Rick Porcello, Max Scherzer find Cy Young success after leaving Tigers
Those Detroit Tigers sure know how to find Cy Young Award winners. Now if they could only keep more of them.
Washington Nationals right-hander Max Scherzer, who won his first Cy Young while with the Tigers in 2013, became just the sixth pitcher to claim the award in both leagues Wednesday when he earned the National League’s top pitching honor in a runaway.
The American League race was considerably tighter, and Scherzer’s former Detroit teammate Rick Porcello of the Boston Red Sox came away the winner despite failing to garner the highest number of first-place votes. Porcello barely outpointed longtime Tigers ace Justin Verlander, 137-132, in the second-closest race since 1970.
Verlander, the AL winner and MVP in 2011, was also the hard-luck runner-up in the 2012 vote, getting edged out by David Price by four points. With Wednesday’s outcomes, five of the last 12 Cy Young winners in both leagues have played for the Tigers sometime in the last six years. Only Verlander remains in Detroit.
'All three of us being in the race shows what we had there for the five years I was there," said Scherzer, who received 25 of the 30 first-place votes to easily out-poll the Chicago Cubs’ Jon Lester and Kyle Hendricks.
"Ricky helped me out in understanding where I needed to find ways to get better, and I hope he’d say the same, that I really cared for what he was doing out on the mound and I helped make him a better pitcher as well."
Porcello texted Scherzer when he found out the NL results and learned his former staff-mate was enjoying a boat trip to the British Virgin Islands with college friends, who doused him with champagne upon hearing the news.
Besides congratulating Scherzer, Porcello expressed admiration for Verlander’s bounce-back season and mentioned how much he had learned from him.
GALLERY: RECENT AL CY YOUNG AWARD WINNERS
"To win the award over a former teammate and somebody who ... was a veteran and I looked up to in the early days of my career, it was pretty cool," said Porcello, who won on the strength of his 18-2 edge in second-place votes.
Verlander, seeking to become the sixth pitcher ever with multiple Cy Youngs and an MVP, had a 14-8 advantage in first-place votes but was inexplicably left out of two ballots. The Cleveland Indians’ Corey Kluber came in third with 98 points.
Scherzer’s victory further validated his thinking two years ago when he rejected the Tigers’ $144 million extension, not only gambling he could get a bigger offer but also arguing he was still improving.
In his second season with the Nationals, who signed him to a seven-year, $210 million deal in January 2015, Scherzer went 20-7 with a 2.96 ERA and 284 strikeouts. He led the NL in two of the three Triple Crown categories, lagging only in ERA (eighth). He also pitched a league-high 228⅓ innings while registering the NL’s lowest WHIP (walks and hits per inning) at 0.97 and holding batters to a .199 average.
Scherzer had his signature moment on May 11 when he tied a major-league record by striking out 20 batters in a game.
His overall numbers this year were comparable to or a shade better than in his Cy Young season of 2013, when Scherzer went 21-3 with a 2.90 ERA but with fewer innings pitched (214⅓) and strikeouts (240).
"I know I have things in my game I would like to get better, but to win this award, there’s so much history into it, so much meaning into it," Scherzer said. "I appreciate that the writers chose me over Lester and Hendricks, because they both had phenomenal years."
So did Porcello, 27, and somewhat unexpectedly.
The sinkerballer endured a difficult first season in Boston in 2015 after being acquired in an offseason trade, going 9-15 with a 4.92 ERA. But he worked on his mechanics to improve his consistency and returned as a more effective pitcher, going 22-4 with a 3.15 ERA.
That was the highest number of victories in the majors since 2011. Porcello’s 5.91 strikeout-to-walk ratio led the league, and he finished right behind Verlander in WHIP at 1.01 while setting career bests in wins, ERA, innings pitched (223), strikeouts (189) and starts (33). Porcello completed at least six innings in 30 of those starts and allowed three earned runs or less 27 times.
'I don’t think I like to admit how difficult it was playing in Boston the first year," Porcello said. "The pressure I was putting on myself — and obviously there’s pressure playing in a city like that — it’s something that I almost couldn’t get out of my own way.
"That offseason I was able to kind of regroup mentally, refocus and take things the way I wanted to, and take them slow. Started with my foundation, my delivery, getting back to doing the basics and doing simple better. It worked."
Follow Jorge L. Ortiz on Twitter @jorgelortiz.
GALLERY: RECENT NL CY YOUNG AWARD WINNERS