{"id":1411,"date":"2021-11-23T14:15:48","date_gmt":"2021-11-23T21:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1411"},"modified":"2021-11-23T14:15:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T21:15:48","slug":"scherzer-wins-third-cy-young","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/?p=1411","title":{"rendered":"Scherzer Wins Third Cy Young"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a id=\"CpWdvRHJT91xhYOV9NQ9Pw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1346668665\" target=\"_blank\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>\/\/ <![CDATA[\nwindow.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'CpWdvRHJT91xhYOV9NQ9Pw',sig:'5sp47FgY30Pye2354vFhrykCDOR4tTGa4KfIUuntC1Q=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'1346668665',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});\n\/\/ ]]><\/script><script src=\"\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><br \/>\nThe 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.\u00a0 While the Kings themselves have been anything but consistent over the years, one thing has not changed.\u00a0 Max Scherzer has remained one of the best pitchers in baseball.\u00a0 In 2021, there were a lot of great pitching performances, especially among those who played for National League teams.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n<p>While the final numbers were right where they usually are, it was not exactly a normal season for Scherzer.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Scherzer wasn&#8217;t completely healthy himself this season, limiting him to 173 innings, far fewer than his usual workhorse load.\u00a0 But he made those innings count with a career best 2.49 ERA and 0.86 WHIP.\u00a0 That WHIP is the sixth lowest by a qualified pitcher in league history.\u00a0 He won 14 games and struck out 231 batters, both of which put him fourth in the league this season.\u00a0 His 11.92 pitching PAR led the league, barely edging out his Dodgers teammate Walker Buehler.<\/p>\n<p>This was the sixth time in the past nine years that Scherzer accumulated a double digit PAR.\u00a0 He is now just 3 PAR behind his former Kings teammate Justin Verlander for second place on the DTBL career pitching PAR list (caveat:\u00a0 only includes 2005-present).\u00a0 It is hard to say where this Scherzer season stacks up compared to the best of his career.\u00a0 Probably behind his other two DTBL Cy Young campaigns though.\u00a0 He struck out 300 while winning the award in 2018 and won 20 games in 2016.\u00a0 The Kings have now won the title in all three of his Cy Young seasons.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And in that one exception (2019), his Kings teammate Verlander won the award instead.\u00a0 With Verlander no longer around, Scherzer is the only player to have been on all five of those championship squads.\u00a0 It is safe to say they would not have won many, if any, of them without him.<\/p>\n<p>There were four standout pitchers in the DTBL this season.\u00a0 As it turns out, all four played for National League teams.\u00a0 So it is interesting to compare how the voting results played out for the DTBL and NL Cy Young awards.\u00a0 The order in which those four finished was almost exactly the opposite in the two races.\u00a0 In the NL, the award was won by Corbin Burnes with Zack Wheeler finishing second, Scherzer third and Walker Buehler fourth.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s how the DTBL vote shook out.\u00a0 Scherzer received seven of the nine first place votes and a pair of seconds to finish with 84 points.\u00a0 The runner-up was Komodos&#8217; ace Buehler.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He received the other two first place votes, five seconds and two thirds for 65 points.\u00a0 While it was the Scherzer\/Verlander duo leading the way in recent championship seasons for the Kings, this year it was Wheeler replacing Verlander.\u00a0 Wheeler had a career year, leading the league with 247 strikeouts.\u00a0 He received one second and six third place votes for 43 points, joining Scherzer and Buehler as the trio who appeared on every ballot.\u00a0 Finishing fourth was the NL Cy Young award winner Burnes.\u00a0 The Cougars first round draft pick this year had a sparkling 2.43 ERA and 0.94 WHIP.\u00a0 One of the talking points post NL Cy Young announcement was that Burnes threw 45 fewer innings than Wheeler.\u00a0 As for this league&#8217;s vote, he threw just six fewer innings than Scherzer.\u00a0 A majority of the votes he received were for the fourth slot and he totaled 27 points.\u00a0 There was a huge dropoff after those four.\u00a0 Finishing fifth was the Cougars&#8217; Kevin Gausman with four points.\u00a0 Interestingly, eight out of the top nine finishers played for NL teams.\u00a0 The only exception was a relief pitcher, Liam Hendriks.\u00a0 The top finishing AL starting pitcher was Gerrit Cole, who came in tenth.\u00a0 Of course, AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray wasn&#8217;t even on the league roster this year.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/CY21.txt\">Click here<\/a> to view the full voting results.<\/p>\n<p>One more award to come.\u00a0 It&#8217;s the big one.\u00a0 Who will be named the 2021 DTBL Most Valuable Player?\u00a0 Come back tomorrow to find out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Embed from Getty Images 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.\u00a0 While the Kings themselves have been anything but consistent over the years, one thing has not changed.\u00a0 Max Scherzer has remained one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-awards","category-kings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1411"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1415,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1411\/revisions\/1415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}