Miami Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara earns one more honor after breakout 2022 season

Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara earned one more accolade for his breakout 2022 season.

Alcantara, the unanimous selection for this year’s National League Cy Young Award, on Monday was named as one of five starting pitchers to the All-MLB first team. He joined the Toronto Blue Jay’s Alek Manoah, the Los Angeles Angels’ Shohei Ohtani and the Houston Astros’ Justin Verlander and Framber Valdez. Alcantara’s selection marks the first time a Marlins player was named to an All-MLB team since the league introduced the honor in 2019.

The first and second teams were determined by a combination of fan voting and a panel of media members, broadcasters, former players and other officials throughout the game.

This wraps up a season in which Alcantara became the first Marlins player to win a Cy Young Award — and be the first NL pitcher to win the award in unanimous fashion since the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw in 2014 — in addition to earning his second All-Star nod, the Baseball Digest Pitcher of the Year Award and the Juan Marichal Award given to the top Dominican player in MLB.

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 1996) and in the National League in 2022 (behind Julio Urias’ 2.16). He held opponents to two earned runs or fewer in 25 of his 32 starts.

He went on a run of 13 consecutive starts with at least seven innings pitched heading into the All-Star Break and gave up no more than two earned runs in 12 of those outings. Eight of those 13 games came against teams that made the postseason — three against the Mets, two against the Braves, two against the Phillies and one against the Cardinals.

Three of his six complete games also came against playoff teams: The Braves (May 22), Cardinals (June 29) and Dodgers (Aug. 27).

Alcantara 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 all did so in 2018 and 2019.