Dodgers News: Hyun-Jin Ryu Nominated for Cy Young Award
Hyun-Jin Ryu. Babe Ryuth.
The Dodgers’ left-hander — now a free agent — has been nominated for the 2019 National League Cy Young Award. This is a well-deserved honor. Ryu had one of the best seasons for any Dodger pitcher not named Clayton Kershaw in recent memory.
2019 NL Cy Young
Top 3 (alphabetically)
Jacob deGrom, Mets
Hyun-Jin Ryu, Dodgers
Max Scherzer, NationalsWinner announced Nov. 13. Voting concluded before postseason
— BBWAA (@officialBBWAA) November 4, 2019
The other pitchers nominated for the honor are the New York Mets’ Jacob deGrom and Washington Nationals’ Max Scherzer. Ryu might not be the clubhouse favorite for this award, but he is very much deserving of the nomination.
In almost any other season, Ryu might be a shoo-in for the award. This year, however, deGrom, Scherzer, and World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg all showed out.
Hyun-Jin Ryu
Hyun-Jin Ryu posted a fantastic list of stats this season: 2.32 ERA, 3.10 FIP, and 3.32 xFIP. While he might not have the strikeout numbers — 22.5 percent strikeout rate — he was elite at overall run prevention. Another amazing factor to Ryu’s stellar 2019 season was his 3.3 percent walk rate and 1.1 walks per nine innings rate.Will it be enough to win him the award? Let’s hope so.
Jacob deGrom
deGrom might be the clubhouse favorite to win this award. The 31-year-old posted a 2.43 ERA and 2.67 FIP with 255 strikeouts in 204 innings. His numbers are about as good as Ryu’s plus the strikeouts. The case for deGrom as the winner of the Cy Young Award is a lot clearer than the case for Ryu.
Max Scherzer
Scherzer missed a few starts in 2019, but was still dominant when he was on the field. Scherzer posted extraordinary marks of a 2.92 ERA, 2.45 FIP, and 2.88 xFIP. In his 172 1/3 innings, he struck out a whopping 243 batters.
Overall
Let’s hope Ryu gets this honor. If he does, he would join a long list of legends before him to win it in Dodger blue:
If Ryu wins, he would be the 13th Cy Young Award winner in #Dodgers history, joining Don Newcombe (1956), Koufax (1963, 1965 and 1966), Mike Marshall (1974), Fernando Valenzuela (1981), Orel Hershiser (1988), Eric Gagne (2003) and Clayton Kershaw (2011, 2013, 2014).
— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) November 4, 2019
He will absolutely win it!!!!
Unfortunately Ryu won’t win it. Because he lost big against the Yankees late in the season, gave up 7 runs, followed by another game against the Diamondbacks also giving up 7 runs. Those bias East Coast writers will point to that game and ask Ryu “if you can’t beat the Yankees, how could you deserve the Cy Young Award?”