Alcantara, Verlander are unanimous Cy Young Award winners
MIAMI - The Marlins' Sandy Alcantara in the National League and Houston's Justin Verlander in the American League are both unanimous selections for the Cy Young Award.
It's the second time the winners in both leagues were unanimous since the award began in 1956 and the first since Detroit's Denny McLain in the AL and St. Louis' Bob Gibson in the NL swept the voting in 1968.
Alcantara had a 2.28 ERA while pitching a major league-best 228 2/3 innings and six compete games. It's the first Cy Young Award for the 27-year-old from the Dominican Republic, who becomes the first Marlins player to receive the honor.
"It makes me feel so special because I came here to the Marlins with my positive mentality - just tried to win," he said. "Tried to compete, tried to get better. This year I put everything in the same spot, working hard. I've had great success. And now to win the National League Cy Young, I feel so happy and blessed."
Alcantara received all 30 first-place votes, the 15th time the NL has had a unanimous winner. Atlanta's Max Fried was second with 72 points, including 10 second-place votes, and Los Angeles Dodgers lefty Julio Urías was third 66 points and seven second-place votes.
The 39-year-old Verlander, who also won the award in 2019 after winning both MVP and the Cy Young in 2011, becomes the 11th player to win it three times. He also won unanimously in 2011.
Behind Verlander, who was the 11th AL pitcher to win unanimously, were Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox with 97 points and 14 second-place votes and Toronto's Alek Manoah with 87 points and seven second-place votes. The three pitchers were named on every ballot.
Verlander's 18 wins led the AL, and he had 185 strikeouts to give him 3,198 in his career, the most among active players.
Alcantara's six complete games were the most in the majors since Chris Sale had six in 2016. The two-time All-Star went 14-9 and threw seven or more innings in 13 straight starts from May 11-July 15, which was the longest such streak since 2014.
Alcantara's innings pitched and wins were both career highs and his ERA was his best in six seasons and ranked second in the NL.
"The hard work, the positivity, every day, fighting for my team, competing against any team. That makes it special," he said. "My mentality all the time is to be aggressive. Try to get better every day. And I'll keep doing the same. And let's see if I can win the Cy Young next year, too."
He joins Martinez (1997) as the only player born in the Dominican Republic to win the NL award. Martinez also won twice in the AL (1999, 2000) and the other Dominican winner in the AL was Bartolo Colon in 2005.
