Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw and Detroit Tigers right-hander Max Scherzer won US baseball’s Cy Young awards as the top pitchers of the year on Wednesday.
Kershaw won the National League (NL) Cy Young for the second time in three years while Scherzer became the second Tiger in three years to win the American League (AL) Cy Young.
Both were overwhelming favorites for the awards following their outstanding seasons this year. Scherzer, the major league leader with 21 wins, received 28 of a possible 30 first-place votes to easily outdistance the Japanese duo of Texas Rangers right-hander Yu Darvish and Seattle ace Hisashi Iwakuma.
Having emerged as the ace of a formidable Tigers staff that also contained 2011 AL Cy Young winner Justin Verlander, Scherzer enjoyed a career year to help Detroit reach the AL Championship Series for a third straight year.
He won 13 straight to open the season and finished with a 21-3 record.
Scherzer added 240 strikeouts while limiting opposing hitters to a 0.198 average, second to Darvish for the AL lead in both categories.
Scherzer’s 203 total points were more than twice that of runner-up Darvish, who posted the highest finish by a Japanese hurler after receiving 19 second-place votes and 93 points.
Iwakuma was third on the list with 73 points.
Kershaw did not win as many games as Scherzer, but his was a dominant season. He captured a third straight NL Earned Run Average title with a Major League-best 1.83 mark, led the NL in strikeouts with 232 and finished with a 16-9 record for the Dodgers, who won the NL West division.
The 25-year-old played a key role in the Dodgers’ second-half surge into the playoffs. In 13 outings after the All-Star break, Kershaw went 8-3 with a 1.59 ERA and struck out 93 hitters.
DISTINGUISHED COMPANY
Kershaw joins very select company in Dodgers history. Prior to Kershaw’s win this year, only Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax has also won the award more than once in the team’s history.
Kershaw earned 207 of a possible 210 points in his landslide victory. St Louis’ Adam Wainwright received the other first-place vote and accumulated 86 points, 24 more than Miami’s Jose Fernandez, the National League Rookie of the Year this year.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but