MLB Awards: A Tale of Two Cy Young Pitchers

It was the best of times, it was the. . . best of times?

As the MLB season draws to a close, we can begin to truly evaluate who has the best chance to win the end of the year awards. For fans of teams well out of the playoff race, the hope of awards season is all that remains. Even then, the current voting climate tends to award players for participating on a winning team. Fans are craving something to be happy about before they must watch their most-hated rivals get a chance at the World Series.

For White Sox fans, their team has been essentially out of the race since their sharp decline in the months of May and June. For Marlins fans, there was hope for a playoff berth until Stanton got injured and the Mets started winning. Now both groups of fans exist in the despair that is September for a team out of playoff contention. The Marlins still have a smidgen of hope, but according to Fangraphs’ playoff odds they have just a 1.3% chance of making the playoffs.

Because both of these teams are out of the race, their fans exist in that September dread. Hoping for the season to end quickly as they stubbornly continue to watch frustrating results. However, for both White Sox and Marlins fans there exists hope in awards season. Both Chris Sale and Jose Fernandez have pitched themselves to the top of the Cy Young discussions in their respective leagues. Despite both starters pitching incredibly well on teams that won’t reach the playoffs, the two could not be more different in how they’ve dominated hitters this season.

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While arguments rage on about what it means to be the Most Valuable Player, the definition of what it means to be a Cy Young winner is even less clear. In fact, Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs wrote about the Cy Young about a month ago. In the article he points out that not only are voters not given specific criteria about their vote but the award itself also uses the word “outstanding” rather than “valuable.” Perhaps this is nitpicking to the max, but there appears to be a difference among the two words in common fan vernacular, whether you agree or not (I do not).

Because there isn’t a specific definition of what it means to be a Cy Young pitcher, voting can get incredibly messy. It becomes even more difficult for writers that are not voters to distinguish between how they evaluate a player and how voters will evaluate the same player. This odd scenario allows for many interesting discussions about which pitchers deserve the award, and more importantly, which pitchers will win the award in each league.

Arguments can be made for Kyle Hendricks and his downright ridiculous run suppression this season to win the National League Cy Young. In the American League, many argue that J.A. Happ‘s high win total indicate that he’s been outstanding for a Jays team that will likely reach the playoffs. Although voters may give their votes to Hendricks and Happ, I want to focus on two pitchers that should receive a large amount of votes. Those pitchers are Jose Fernandez and Chris Sale. Despite having a similar profile (nasty breaking ball, high strikeout pitcher), the two could not be having more different seasons. Those differences are stark, but do not necessarily indicate that either is more or less deserving of the award. They’re simply different. And their differences are what makes the Cy Young Award so interesting and great to talk about.

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Let’s begin with Jose Fernandez, who has been a favorite for the Cy Young in the National League since Clayton Kershaw went down with a long term injury. Fernandez has what many call “electric stuff.” His fastball sits in the mid 90s consistently, and he uses a nasty curveball combined with a good changeup to keep hitters off balance. His arsenal of pitches naturally lends towards overpowering hitters and getting large amounts of strikeouts.

Fernandez has done exactly that this season. In his most recent start, he struck out 14 Dodgers hitters while only facing 27 during his 6 innings pitched. That start, and many others like it, have given him a ridiculous 34.9% strikeout rate. With a strikeout rate that filthy, there comes certain drawbacks. Mainly, Fernandez’ inability to go deep into games. Jose Fernandez may not even reach 200 innings pitched this season (currently at 167.1 IP), and he has not gone deeper than 7 innings into a game all season. Fernandez’s ability to keep hitters from putting the ball in play is incredibly valuable and certainly outstanding; however, his value takes a big dip because of his inability to pitch a large amount of innings. The relatively recent return from Tommy John is most likely a factor, but in general Fernandez has simply struggled to limit his pitches in the early innings.

Chris Sale is quite the opposite. Sale has the most innings pitched in all of baseball with 201.2, despite having two less starts than the rest of the names at the top of the rankings. While Fernandez hasn’t reached more than 7.0 innings pitched in a single game all season, Sale is averaging 7.2 innings per start this season. He has pitched 5 complete games this season, which leads all of Major League Baseball.

Not only has Sale effectively eaten innings for the White Sox, he’s done it while limiting runs and getting better as he goes through a game. Sale has also greatly improved his approach, allowing him to have the first really good second half of his career. He now holds a 3.03 ERA while still striking out 25.7% of batters faced and holding a 1.02 WHIP. Those numbers hold up with some of Sale’s best seasons, which could all be considered Cy Young worthy despite him never finishing higher than 3rd in voting.

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Both pitchers are more than worthy of being not only on voter’s ballots for the Cy Young, but being the top choice. Fernandez has shown his value in missing bats and striking out massive amounts of hitters despite lacking the ability to go deep into games and pitch a large chunk of innings. Sale, on the other hand, has pitched in huge chunks while limiting runs in a high run scoring environment despite giving up home runs and not striking out nearly as many batters as Fernandez. They’re very different and yet very similar pitchers. The beauty in the Cy Young Award? They can both win their respective league’s awards because of the different, yet valuable, skill sets they have shown this season.

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