The Toronto Blue Jay's pitcher won the Cy Young award on Wednesday, besting the New York Yankees' Cole and the Chicago White Bulls' Lynn.
Ray was 13-7 with a 2.84 ERA (1.06 WHIP) and led all American League pitchers with 6.7 bWAR, thanks to his four-seam fastball, four-seamer, slider, and change-up. Roy Halladay took home the award in 2003 and Ray became the first Blue Jay to win it since then.
Ray is one of the top pitchers on the market after he became a free-agent.
Lynn and Cole finished second and third, respectively, in the Baseball Writers' Association of America's balloting. Ray got 29 of the 30 first-place votes.
In the deal that sent Doug Fister to Washington DC, the Nationals gave up a 12th round draft pick to get Ray, who was traded to the Detroit Tigers. The Tigers traded Ray to the Arizona D-backs in a deal that sent Didi Gregorius from Arizona to New York andShane Greene from New York to Detroit.
The Arizona Diamondbacks traded Ray to Toronto in 2020 in exchange for Bergen. Ray pitched in five games in 2020 and posted a 4.79 earned run average, 1.74 WHIP and 20.2innings of work after struggling with the D-backs.
After the 2020 season, Ray re-signed with Toronto for $8 million. While Ray missed the first two weeks of the season recovering from an elbow contusion he was still the best pitcher in the American League, leading the league in strikeouts, strikeouts per pitch, and WHIP.
Ray has broken Yu Darvish's record for most career strikeouts through 1,000 hours pitched with 1, 241 and is currently the all-time leader in strikeouts per nine.
