There is no one in baseball who is more effective at closing out a ball game than Emmanuel Class. Just look at his ERA of 0.61 before starting the day this Friday.
Class has earned 47 saves this season (2nd in MLB), surpassing José Mesa (46 saves in 1995) for the most saves in a single year by a Cleveland player to date.
The Dominican has also recorded 33 consecutive save conversions since May 20, the second-longest save streak in club history (Mesa – 38 consecutive SVs in 1994-95) and the longest by any MLB reliever in a only season since BAL’s Zack Britton made 47 consecutive saves in 2016.
That’s not counting his WHIP of 0.65 and his 66 strikeouts in 73.1 innings of work, which places him as a strong candidate for the Juan Marichal award.
He Juan Marichal awardan award that recognizes the best Dominican in the MLB regular season created in 2021 by the company Lineup International, to recognize the performance of Dominican players in the best baseball in the world.
The winner will be announced on October 20 as that date is the birthday of Don Juan Marichal, who personally delivers the statuette every year to the player who is elected in the first days of December.
All Dominican position players who have played in a minimum of 65 percent of their team’s Major League games (105 games) and all Dominican pitchers who have played in a minimum of 150 innings are eligible for the award, when in the case of starting pitchers, and 30 percent of their team’s calendar games in the Major Leagues (48 games), in the case of relievers.
At the end of the regular season, the Board of Directors will issue the voting forms, attached to a list of those Dominican baseball players who have met the minimum performance requirements in the current Major League Baseball campaign.
In the first two weeks of October of each year the voter must deliver the Voting Form to the Board of Directors of the Juan Marichal Awardto the address indicated from time to time.
Each voter may vote for a maximum of five (5) players.
Previous winners
The first Dominican to take the Juan Marichal award was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in 2021, when he was the American League leader in runs scored (123), top home run hitter (48) and leader in OBP (.401), slugging (601), OPS (1.002) and an OPS adjusted score of 167, the highest in the American League.
Pitcher Sandy Alcántara, 2022 Cy Young in the National League, was the winner in 2022, in that season he left a record of 14-9, an ERA of 2.28 and was the leader in both complete games (6) and innings pitched (228.2).
In 2023, Marcel Ozuna won the distinction after a season in which he hit 40 homers, 100 RBIs, scored 84 and left an offensive record of .274/.346/.558.
