mid-80s. He had strong command, but didn’t strike out many.
Six years later, Bieber of the Cleveland Indians was named the unanimous winner of the American League Cy Young Award for the truncated 2020 Major League Baseball season. From start to finish in the 60-game regular season, he was by far the best pitcher in baseball. He either led or tied for the major league lead in many statistical categories, such as ERA (1.63), wins (eight), strikeouts (122) and wins above replacement (3.3).
Not far behind on many of those lists was Bieber’s former Indians teammate Trevor Bauer, who won the National League Cy Young Award, also Wednesday. Now documenting his free agency on social media, Bauer went 5-4 with a 1.73 ERA and 100 strikeouts for the Cincinnati Reds during the regular season, and earned 27 of the 30 possible first-place votes from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. He is the first Reds pitcher to win the award.
The three other first-place votes in the NL went to Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs, who finished second.
Jacob deGrom, the New York Mets’ ace who claimed the award in 2018 and
2019, finished third. Bieber, the AL’s first unanimous winner since Justin Verlander in 2011, bested Minnesota’s Kenta Maeda and
Toronto’s Hyun-jin Ryu, two former Dodgers in their first year with new teams.
●Elsewhere: Pitcher
Marcus Stroman accepted the New York Mets’ $18.9 million qualifying offer to stay with the team for 2021. The 29-year-old right-hander did not play this year, missing the start of the shortened season in late July due to a torn left calf muscle, then announcing Aug. 10 he had opted out because of the coronavirus pandemic.
ETC.
●Tennis: Colette Evert,
the matriarch of a tennis family that produced five children who were successful in the age-group and professional ranks, including 18-time Grand Slam champion Chris Evert, has died. She was 92. She died last Thursday in Deerfield Beach, according to a tweet by Chris Evert and an online obituary posted by Fred Hunter’s Funeral Home in
Fort Lauderdale. In 1952, she married Jimmy Evert, a tennis teaching professional in Florida whom she met at the wedding of a mutual friend in New York. The couple moved to Florida, where Jimmy was the city of Fort Lauderdale’s tennis director for 49 years. He died in 2015. Besides Chris, she is survived by sons Drew and John and daughter Clare EvertShane; 10 grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Jeanne Evert Dubin, died in February. ... Ekaterina Alexandrova advanced to her first quarterfinal in nine months by beating fellow Russian Varvara Gracheva
7-5, 6-1 at the Upper Austria Ladies Linz tournament in Linz, Austria. Her opponent in the quarterfinals will be sixth-seeded Nadia Podo
or 2018 champion
roska
Camila Giorgi.
Cristiano Ro
●Soccer: naldo moved closer to becoming the all-time top scorer for a national team in a round of friendlies in which several matches were affected by the coronavirus. Ronaldo netted once in Portugal’s 7-0 rout of Andorra to take his tally to 102 international goals, seven shy of the 109 scored by former Iran striker Ali
Daei, the only other male soccer player to surpass the 100-goal milestone for a national team. ... Finland stunned World Cup winner France 2-0 as the hosts were punished for squandering several scoring opportunities at Stade de France. ... Barcelona is suing
Neymar for nearly $12 million, the amount the club says it overpaid the Brazilian during the time he played in Spain, a person with knowledge of the case said.
●NB●: The Oklahoma City Thunder promoted assistant Mark Daigneault
to head coach, handing the team over to the 35-year-old former coach of its G
League team. Daigneault replaces Billy Donovan,
now coaching the Bulls.
●NHL: The NHL could go with a temporary realignment of its teams for next season during the COVID-19 pandemic. The league also is contemplating a reduced schedule and temporary hubs. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman
said realignment could help with ongoing travel restrictions for Canada and mandated quarantines for visiting certain states in the United States. ... Howie Meeker, who won four Stanley Cups with the Toronto Maple Leafs, served in Parliament during his playing days, and went on to become a Canadian icon as a respected and colorful television hockey analyst, died Sunday. He was 97.