Trevor Bauer of the Cincinnati Reds (National League) and Shane Bieber of the Cleveland Indians (American League) won this year's Cy Young Awards, the Baseball Writers' Association of America announced on Wednesday.

Bauer beat Yu Darvish of the Chicago Cubs and Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets in the competition for the honor. He became the first pitcher in Reds history to win the Cy Young Award. Now there are only three active Major League Baseball teams still searching for their first winner: the Colorado Rockies, Texas Rangers and Miami Marlins.

By the way, had deGrom won this year's Cy Young, he would have joined Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux as the only pitchers in history to win three in a row. 

Bauer had good reasons to be voted the winner, not only because of his NL-leading 1.73 ERA (earned run average), but also because he led the Reds back into the playoffs after seven years of absence. The 29-year-old achieved 100 strikeouts in 73 innings and had two shutouts.

"The biggest deal this year is I was just healthy. I was able to go out there and compete, be on a routine," said Bauer.

Earlier this month, Bauer rejected the $18.9 million qualifying offer by the Reds, becoming a free agent. "I haven't thought about free agency very much yet, to be honest. I have had a lot of stuff that I've been doing trying to get my offseason underway, trying to get better at baseball."

Compared with Bauer, Bieber won his Cy Young unanimously. Having pitched in 77⅓ innings, he led in wins (8-1, shared with Darvish), ERA (1.63) and strikeouts (122), becoming the second pitcher in Indians history to win the AL pitching Triple Crown after Hall of Famer Bob Feller in 1940. Bieber is also the first one since Johan Santana of the Minnesota Twins in 2006 to lead the majors in all three categories.

So don't feel too bad for Kenta Maeda of the Twins or Ryu Hyun-jin of the Toronto Blue Jays who lost to Bieber in the competition. The last time the AL saw a unanimous Cy Young winner was nine years ago when Justin Verlander of the Detroit Tigers won the honor. Such a decisive win has only happened 10 times in AL history.

"Today's a good day regardless. It just makes it that much better that we were able to take this thing home and that it was unanimous," said Bieber, who also praised Bauer for winning the award. "Nobody's more deserving of it than him, and he knows what he wants, and he knows how to go out and get it. And we keep in touch. I was truly pulling for him, and you know, so is my family. And I know he feels the same way, so it's special."