Mets ace Jacob deGrom wins NL Cy Young Award for second straight season in landslide vote

Jacob deGrom entered this year with a natural — but daunting — question looming over him: After winning the 2018 National League Cy Young Award with a historically great season, what could he possibly do for an encore?

After April turmoil, the answer officially came Wednesday night: Win the Cy Young again.

DeGrom was named the league’s top pitcher for a second season in a row, snagging 207 points and 29 of 30 first-place votes from members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, which voted before the playoffs and announced the results Wednesday. Just like last year, deGrom was one vote away from being the unanimous choice.

That blew out the Dodgers’ Hyun-Jin Ryu, who received 88 points and one first-place vote. In third was the Nationals’ Max Scherzer, who finished outside the top two for the first time since 2015, getting 72 points.

The back-to-back feat further establishes deGrom as one of the best pitchers of his generation and puts him — with continued success and health — on a potential Hall of Fame track. In six seasons, deGrom has these two Cy Youngs, the Rookie of the Year award in 2014 and three trips to the All-Star Game.

He also joined an exclusive group, becoming only the 11th pitcher to win consecutive Cy Young Awards. That list is littered with Hall of Famers and future Hall of Famers: Scherzer, Clayton Kershaw, Tim Lincecum, Randy Johnson (four straight), Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens (twice), Greg Maddux (four straight), Jim Palmer, Denny McLain and Sandy Koufax.

Put another way: For all that deGrom has done in recent years to put his name in the same conversation as Mets pitching greats Tom Seaver and Dwight Gooden, he now has accomplished something that they never did. Seaver — who won in 1969, 1973 and 1975 — is the only other Met to win more than one.

“Being mentioned with the names that are on those lists, both in major-league history and in Mets history, is truly an honor,” deGrom said, “and something that, when I first came up, if you had asked me that or told me that this was going to happen, I probably wouldn’t have believed it.”