With voting season in full swing, the The Baseball Writers’ Association of America announced finalists for several high-profile awards on Monday. The National League Cy Young was among them, leaving this year’s voters to decide among the Reds’ Trevor Bauer, the Cubs’ Yu Darvish and the Mets’ Jacob deGrom. The question is: Which right-hander do you think they should choose?
When it came to preventing runs in 2020, no qualified NL starter was superior to Bauer, now a free agent whose platform year came at an ideal time. The 29-year-old easily paced his league in ERA (1.73). He also ranked second in the NL in strikeouts per nine (12.33), third in K/BB ratio (5.88) and fWAR (2.5), fourth in bWAR (2.7), fifth in FIP (2.88) and sixth in innings (73).
Darvish equaled Bauer’s bWAR, but he upended him in the fWAR category (3.0; first). The resurgent 34-year-old also finished No. 1 in his league in FIP (2.23) while placing near the top in ERA (2.01; second), BB/9 (1.66; second), innings (76; third) and K/9 (11.01; eighth).
And there’s simply no slowing down deGrom, who’s the back-to-back winner of this award. The 32-year-old didn’t have the quite workload of Bauer or Darvish, as deGrom dealt with some injuries and wound up with 68 innings. As always, though, he was dominant. DeGrom finished first in K/9 (13.76), second in FIP (2.23) and fWAR (2.26), fourth in ERA (2.38) and K/BB ratio (5.78), and seventh in bWAR (2.6).
Looking at the exemplary numbers these three posted in 2020, it appears voters are going to have a hard time settling on a pick. There’s no wrong answer among the three, but which one do you prefer? (Poll link for app users)
Diehard Mets here, giving it to (future Met?) Bauer
I vote Max Fried.
He’s not on the ballot tho
Trevor Bauer with his Bauer Pauer is gonna take it home for the first time in his career! Let’s go!
I vote for Yu Darvish. FIP is better than ERA. And considering where he came from, to do what he did was exemplary.
I agree. Plus, I do look at Wins when rating top starting pitchers. Darvish outpitched the opposing starter, and pitched deep enough to earn the win, at a better rate than Bauer or DeGrom. All things being equal, I will take the pitcher with the 8 wins.
Bauer had the historically bad Cincinnati offense backing him up. It’s hard to win if you give up less than 2 runs a game and your offense can’t give you more than that.
I think Bauer should win, but I don’t think he will. To many voters probably dislike him because of his personality and will vote based on that.
Jacob degrom disagrees with your first paragraph
That Cubs offense was also pretty lousy. Only scored when hitting bombs.
No Max Fried?? I’m shocked!
Fried should be on this list.
No he shouldn’t… He was 4th best. He had a great season but not better than those 3 at the top
I bet my friend I would smoke a cigarette if Bauer didn’t win.
I expect results if he doesn’t haha
That’s something I’ll never do again. Quit after 15 years of smoking so for your sake unless you stronger than a nine on the addiction scale I hope he wins.
You just know if bauer wins he is gonna use the cy young as an angle to raise his earnings.
A player is going to use his accomplishments to increase his wages? Wow shocker
Yep, that’s capitalism…..why wouldn’t he???
I’m hoping he’s being sarcastic/ironic but I’m not confident that’s the route he was going
Is he not supposed to use winning one of the most prestegious awards in baseball as a way to say “I’m worth something”?
As he should!
Geez, Max Fried got robbed. He should’ve at least been a finalist.
Agreed, I cast no vote based on that.
How was he robbed? deGrom, Bauer and Darvish all had better years. He was very good, but don’t be silly.
I wouldn’t say he got “robbed”! These 3 finals had amazing seasons. Fried had a great year also but someone has to be fourth and Fried deserve that slot as great a season that he had
This is/was Bauer’s year. Nobody comes close. Maybe Shane Bieber? But he’s in the AL. Yeah. This is a no contest situation.
“Maybe” triple crown winner Shane Bieber? LOL! Bauer doesn’t even have the fip lead in his own league.
I voted deGrom.
I don’t think the offenses in the Central were nearly as good as in the East.
But, he gets dinged on total innings a bit. So, a really tough call. Really hard to separate any of them as clearly better. I bet it winds up a really close vote.
4 NL Central teams and 3 AL Central teams made the playoffs, so Bauer and Darvish were likely playing better competition.
