Why Blake Snell should be the frontrunner for the AL Cy Young award

His team may not be front-runners for a playoff spot, but the Tampa Bay Rays ace should be the front-runner for the top pitcher in the American League

On Wednesday afternoon, the Cleveland Indians were in St. Petersburg, Florida to play the final bout of a 3-game series against the hometown Tampa Bay Rays. Cleveland was fresh off a shutout win against the Rays Tuesday night, a game headlined by Josh Donaldson making his Tribe debut in the clean-up spot.

The 2015 AL MVP went 0-4 with a K, but his new team has no reason to be concerned; Cleveland comfortably sits atop the AL Central, cushioned by 14.5 games, and should clinch an inevitable playoff berth sometime this weekend. The Tribe has the whole month of September to prepare for postseason play, and were looking to take Wednesday’s rubber match to avoid losing a series to the Rays for the second time this month.

Unfortunately for Cleveland, they didn’t win Wednesday. In fact, the third-best offense in all of baseball managed to score just one run, which is also the same amount of hits and 1/9th the amount of strikeouts they had against the Tampa Bay Rays starter. Who’s the pitcher that shut down a lineup FULL of All-Stars, you ask? Why, that would be Blake Snell.

How was Cleveland stymied by a 25-year old lefty with the body of a teenager? Well, the Tribe aren’t the only one to have struggled against Snell this season — in fact, “Snellzilla” has made opposing offenses look like little leaguers quite often throughout 2018. This is evident by Snell’s fantastic line: 2.03 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, .183 opp. average and 195 strikeouts in 164 innings with a 6.3 WAR (according to Baseball Reference). The most impressive stat, however, is a home ERA of 1.24, the best home ERA by an AL pitcher since 1971.

Snell isn’t just having a good season by his standards; he’s been one of the best pitchers in baseball. Amongst American League qualified pitchers, Snell ranks 2nd in ERA, opp. average, opp. OPS, and Hits/9, 4th in WHIP, and 7th in K/9. Oh, and he leads the entire MLB in wins, notching his league-best 19th victory on Wednesday.

Snell has undoubtedly been one of baseball’s best arms this season, thrusting him in the forefront of the AL Cy Young conversation. I think he deserves the award, but Snell’s Cy Young case is murky because (a) Chris Sale is VERY good (we’ll get to that momentarily), and (b) his advanced pitching metrics don’t shine nearly as bright as his conventional stats. As previously mentioned by my colleague Bill Felber, Snell’s new-school pitching stats are lacking — he’s left out of the MLB top 10 in FIP, xFIP, SIERA, and behind other AL Cy Young candidates such as Sale, Trevor Bauer, and Justin Verlander.

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In case you aren’t aware of the significance of those acronyms, they’re just data-driven attempts at estimating how effective a pitcher is at preventing runs, essentially removing luck from the equation by factoring out defense and ballpark variables. However, after some digging of my own, I was able to counter the new-school criticism of Snell with advanced pitching statistics that prove he’s been more than lucky. In fact, Snell owns the best Batting Average on Balls in Play (BABIP) AND Left On Base Percentage (LOB%) among AL pitchers, ranks 2nd in Wins Above Average, Base-Out Runs Saved and Base-Out Wins Saved, 3rd in ERA+, and 4th in clutch. On top of that, Snell’s 6.3 Wins Above Replacement (WAR) is just 0.3 less than the AL-leading Sale.

To summarize the sabermetric-heavy jargon, the myth that Snell’s phenomenal 2018 hinges on fortune rather than skill has been debunked. With that out of the way, the only thing standing between Snell and the Cy Young is Sale, who leads the AL in most of the stats above and is the overall favourite to win the award. I argue that Snell deserves it more than Sale, however, because injuries have limited the Red Sox ace to 147 innings — meaning as of now, Sale hasn’t logged enough innings to qualify for the ERA lead — and he’s only thrown six major league innings since July 27. In that span, meanwhile, Snell has posted eight starts in which he’s gone 7-0 with a 1.40 ERA and 6.77 K/BB (which definitely has something to do with his nasty curveball).

Snell has also been more integral to his team’s overall success. In the brief time he spent on the disabled list in July, the Tampa Bay Rays went 8-10, but since Snell returned to the mound on August 4 they’ve had a .603 win%. The Red Sox had a .686 win% when Sale was first placed on the disabled list, and have actually been BETTER in his absence, having gone 29-12 (.707) with only won of those wins being credited to their freak southpaw. Not only does this illustrate how crazy good Boston has been this year, but also how the Rays have had to rely much more on Snell than the Red Sox have had to rely on Sale.

While the Tampa Bay Rays have taken the league by storm with their unconventional “opener” strategy — at one point in the season they only had one starting pitcher on the depth chart, then traded him — it’s the team’s lone traditional starter who’s garnering attention of his own, and rightly so as Blake Snell is having an elite season. Sale may appear to be the current Cy Young favorite, but Snellzilla has a few more starts left to improve his case and even surpass his divisional foe in claiming the title of the AL’s best pitcher.

*stats current as of September 14