The two pitchers with the lowest ERAs in the MLB received the highest honor bestowed on their position: Blake Snell of the San Diego Padres and Gerrit Cole of the New York Yankees received Cy Young Awards for their respective leagues on Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:
- Snell led the MLB with a 2.25 ERA, while Cole, who played in one more game, was a close second with a 2.63 ERA
- The two were also among the top five pitchers in total strikeouts: Snell (No. 3) recorded 234 over 180 innings and Cole (No. 5) hit 222 over 209 innings.
- This is Snell’s second Cy Young Award; He scored his first goal in 2018 while playing for the Tampa Bay Rays. Cole is a first-time receiver.
- Snell is the seventh pitcher to win a Cy Young in both leagues. The six others are Gaylord Perry, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson, Roy Halladay and Max Scherzer.
How Snell won his second Cy Young
By giving in to his extremes. Snell, historically and effectively wild, became the first major league pitcher to win an ERA title while walking at least five batters per nine innings. There was some luck involved – Snell also led all qualified pitchers with a beach rate of 86.7 percent – but for an entire summer no starter was more unbeatable or more adept at escaping traffic.
Snell’s rediscovery of a true four-pitch mix helped. This also applies to what he described as a change in mindset at the start of the season. Instead of worrying about increasing walk and pitch totals, he tried to put an additional emphasis on pure run prevention. It seemed to work: In his last 23 starts, Snell posted a 1.20 ERA. — Dennis Lin, Padres staff writer
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Snell’s free agent prospects
Can Snell maintain the luck he had against baserunners in 2023? Are you content with paying well for just five or six innings – albeit often dominant innings – every five days? How much premium should Snell deserve for his proven ability to silence elite offenses? These are some of the questions front offices need to ask themselves this offseason.
Even if he’s not the safest bet for a mega-deal, Snell should be fine in the end. He doesn’t give up a lot of contact, he doesn’t hit a lot of home runs, and in that context, he might have the best skill set of any left-handed hitter in the game. Eleven months ago, Carlos Rodón, a left winger (and Scott Boras client), signed a six-year, $162 million contract with the Yankees. This seems to be a possible starting point for Snell. And with Shohei Ohtani and Julio Urías currently out of pitching, a $200 million deal seems achievable. —Lin
Cole was “the standard” for an ace
From Cole’s first appearance of the season on Opening Day – he struck out 11 and held the San Francisco Giants to six scoreless innings – to his last – a two-hit shutout against the Toronto Blue Jays – he was spectacular. He led the American League in ERA, innings pitched, games started, quality starts, ERA+, WHIP and hits per nine innings pitched.
For someone with a $324 million contract, Cole somehow felt underrated heading into the 2023 season. After giving up a career-high 33 home runs in 2022, there wasn’t much buzz surrounding Cole at the start of the year. But the biggest thing he needed to change last offseason was minimizing the slug, and that’s exactly what he did. Cole ranked third in the American League in HR/9 and ninth in hard-hit percentage.
Internally, the Yankees were disappointed that they wasted such a dominant year with their champions in their worst season since 1992. But there was no question that Cole gave the Yankees their best chance. They posted a 23-10 record in his 33 starts and a 59-70 record in all other starting appearances.
“He’s the benchmark right now,” Yankees captain Aaron Judge said in October. “He is the benchmark for what you expect from an ace.”
And now Cole joins Roger Clemens, Ron Guidry, Sparky Lyle, Whitey Ford and Bob Turley as the Yankees’ Cy Young winners. – Chris Kirschner, Yankees staff writer
What Cole says
After winning the award, Cole said he wanted to ensure the team made the best use of analytics next season.
“I just want to make sure we understand these (numbers) as best we can,” he said. “We force contact. We force fly balls. There are some of these advanced metrics that suggest that these mishaps are simply attributed to luck, right? “Oh, that person hit him a long way, and if he had pulled it harder it might have been a home run, or if he had hit it more it might have been more of a double, and you play with the bat- and exit velocity and the trajectory and all these different types of things.’ But at the same time it was the right pitch in the right place that made the victory possible very efficiently. I think that we’re trying to make sure that we’re clear-headed and that we’re making a concerted effort to figure out why things happen, just to understand ourselves better.”
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Required reading
(Photos: Orlando Ramirez and Brad Penner / USA Today)