In the run-up to the season, I have walked through key factors to look at when betting the MVP race in the preseason. The Cy Young is a little different; there aren't necessarily several key factors, as just one thing that matters: ERA.
Among the past 12 winners handed out, not a single one has finished lower than second in their league's ERA race. That's an incredible streak.
In landing on this one key factor, I did look at others along the way that just didn't prove as closely correlated.'
For MVP, age was a huge factor, but there have been five pitchers over 30 to win the award in the last decade, including us being fresh off 39-year-old Verlander collecting his third Cy Young. Voters don't seem to mind a pitcher coming from out of nowhere, as there have been multiple players to win this award without ever having received a vote before. Again, we don't have to look beyond last season for one such case (Sandy Alcantara).
We all remember 2010 as the year that Felix Hernandez killed the win's relevancy in the Cy Young, but 2016 was quietly a big pivot point as well. That season, Rick Porcello won the award with a 3.15 ERA that ranked fifth in the AL. It was one of the more mocked winners even in the moment, and the fact that Porcello faded so fast has only seemed to solidify in the voting block the importance of an elite ERA.
Winning does again help, but only to a degree. It may actually surprise folks that winning does still matter to any degree since we are fresh off Alcantara winning for a 69-win Marlins team, but that was by far the worst team record of any winner in the past decade. There was only one other winner from a team under .500, compared to three winners from 100-win teams. This could be a bit of causation to go along with a bit of correlation, though, and regardless, it's not nearly the determining factor that ERA is.'
Among counting stats, innings don't matter much beyond just needing to be qualified for the ERA title. Just since 2016, there have been three winners outside the top 13 in their league in IP. Strikeouts do still matter, but only to a degree. In the last decade, every single winner has finished in the top 10 in their league in Ks their Cy Young season. And to a degree the WARs still matter too (pitching WAR varies a lot more between FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference than position player), but none of these counting stats align as closely as just looking at the ERA rankings.
To reiterate: eight of the last 12 winners have just straight-up been their league's ERA leader, with the other four all finishing second. That's what this award has become, so let's find some names who could potentially finish near the top of their league lead in ERA.
For this breakdown, since there's one mega factor, I'm not going to go through every player listed at the books, because for most of the guys I'm not interested in, it will just be the case that I don't believe in their ERA ceiling (even for a guy like Alek Manoah).
There are a few guys not listed here (Carlos Rodon and Luis Severino come to mind) who I do have interest in watching how they rehab and potentially jumping into the market for, if they progress well. But as I have mentioned, these awards watch pieces will be coming out all season, so there's no rush. We'll get to discussing everyone eventually. This is just the pitchers who deserve mention in the preseason moment.