The Braves’ Max Fried finished second to Miami’s Sandy Alcantara in National League Cy Young Award voting Wednesday night.
Alcantara won unanimously after posting a 2.28 ERA while pitching a major league-best 228 2/3 innings and six compete games.
Fried was 14-7 with a 2.48 ERA and 170 strikeouts. He was a first-time All-Star and helped lead the Braves to their fifth straight NL East crown.
Voting was done by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
Alcantara received all 30 first-place votes, the 15th time the NL has had a unanimous winner. Fried was second with 72 points, including 10 second-place votes.
Los Angeles Dodgers lefty Julio Urías was third with 66 points and seven second-place votes.
It’s the first Cy Young for the 27-year-old Alcantara, who becomes the first Marlins player to receive the honor.
Alcantara’s six complete games were the most in the majors since Chris Sale had six in 2016. The two-time All-Star went 14-9 and threw seven or more innings in 13 straight starts from May 11-July 15, which was the longest such streak since 2014.
Credit: AP
Credit: AP
Alcantara’s innings pitched and wins were both career highs and his ERA was his best in six seasons and ranked second in the NL.
He joins Pedro Martinez (1997) as the only player born in the Dominican Republic to win the NL award. Martinez also won twice in the AL (1999, 2000) and the other Dominican winner in the AL was Bartolo Colon in 2005.
Urías was 17-7 and led the NL with a 2.16 ERA to help the Dodgers lead the majors with 111 wins in the regular season. The left-hander had 166 strikeouts after a 2021 season in which he led the majors with 20 wins.
Houston’s Justin Verlander won the American League Cy Young Award. Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox was second and Alek Manoah of the Toronto Blue Jays finished third in the voting.
Verlander had 210 points and Cease received 97. Manoah had 87 points.
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