Bauer: ‘Huge honor’ to be Reds' first Cy Young winner

“All the offseason work, all the time studying, learning, researching, all the bad years that I’ve had, the bad pitches I’ve made," Bauer said, "to find a way to overcome all that and to actually accomplish something I’ve wanted for that long, it’s pretty special.”

Reds pitchers had finished second in voting five times: Tom Seaver (1981); Mario Soto (1983); Danny Jackson (1988); Pete Schourek (1995); and Johnny Cueto (2014).

Bauer, who the Reds acquired from the Cleveland Indians at the trade deadline in 2019, won the award in his first full season with the Reds. He’s now a free agent and deferred a question about his future to his agent on Wednesday night. The Reds were the only team founded before 1961 that didn’t have a Cy Young winner.

“That’s a huge honor,” Bauer said. “For the oldest franchise in in baseball to have not had a Cy Young Award winner, it’s about time that Cincy had one. I look forward to being able to share it with the people and interact with the fans and Cincy at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future.”

Bauer, 29, led the league with a 1.73 ERA, a 0.79 WHIP (walks and hits per innings pitched), 5.06 hits per nine innings and a .159 opponents' batting average. He finished second with 100 strikeouts.

Bauer’s devotion to advanced statistics and analysis helped him take his game to the next level in 2020.

“I think a lot of my methods have been validated in other ways already,” Bauer said, “and really it’s about the validation for myself. It’s about providing a better landscape for my fellow players. I really believe the things I do are beneficial for health and performance and opportunity and stuff like that. I think that a lot of players could benefit from it, so that’s why I’m as active as I am in promoting it, talking about it on social media, launching companies to to double down on that and to help other players. That’s really what you know where my vision lies and where my passion lies in leaving the game in a better place for my fellow players than what it was when I came in.”