MLB Awards Watch: Top 5 NL Cy Young candidates thru April

4. Matt Harvey – 4 GS, 4-0, 3.04 ERA, 31 K

Brad Mills-USA TODAY Sports

With Tommy John surgery in his rearview, Matt Harvey has picked up right where he left off in 2013. Despite being snubbed from an Opening Day start in 2015 in favor of Bartolo Colon, the decision did not alter his nor Colon’s success levels.

The Mets are doing very well in the NL East and it’s because of pitching pitching. While Colon is 4-1 with a 3.31 ERA, Harvey and sophomore Jacob deGrom are also doing wonderful things in the rotation. Of all three, Harvey has the highest ceiling.

The 26-year-old finished fourth in 2013 NL Cy Young voting the same year he tore his UCL despite starting only 26 games. He was that dominant. With a perfect winning record in 2015 to start his year off, Harvey has picked up two wins on the road and two at home, with all but the one versus the crosstown Yankees coming against division rivals.

The best part about Harvey’s game in 2015 has been his deft control. Through 26.2 innings pitched, he has walked only three batters and has an insanely promising K:BB ratio of 10.33. But fear not, the TJ surgery has done little to his velocity and Harvey is still making a living by being a power pitcher with a K/9 of 10.5, over half a point higher than his career mark of 9.9. Pre TJ surgery in 2013, his four-seam fastball was averaging 95.4 mph. In 2015 right now, the four-seamer is sitting at an even 95 mph on average and has touched as high as 99 mph on the gun.

At this time last year, all the talk about Big Apple pitching surrounded Masahiro Tanaka. Now it essentially surrounds any pitcher who wears a Mets jersey. If Harvey can pull off the feat and collect his first ever Cy, he would be the fourth Mets pitcher in history to do so after Tom Seaver (1969, 73, 75), Dwight Gooden (1985) and R.A. Dickey (2012).

Perhaps even more notable in Mets lore is that it would mark the third time in history that a Mets pitcher followed up an NL ROY award with a Cy Young award in consecutive seasons. In 1972, pitcher John Matlack’s ROY was followed up by Seaver winning the Cy in ’73. Then Gooden followed his ’84 ROY season by winning his only Cy in ’85. As it stands right now, deGrom’s 2014 puts a talented Mets rotation in a nice spot to accomplish this strange feat.

Next: Gerrit Cole