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The Kings roller coaster ride of a past decade that continually fluctuates between championship and bottom feeder seasons peaked again in 2021 with them winning their ninth DTBL Championship. While the Kings themselves have been anything but consistent over the years, one thing has not changed. Max Scherzer has remained one of the best pitchers in baseball. In 2021, there were a lot of great pitching performances, especially among those who played for National League teams. In what wound up being almost the polar opposite of the NL Cy Young vote, Max Scherzer is the 2021 DTBL Cy Young award winner, earning the honor for the third time in his career.
While the final numbers were right where they usually are, it was not exactly a normal season for Scherzer. As a free agent to be, he was traded from the struggling Nationals to the Dodgers and immediately became a critical piece for the defending World Series champions who lost Clayton Kershaw to injury and Trevor Bauer to administrative leave. Scherzer wasn’t completely healthy himself this season, limiting him to 173 innings, far fewer than his usual workhorse load. But he made those innings count with a career best 2.49 ERA and 0.86 WHIP. That WHIP is the sixth lowest by a qualified pitcher in league history. He won 14 games and struck out 231 batters, both of which put him fourth in the league this season. His 11.92 pitching PAR led the league, barely edging out his Dodgers teammate Walker Buehler.
This was the sixth time in the past nine years that Scherzer accumulated a double digit PAR. He is now just 3 PAR behind his former Kings teammate Justin Verlander for second place on the DTBL career pitching PAR list (caveat: only includes 2005-present). It is hard to say where this Scherzer season stacks up compared to the best of his career. Probably behind his other two DTBL Cy Young campaigns though. He struck out 300 while winning the award in 2018 and won 20 games in 2016. The Kings have now won the title in all three of his Cy Young seasons. In fact, in the Kings five championship seasons in the past decade (2013, 2016, 2018, 2019 and 2021), Scherzer has finished first or second in the Cy Young vote in all but one. And in that one exception (2019), his Kings teammate Verlander won the award instead. With Verlander no longer around, Scherzer is the only player to have been on all five of those championship squads. It is safe to say they would not have won many, if any, of them without him.
There were four standout pitchers in the DTBL this season. As it turns out, all four played for National League teams. So it is interesting to compare how the voting results played out for the DTBL and NL Cy Young awards. The order in which those four finished was almost exactly the opposite in the two races. In the NL, the award was won by Corbin Burnes with Zack Wheeler finishing second, Scherzer third and Walker Buehler fourth. Here’s how the DTBL vote shook out. Scherzer received seven of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds to finish with 84 points. The runner-up was Komodos’ ace Buehler. The Dodgers righty was just barely edged out by Scherzer in PAR, WHIP and strike outs, but Buehler had the slight edge in ERA and wins. He received the other two first place votes, five seconds and two thirds for 65 points. While it was the Scherzer/Verlander duo leading the way in recent championship seasons for the Kings, this year it was Wheeler replacing Verlander. Wheeler had a career year, leading the league with 247 strikeouts. He received one second and six third place votes for 43 points, joining Scherzer and Buehler as the trio who appeared on every ballot. Finishing fourth was the NL Cy Young award winner Burnes. The Cougars first round draft pick this year had a sparkling 2.43 ERA and 0.94 WHIP. One of the talking points post NL Cy Young announcement was that Burnes threw 45 fewer innings than Wheeler. As for this league’s vote, he threw just six fewer innings than Scherzer. A majority of the votes he received were for the fourth slot and he totaled 27 points. There was a huge dropoff after those four. Finishing fifth was the Cougars’ Kevin Gausman with four points. Interestingly, eight out of the top nine finishers played for NL teams. The only exception was a relief pitcher, Liam Hendriks. The top finishing AL starting pitcher was Gerrit Cole, who came in tenth. Of course, AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray wasn’t even on the league roster this year.
Click here to view the full voting results.
One more award to come. It’s the big one. Who will be named the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player? Come back tomorrow to find out!