MLB: Predicting the Award Winners for 2017
By Jason Reed
Cy Young:
American League: Aaron Sanchez
National League: Clayton Kershaw
The Cy Young award may be the hardest to predict out of all of the awards. The National League is loaded with talent. There is the likes of Max Scherzer, Stephen Strasburg, Noah Syndergaard, and Madison Bumgarner just to name a few. In the AL, well the AL seems to be a different story. Yes there is elite pitchers in the AL, quality guys who are true aces. However, I think any of these NL guys can best any of the AL pitchers. Nobody screams out Cy Young to me, however I do think Barstow’s own Aaron Sanchez will put together an award season.
Aaron Sanchez is probably an odd choice for AL Cy Young, as I have not seen anyone else write him off as Cy Young caliber. However, Sanchez led the AL in ERA last season with a 3.00 mark. While neither his strike out or walk rate really sticks out, he still manages to get batters out. His ground ball percentage is a testament to that, as Sanchez had the third best ground ball percentage of qualified pitchers. The amazing thing about Sanchez is that he is only 24 years old, with so much time on his side he will only get better and better.
As for Kershaw, well Kershaw will regain his throne as the best pitcher on the planet. Not that anyone has questioned that title, luck has just not been on his side. 2015 saw Kershaw fall to third in Cy Young voting behind historic performances from Jake Arrieta and Zack Greinke. 2016 saw him suffer a back injury that saw him miss a good chunk of the season. Although he still led all pitchers in WAR, he still wasn’t qualified. Kershaw will regain his throne, and win the Cy Young for the first time since his MVP season in 2014. The great thing about Kershaw is he remains outstanding, these other guys have breakout seasons, then fading back into constant contributors. While guys like Arrieta and Greinke are great, they haven’t posted year in year out numbers like Kershaw has.