 |
| Ryu Hyun-jin, who struggled hard during his time with the LA Dodgers. |
|
How great was Ryu Hyun-jin (Hanwha Eagles) in his heyday.
The Major League Baseball Secretariat has announced the results of the 2025 Cy Young Award voting. However, this result has revealed Ryu Hyun-jin's status as an active player in the LA Dodgers in the past. Here's the fact that the vote showed.
Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander Ryu Hyun-jin in the 2019 season was the starting pitcher who got closer to the Cy Young Award than Yamamoto Yoshinobu in the 2025 season 'World Series MVP'. The results of the Cy Young Award vote tell us the truth.
The MLB Secretariat announced the results of the Cy Young Award voting between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL) on the 13th (Korea time). The Cy Young Award, which is decided by a vote of members of the National Baseball Journalists Association (BBWAA), is the most prestigious award established in 1956. It is an award to select the pitcher who has performed the best in a season in the Major League. However, the award is only for regular league performance. Voting is already completed before the postseason is held, and the results are announced later.
Each BBWAA member who has the right to vote exercises a total of five votes (7 points for 1st place, 4 points for 2nd place, 3 points for 3rd place, 2 points for 4th place, 1 point for 5th place). The final winner of the Cy Young Award will be selected by adding up the total points received in this way.
 |
| MLB 공식SNS 캡쳐 |
|
As a result of this vote, Tarik Skubal (Detroit Tigers) was selected as the winner of the Glorious 2025 Cy Young Award in AL and Paul Skins (Pittsburgh Pirates) in NL, respectively. It did not deviate significantly from the results already expected. This is because both pitchers were special aces with brilliant pitching in the regular league.
In particular, Skins played as the best starting ace regardless of whether his team Pittsburgh remained at the bottom of the NL Central. Despite only being in the second year of full-time starting in the Major League, he started 32 games this season, recording 10 wins and 10 losses with a 1.97 ERA (41 earned runs in 187 ⅔ innings) and 216 strikeouts with a WHIP of 0.95. If Skins had belonged to a strong team and received abundant support from the team's batters, the number of wins would have increased even more. Journalists from the BBWAA fully took this into account. In the end, he drove all 30 first-place votes to Skins.
AL Cy Young Award winner Skubal also played as the second-ranked Ditrois ace in the Central Division and won the award after recording 13 wins and 6 losses with a 2.21 ERA (48 earned runs in 195 ⅓ innings) and a WHIP of 0.89. A total of 198 points were scored with 26 first-place votes and 4 second-place votes.
However, there is a noticeable result in this Cy Young Award vote. Yamamoto, who led the Los Angeles Dodgers to their second consecutive World Series title after showing extreme power in the postseason, received a lower score than expected.
Even Yamamoto did not receive a single first or second place vote. He received only 72 points in total with 16 third-place votes, 11 fourth-place votes, and two fifth-place votes. The results of the NL Cy Young Award were third. It is second only to Christopher Sanchez (Philadelphia Phillies, 120 points).
 |
| MLB 공식SNS 캡쳐 |
|
The reason for this result seems to be that, as mentioned earlier, the Cy Young Award voting was conducted purely on the basis of regular league performance. Yamamoto went 12-8 with a 2.49 ERA (48 earned runs in 173 ⅔ innings) and a WHIP of 0.99 in 30 regular league games this year. The ace-level performance is clear, but BBWAA members were cold-hearted. Still, it is surprising that they did not give a single first or second place vote. Perhaps it contains a discriminatory view of 'Asian Pitcher'.
There is a player who is attracting new attention due to this result. It is Ryu Hyun-jin, who dominated the KBO League and joined the Los Angeles Dodgers and raged. Ryu Hyun-jin has received the first place vote in the Cy Young Award, which did not even receive Yamamoto in the past. It was also the first Asian pitcher of all time.
This happened in 2019, the last season of the Los Angeles Dodgers. At that time, Ryu Hyun-jin started 29 games and played 182 ⅔ innings with a 2.32 ERA, recording 14 wins and 5 losses. He struck out 163, and the WHIP was just 1.01.
 |
| Ryu Hyun-jin, who struggled hard during his time with the LA Dodgers. |
|
Ryu Hyun-jin, who was also selected as an All-Star in the National League in the 2019 season, finished second in the National League with one first-place vote in the Cy Young Award voting. At the time, the NL Cy Young Award went to New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom, who Ryu Hyun-jin was the only opponent to block deGrom's unanimous award.
As a result, it can be said that '2019 season Ryu Hyun-jin' received a better evaluation than '2025 season Yamamoto'.
 |
| Ryu Hyun-jin during his time with the LA Dodgers. |
|
Of course, the evaluation of the Cy Young Award is a relative result. This cannot be said to be an accurate indicator of a pitcher's ability. There is no doubt that Yamamoto, who was crowned the "World Series MVP" with extreme power in this year's postseason, is a great pitcher.
However, now that Korean pitchers have become extinct on the MLB stage, we can recall how great Ryu Hyun-jin was by comparing past records with current voting results. In addition, I wonder if the 'second Ryu Hyun-jin' will be able to appear in the current KBO league, where the player level has been downgraded overall.
This article was translated by Naver AI translator.
