MILWAUKEE — Pete Vuckovich spit, snarled and growled his way to the Brewers’ last Cy Young Award in 1982. Nearly four decades later, cool and collected Corbin Burnes flat-out dominated.
Burnes, after participating in a no-hitter and setting a slew of strikeout records on the way to winning the first ERA title in Brewers history, was named the Baseball Writers’ Association of America’s National League Cy Young Award winner on Wednesday over runners-up Zack Wheeler of the Phillies and Max Scherzer of the Dodgers in a razor-thin vote. Another Brewers pitcher, Brandon Woodruff, finished fifth.
“Growing up always wanting to pitch in the big leagues, you always want to be the best in the league,” Burnes said. “For me, [winning a Cy Young Award] wasn’t a goal until really my 2019 season. When you get kicked in the teeth like that, to try to come back to be the best in the league is always the goal.”
Burnes and Wheeler each received 12 first-place votes and Scherzer got the other six. Burnes tallied 151 total points via a BBWAA balloting system in which voters ranked their top five pitchers before the start of the postseason, edging second-place finisher Wheeler by only 10 points.
According to the BBWAA, it was the closest NL vote since Cy Young Award balloting expanded to five pitchers in 2010, and only the second time that the winner and runner-up received the same number of first-place votes. In 1981, the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela and the Reds’ Tom Seaver each received eight first-place votes, with Valenzuela winning by just three points, 70-67.
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