Toronto lefty Ray wins AL Cy Young, Brewers' Burnes takes NL

In this Year of the Pitcher, both Robbie Ray and Corbin Burnes completed their own kind of comebacks.

Ray rebounded from a dismal season that saw him take a rare pay cut to win the AL Cy Young Award with Toronto while Burnes returned from an early bout of COVID-19 with Milwaukee to win the NL’s top pitching prize Wednesday.

“Everyone has their story,” Burnes said during a conference call.

Burnes led the majors with a 2.43 ERA and edged out Philadelphia's Zack Wheeler. They both got 12 first-place votes from members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America, but Burnes drew 14 seconds to Wheeler's nine.

Burnes pitched 167 innings, the fewest for a Cy Young-winning starter in a non-shortened season, and struck out 234. Wheeler struck out 247 — one shy of Ray's big league-leading total — and topped the majors with 213 1/3 innings.

“Everyone's case," Burnes said, “was different.”

Ray was best in the AL with a 2.84 ERA and 193 1/3 innings. That came a pandemic-shortened 2020 when the lefty went a combined 2-5 with a 6.62 ERA for Arizona and Blue Jays and issued the most walks in the majors.

“I knew ... I was going to have to put in some hard work,” Ray said, adding, “I knew I wanted to make changes.”

And in a sign of just how much voters have moved past simply win-loss records while crunching new-era stats, Dodgers lefty Julio Urías posted the most victories in going 20-3, but finished a distant eighth and didn't get a single top-four nod.

Max Scherzer, who pitched for Los Angeles and Washington, finished third in the NL and Dodgers ace Walker Buehler was fourth.

Burnes became the first Brewers pitcher to earn the NL honor — Pete Vuckovich in 1982 and Rollie Fingers in 1981 won the award when Milwaukee was still in...

source https://www.chron.com/sports/article/Blue-Jays-lefty-Robbie-Ray-bounces-back-wins-AL-16629955.php