Hunter Greene made himself a decent chunk of money on Wednesday night when the Cy Young Award was announced.
While Greene did not win the award – and no one expected him to do so after he missed more than a month near the end of the season – he did finish 8th in the voting.
Greene got one vote for third place (David Brandt of The Associated Press) and one vote for fourth place (Britt Ghiroli of The Athletic). Those two votes earned Greene an extra million bucks.
When Hunter Greene signed his contract extension with the Cincinnati Reds back in April of 2023 there were multiple bonuses involved if he were to win things like the Cy Young, MVP, Gold Glove. But there was also bonuses involved for where he finished in both MVP and Cy Young voting. A 6th-10th place finish in the Cy Young voting, which is what happened for the 2024 season, Greene gets an additional $500,000 added to his salary for both 2028 and 2029. If you toss in that he also got a $200,000 bonus for making the All-Star team this year, Greene had himself a productive year for his bank account.
As for the Cy Young Award itself, in the National League it was a 2-man race as Chris Sale and Zach Wheeler combined for 59 of the 60 votes handed out for 1st and 2nd place. Paul Skenes was voted 2nd on one ballot. Still, even among those two guys it was Sale who ran away with is as he had 26 of the 30 1st place votes, with Wheeler grabbing four of them.
If you want to see how the voting broke down and who voted for who, the Baseball Writers Association of America has the votes available to see right here. From the Cincinnati chapter, it was Mark Sheldon and Charlie Goldsmith who had the Cy Young votes this year.