Robbie Ray was named the American League winner and Corbin Burnes the National League winner of the Cy Young Award by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America in results revealed on Wednesday night on MLB Network.
With this Cy Young win, Ray has vastly exceeded the expectations placed upon him when the Blue Jays acquired him in a midseason trade in 2020 and re-signed him to a modest one-year, $8 million contract last winter. Coming off a 6.62 ERA and the highest walk rate (7.8 per nine innings) of any pitcher with at least 50 innings last year, Ray was considered a project whose electric stuff was compromised by his wildness.
But in his age-29 season, the left-handed Ray, who turned 30 last month, put all the pieces together. His 2.84 ERA was the best among qualifiers in the AL, and his 193 1/3 innings, 32 starts, 154 ERA+ and 1.045 WHIP were also tops in the AL. Ray struck out an MLB-best 248 batters, but his season can perhaps best be defined by his ability to lower that aforementioned walk rate from 7.8 per nine to just 2.4. Ray reinvented himself by working with Toronto pitching coach Pete Walker on trusting his stuff in the strike zone and pitching with confidence.
This is the fifth time a Blue Jays pitcher has won the Cy Young and the first since the late Hall of Famer Roy Halladay claimed the honor in 2003. Ray is just the ninth pitcher ever — but the second in as many years — to win the Cy Young heading into free agency (Trevor Bauer won the NL Cy Young last year before leaving the Reds for the Dodgers). Ray’s 2022 destination is not yet known, but no matter the outcome, he has made his mark north of the border. His 6.62 ERA in 2020 now stands as the highest ever for a pitcher who won the Cy Young the following year, surpassing Cliff Lee’s 2007 mark ahead of his 2008 win with Cleveland.
Burnes’ 2021 began with him striking out a record 58 batters before issuing his first walk, and it ends with him receiving his first Cy Young Award. The right-handed Burnes went 11-5 with a 2.43 ERA in 167 innings across 28 starts and was the Major League leader in ERA, strikeout rate (35.6), strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.88), Fielding Independent Pitching (1.63) and barrel rate (2.9%). His FIP was the second lowest of the Divisional Era (since 1969), trailing only Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez’s 1.39 mark in 1999.
Though Burnes’ 167 innings pitched are not up to the usual Cy standard (Blake Snell’s 180 2/3 innings in 2018 had previously been the fewest for a Cy Young starter in a non-shortened season), they are largely a product of the times. Burnes, 27, missed two weeks early in the season after testing positive for COVID-19, the Brewers used a six-man rotation to keep their pitchers fresh after the shortened 2020 season, and only four pitchers in the Majors this year reached the vaunted 200-inning mark.
Two months after handling 8/9ths of the Brewers’ first no-hitter since Juan Nieves in 1987, Burnes is now the organization’s first Cy Young winner since Pete Vuckovich in 1982 (Rollie Fingers had become Milwaukee’s first Cy Young recipient in 1981). The only clubs with a longer Cy scarcity are the Rangers, who have never had a Cy Young winner, dating back to their formation in 1961, and the Orioles, whose last winner was Steve Stone in 1980.