Nationals’ Scherzer, Red Sox hurler Porcello win Cy Young Awards

A week later, another election surprise.

In the American League, Scherzer’s former Tigers teammate, Rick Porcello of the Boston Red Sox, was a first-time victor with just eight first-place votes. Neither did Fred Goodall of the AP in Tampa Bay.

Although the people who vote for the Cy Young winners do not actually work for the MLB and are instead independent writers who are also members of the Baseball Writers Association of America, this did not phase Kate Upton.

This was a season in which there was not one clear-cut favorite, but a few.

Baltimore’s chapter representatives voted for hometown closer Zach Britton, earning him two of five first-place votes.

He has won the Cy Young before, but a second one would have put him in an elite class.

Porcello wound up with 137 voting points and Verlander with 132. Each writer votes for five players.

Try to distinguish between the dominance of a starter and reliever over an entire season, and how do you compare apples-to-apples?

The voting system rewards seven points for first-place votes, four points for second-place votes, three points for third-place votes, two votes for fourth-place votes and one point for fifth-place votes. Closers are very important.

Meanwhile, Verlander himself remained diplomatically silent, save for a tweet to thank those who voted for him. He had a good season. “I went around the clubhouse, I asked guys”. The model’s most interesting remark was when she wrote how she initially believed that she was the only person allowed to “f-ck” Verlander.

“Maybe I should have waited until the end”, he said. Kluber probably would have gotten my vote, but I’m open to the possibility that I’m biased. However, Verlander failed to make an appearance whatsoever on two of the ballots, which resulted in his overall point total falling short of first place. Sanchez led the AL in ERA, at 3.04.

Britton was left off six of the 30 ballots, which is considered a shocker. Perhaps it was a different eye test. With the win, Scherzer becomes just the sixth pitcher to win the award in both the NL and the AL.

Still, Rosenthal said the BBWAA most do a better job of selecting voters and voters who don’t feel like they can devote the time to researching their vote should decline a ballot. The numbers seem to support that. But it was still puzzling. Bumgarner’s other second-place vote came from the Washington Times’ Todd Dybas (obviously representing half of the Washington, D.C. voters).