Miami Marlins Sandy Alcantara named Baseball Digest Pitcher of the Year
Award season has begun for Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara.
The 27-year-old right-handed pitcher on Thursday was named the 2022 Baseball Digest MLB Pitcher of the Year. Alcantara received 14 of 22 first-place votes to finish ahead of runner-up Justin Verlander of the Houston Astros. The Chicago White Sox’s Dylan Cease, Los Angeles Dodgers’ Julio Urias and Toronto Blue Jays’ Alek Manoah rounded out the top five.
Alcantara led MLB in innings pitched (228 2/3) and complete games (six) and worked at least eight innings in 14 of his starts — the most by any MLB pitcher since 2014. Alcantara’s 2.28 ERA was the second-lowest in Marlins’ history (behind Kevin Brown’s 1.89 in 1995) and in the National League in 2022 (behind Urias’ 2.16). He held opponents to two earned runs or fewer in 25 of his starts.
He is also the first pitcher in Marlins franchise history to have multiple 200-inning, 200-strikeout seasons and the first in MLB to hit those marks in consecutive seasons since Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom in 2018 and 2019
Alcantara joins Dontrelle Willis (2005) as the only pitchers in Marlins franchise history to be named MLB Pitcher of the Year by Baseball Digest.
But the recognition likely isn’t going to stop here for Alcantara. He is a favorite to win the National League Cy Young Award next month, an honor that has yet to be won by a Marlins pitcher.
.JPG)