Seattle ace Felix Hernandez won the Cy Young Award for the American League’s best pitcher, winning by an easy margin in results released on Thursday by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
“King Felix” won the award despite a modest 13-12 record, but his major league-leading 2.27 ERA and superior stats put him far ahead of Tampa Bay’s David Price and the Yankees’ CC Sabathia and their impressive win-loss numbers.
Victimized by the Mariners’ poor hitting all season, Hernandez found ample backing with the voters in this pitchers’ duel. They clearly recognized how little the last-place Mariners helped him — in 10 starts, they were either shut out and held to one run.
“This confirms the Cy Young is an award not only for the pitcher with the most wins, but the most dominant,” a teary-eyed Hernandez said while celebrating with relatives at the family home in Valencia, Venezuela.
“King Felix” got 21 of the 28 first-place votes and 167 points in the poll. The 24-year-old right-hander led the league in innings (249 and two-thirds), was second in strikeouts (232) and held AL opponents to the lowest batting average (.212).
Price, who went 19-6 with a 2.72 ERA, was second with four first-place votes and 111 points. Sabathia, who was 21-7 with a 3.18 ERA, drew the other three first-place votes and finished third at 102.
“felix is VERY deserving of the award,” Price tweeted. “I don’t think people understand the numbers he put up outside wins/losses!”
The 13 wins by Hernandez marked the fewest for a Cy Young starter in a full season — Tim Lincecum set the record last year with 15 victories for San Francisco.
“It’s not only the wins, it’s the whole stats,” Hernandez said. “This is the first of many. Now I have to work even harder because I’m the best pitcher in the American League.”
Hernandez said he started crying when he got the award and his family began jumping around.
“It was a great, great, great, amazing feeling,” he said.
The Mariners finished with an AL-worst 61-101 record and their 513 runs were by far the fewest in the majors. They gave him barely more than three runs to work with each game and weren’t too sharp in the field, either — in his 34 starts, he got saddled with 17 -unearned runs.
“They tried to do too much for me. I love my teammates,” he said. “They would tell me, ‘You did your job.’”
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