All 7 lost in the first round too. Just sayin.
And Bauer destroyed the Braves hitters in the postseason.
One could argue those teams made the playoffs because they faced weaker competition. The central got bounced pretty quickly.
But it’s pointless to argue that one way or the other.
Based on numbers alone I go Bauer, Darvish, deGrom for this season.
I’d go Bauer, deGrom, Darvish… Yu “struggled” down there stretch in house last couple of starts and I think Jake passed him a bit, but it doesn’t matter because Bauer had the best year of all of them
The 7 Central teams combined to win two playoff games and they all got bounced out of the first round. That’s not better competition.
I still put Bauer as the Cy Young winner though.
And, that is not an unreasonable point, @shmoe. I think this kinda shows how difficult it’s going to be for the voters. I mean, @b-strong raises *another* not unreasonable counterpoint
Ya know?
I think it comes down to personal preferences & I dunno…style points. Which gets me back to deGrom lol.
Man, really hard to rank these guys over so few games.
They all certainly threw well.
As many have already pointed out here, the Angels really need to sign Bauer.
I’d rather see him in Anaheim and not San Diego.
I mean he was brilliant but who was he better than?
Smoke em if you gottem astick!
Bauer. No disrespect to Darvish and deGrom. But this one should be unanimous.
I don’t know about “unanimous” but he will win it… deGrom still deserves loss of consideration having played in a very difficult division
*LOTS of consideration
Bauer all the way . He was dominant all year
Bauer is going to win. But he is ignorant if he thinks he would have beat Degrom in a full season. Also look at the competition they faced. Degrom faced batter lineups
Last year after 12 starts Degrom has a mid 3 era.. just to show what I’m talking about.. he won CY that year
No one, not even Bauer, thinks Bauer is better than deGrom. Don’t worry, MetsFan. You don’t need to defend deGrom’s honor.
Stroman thinks he is better than Degrom lol
Hahaha. Probably.
Agreed VonPurpleHayes
He wouldn’t be ignorant for believing he’s now better than deGrom if he wins the Cy Young. If he believes he’s better it’s because he is an uber competitive athlete. He’s not better, but I wouldn’t blame him for thinking it after being named the league’s best pitcher.
I think some of the numbers are off in the article (or maybe they need to be extrapolated for a full season to see the full picture)? For example, it says Bauer finished 3rd in fWAR at 2.5 while deGrom finished 2nd in fWAR at 2.26. How is 2.26 fWAR better than 2.5 fWAR? Are they basing that on innings pitched where if deGrom pitched the same amount of innings as Bauer, his fWAR would be higher than 2.5? I’m guessing this is more likely to be a type-o by the writer? Not trying to be a stickler at all, I really want to know if I am missing something here.
I think the writer meant to say that deGrom had 2.6 WAR. Normally WAR totals go the tenth place, not the hundredth place,
While I think Bauer will win it, Darvish really made a strong case for himself too. This could end up being a very close race. Bauer’s abrasive personality won’t win him many tie breakers with those who get to vote. (Personally I love the guy…I find him very refreshing). One bad outing by deGrom this year probably ruined his chances for a three-peat. His ERA jumped almost a full run after one particularly bad start if I recall correctly.
Bauer had an amazing WHIP this year too (under 0.80) so it shows that his numbers are not fluky at all. He was truly dominant and allowed very few base runners all season.
Yu
its just not even close
Fried and Lamet round out the Top 5. Winner is Bauer but all 5 pitched extremely well.
i think either of them should be above DeGrom. i think he made the finalists largely on name recognition. not that he wasnt great again, but those two were probably better.
Bauer probably wins but I hope it’s Darvish, he made pitching look like an art form this year
I’d say deGrom is the best pitcher in the game based on the last few years, but for this vote it’s Bauer, Darvish and deGrom. I suspect deGrom would have pulled ahead of the other two if a full 162-game schedule was played, but we have to work with what’s given this year.
I’d vote Bauer here(think he flatout earned it this season, especially in that bandbox of a ballpark) but would take deGrom in a must-win game if I had to choose one of these guys to start for my team!
Jacob deGrom or Yu Darvish are the only correct answers
These 3 are CY Young potential winners this year. Man, on a 60 game season, picking are that bad?
I voted for Yu uts likely going to Bauer. I’m fine with that. It won’t be unanimous though. It will be very close