METS. Photo Credit: Amy via Flickr
By Richard Heaton
Earlier this month, the New York Mets took home two of the three biggest player awards of the 2019 Major League Baseball season.
At the end of the regular season, the Baseball Writers’ Association of America voted on their annual player awards and during the week of Nov. 11, winners were announced each night.
That Monday night, the winners of the National League Rookie of the Year award were announced. This award goes to the best player who has not yet played the minimum number of games.
Mets First Baseman Pete Alonso won the award nearly unanimously, only one voter gave a first place vote to a different player.
Alonso had a legendary season and broke numerous records. He hit 53 home runs, which is the new record for home runs by a rookie. That record was previously held by the Yankee’s Aaron Judge, which he broke in 2017.
He also destroyed the Mets record for home runs in a season. Before the 2019 season, no Mets player had ever hit more than 41 home runs. His 53 home runs were also the most home runs in baseball this year; no other player even hit 50 this year.
He also drove in 120 RBI’s, which was the fourth most in all of baseball, just six behind the leader.
His competition included Mike Soroka of the Braves and Fernando Tatis Jr of the Padres. Tatis was a beast and his father played for the Mets and holds a few records but he missed half of the season due to injury. Soroka had a 2.68 ERA as won of the best pitchers in the league.
Then on Nov. 13, Jacob deGrom won the National League Cy Young Award. This award is given to the best pitcher in the league and this was deGrom’s second year in a row winning.
Like Alonso, deGrom missed just one first place vote. His season wasn’t as good as his 2018 campaign but it was still amazing and put him on track for a potential run at the Hall of Fame.
Despite winning only 11 games all year, he’s been incredibly dominant. He posted an ERA of 2.43 and recorded 255 strikeouts. Over his last 23 starts of the season, his ERA was just 1.89.
No other pitcher in the National League had more strikeouts and this was the second year in a row that he had at least 250.
His main competition was Max Scherzer of the Washington Nationals and Hyun-Jin Ryu of the Dodgers. Scherzer went on to win the World Series with the Nationals but he missed roughly six games which hurt his numbers.
Ryu led all of baseball with a 2.32 ERA but recorded nearly 100 fewer strikeouts than deGrom.
deGrom’s season was so good that he finished in 10th place in National League Most Valuable Player voting. He was the only pitcher in the league to finish in the top 10.
The only stat that had fans and voters worried was his 11 wins, which is the second fewest wins by a player to win the award. Most pitchers to win the award have 15 to 20 wins or more.
Among all other awards, both major and minor, no Mets players were even nominated.
