Sandy Alcantara wins the NL Cy Young

It’s official! Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara won the NL Cy Young award. I wrote why he should’ve won before and nothing changed since then. He was clearly the best starting pitcher in the game in 2022, though the Cy Young award only gives him the NL crown. Sandy is going to be a big part of our push to make the playoffs next season. Let’s honor Sandy and talk about his amazing season.

Sandy Alcantara is the NL Cy Young award winner.

Sandy Alcantara has been nothing short of amazing in 2022. His final numbers: 14-9  2.28  ERA/2.99 FIP in 32 games and a Major League high 228.2 innings pitched. You read that right, 228.2 innings. No one pitches this much anymore, most starting pitchers can barely get to 170 innings, let alone well over 200. Sandy had the highest WAR of any pitcher with a remarkable 8.0. He also had 8.1 K/9 and 2.0 BB/9.

Sandy Alcantara was a unanimous NL Cy Young award winner. Unanimous. Not one voter thought that someone else was better. Two other aces were his competition: the Atlanta Braves’ Max Fried and the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Julio Urias. Fried produced a 5.9 WAR, while Urias produced a 4.9 WAR. They were 1.0 WAR apart from each other, but 3.1 WAR and 2.1 WAR away from Sandy.

Urias won more games (17), but it’s not a statistic that valued anymore, considering it depends on the offense and not the pitcher. Fried delivered a 2.48 ERA/2.70 FIP in 30 games and 185.1 innings, while Urias delivered a 2.16 ERA/3.71 FIP in 31 games and 175 innings. Fried beat Sandy in FIP, but it’s how pitchers should have pitched, not how they actually pitched. It’s also why I prefer bWAR (that I use here), and that’s based on ERA, and not fWAR that’s based on FIP.

Urias had a better ERA, but in significantly fewer innings. And clearly overachieved. Sandy Alcantara was better than both by far, so much so in fact, that his WAR is only slightly worse than both of theirs combined.

So what now? Sandy Alcantara is the first Cy Young winner in team history and isn’t going anywhere, we’re not trading him and have him locked up via an extension. It should be “Sandy’s beach” again in 2023.