The 1986 season was special for a lot of reasons. Mike Scott was a big part of that, as he had one of the best seasons by an Astros pitcher ever.
How good was he? Well, he led the league in ERA (2.22), shutouts (5), innings pitched (275), strikeouts (306), ERA+ (161), WHIP (0.923), hits per nine innings (5.9), strikeouts per nine (10.0) and strikeouts per walk (4.25).
As you can imagine, all that added up to a Cy Young Award, as Scott just beat out Fernando Valenzuela for the honor, taking six more first place votes. Interestingly, four different Mets pitchers earned votes that year, including Doc Gooden, Sid Fernandez, Ron Darling and Bob Ojeda.
It was the first major award won by an Astros player and one of just two Cy Youngs won by Astros pitchers in franchise history. He joins Jeff Bagwell (MVP, '94, ROY, '91), Roger Clemens (CY, '04) and Billy Wagner (Relief Man, '99) as those Astros players to win major awards.
What's more, Scott became just the second player in franchise history to top 300 strikeouts in a season, joining J.R. Richard (who did it twice) in that club.
If we want to look at advanced stats, Scott actually had a lower FIP than his ERA, at 2.16. He also had over 8 WAR by both FanGraphs and Baseball Reference standards. That puts him in MVP territory, and if you followed that '86 Astros team, you know how valuable he was.
Of course, the biggest snapshot from that season for Scott came on Sep. 25, when he threw a no-hitter against the San Francisco Giants to clinch the division title for Houston. He struck out 13 in that game. At the time, it was the first time a pitcher had every clinched a pennant or division title with a no-hitter. It also probably cinched up that Cy Young for him.
You want to know the craziest stat from that game? Scott only hit two batters all season, but hit the leadoff guy in that game to immediately eliminate the chance at a perfect game. Talk about a bit of bad luck mixed in with a ton of good, huh?