Mavericks pitcher Clayton Kershaw
The 2013 AL and NL Cy Young awards were no-brainers. Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw stood out among their peers in their respective leagues. Both had outstanding, career-best seasons. The Kings’ Scherzer had the advantage over Kershaw in wins and strikeouts, while Kershaw led the way in ERA and WHIP. In a very tight vote, Mavericks lefty Clayton Kershaw is the 2013 DTBL Cy Young award winner.
Kershaw is just the fifth starting pitcher in DTBL history to post a sub-2.00 ERA in a single season. Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez accomplished that feat twice while Kevin Brown and Roger Clemens did it once each. Kershaw’s 1.83 ERA was the lowest total the league has seen since Pedro in 2000 and is the fifth lowest mark ever. Needless to say, he obliterated the rest of the league in that category this season, more than 8/10 of a run better than any other pitcher. He easily led the league in WHIP too, at 0.915. Both totals are Mavericks single season records. What kept the Cy Young race tight was the fact that he “only” won 16 games, but even that was fifth best in the league. His 232 strikeouts trailed only Yu Darvish and Scherzer.
This is Kershaw’s first DTBL Cy Young award, but he came very close each of the last two years. A sixth round pick of the Mavericks in 2009, Kershaw burst into the upper echelon of pitchers in his second season in the league in 2010. This was his fourth consecutive season with an ERA under 3, a WHIP below 1.2, at least a dozen wins and over 200 strikeouts. Putting up those numbers once is pretty impressive, but doing it four years in a row puts him among the elite pitchers in league history. Prior to this year, his previous best season was in 2011 when he set career highs in wins (21) and strikeouts (248) while posting a sub 1.0 WHIP. With numbers like that, he would have won the Cy Young most seasons, but finished second to Justin Verlander that year. He followed it up with a third place finish a year ago. But now the award is his.
Kershaw was the ace of the league’s best pitching staff this year. The Mavericks blew away the rest of the league with their 46 pitching points. Kershaw was obviously a big part of that, as he has been for several years now. He is the Mavericks franchise career leader in ERA and WHIP, but still has a ways to go to catch Johan Santana in wins and strikeouts. Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg and Matt Harvey give the Mavericks quite a core to lead their rotation for years to come.
The Cy Young vote was extremely close, perhaps indicating a split between those who value wins and those who don’t (as much). Kershaw received six of the ten first place votes and was placed second on the other four ballots, for a total of 88 points. Scherzer, who led the league with 21 wins, received the other four first place votes and tallied 80 total points. Nine of the ten ballots had Kershaw and Scherzer in the top two spots. The only other player to receive a second place vote was Rookie of the Year winner Yu Davish. The Demigods ace finished third in the vote with 44 points and appeared third on six of the ballots. Cougars veteran Adam Wainwright received a bulk of the fourth place votes and did indeed finish fourth in the voting with 29 points. All of these four pitcher appeared on at least nine ballots. The fifth place votes were much more diverse. Choppers closer Craig Kimbrel rounded out the top five with ten points. You could put together a pretty impressive list of pitchers who didn’t even receive a single vote, which is a pretty good indication of just how many pitchers had stellar 2013 seasons.
Click here to view the full Cy Young voting results.
Check back on Monday night to see who will win the 2013 DTBL Most Valuable Player award. Will it be Cabrera vs. Trout, Round 2, or will Chris Davis crash the party?