Laguna Hills High product Shane Bieber wins AL Cy Young unanimously
As the Cleveland Indians kept trading pitchers around him, Shane Bieber continued to move up the depth chart.
All the way to the top of the American League.
Bieber, a product of Laguna Hills High, was the unanimous selection as the American League Cy Young Award winner on Wednesday.
It was the 10th time an American League pitcher had won the Cy Young unanimously, none since Justin Verlander did it in 2011. There have been 14 unanimous Cy Young winners in the National League, most recently the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw in 2014.
Bieber moved to the top of the rotation for a team that in a 13-month span traded away Trevor Bauer, Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger.
Bieber was 8-1 with a 1.63 ERA in 12 starts for the Indians, a performance that also may net him a top 10 finish in the MVP voting when that is announced on Thursday.
He led the league in wins, ERA and strikeouts, with 122 strikeouts in just 77-1/3 innings.
Bieber, who played at UC Santa Barbara after Laguna Hills, was the Indians’ fourth-round pick in the 2016 draft. He made his big league debut in 2018.
In 2019, his first full season, he was an All-Star and won the MVP of the game, which was held in Cleveland.
The two pitchers who finished immediately behind Bieber in this year’s Cy Young race came from the Dodgers.
Kenta Maeda of the Minnesota Twins finished second in his first year in the American League after the Dodgers traded him as part of the three-way Mookie Betts deal. Maeda was 6-1 with a 2.70 ERA and 10.8 strikeouts per nine innings in Minnesota in 2020.
Hyun-Jin Ryu of the Toronto Blue Jays finished third. Ryu signed a four-year, $80-million deal with Toronto as a free agent after pitching for the Dodgers from 2013-19. Ryu was 5-2 with a 3.01 ERA and 9.7 strikeouts per nine innings with Toronto.
Gerrit Cole, who turned down offers of more than $280 million from the Dodgers and Angels last winter to sign for $324 million with the Yankees, finished fourth.
Angels right-hander Dylan Bundy finished ninth, collecting one third-place vote and two fifth-place votes. Two of his three votes came from Angels beat writers. Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com picked Bundy third and Fabian Ardaya of the Athletic listed him fifth. Bundy’s other vote came from T.R. Sullivan, who covers the Texas Rangers for MLB.com.
Bundy turned out to be one of the most pleasant surprises in a disappointing Angels season, posting a 3.29 ERA in 11 starts.
More to come on this story.
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