Max Scherzer already owns a Cy Young award in the American League that he earned in 2013. Scherzer won 21 games in 2013 and was 5th in the AL in ERA (2.90). This season Scherzer won 20 games and finished 8th in ERA (2.96).
The Cy Young was first awarded in 1956 and was only given to the best pitcher in the Major Leagues and in 1967 they changed it to be awarded to pitchers in both leagues.
If Scherzer is named the NL Cy Young this year, he would become the 6th pitcher to do it in both leagues joining Roy Halladay who was the last to do it in 2010.
John Smoltz is a Hall of Fame pitcher and an analyst for the MLB Network. When asked by one of the hosts last year who would win the Cy Young award, he said that he would predict once he went through the data for what he said were the 6th most important stats.
They made some assumptions that a reliever is not worthy of consideration. This year in the AL, Zach Britton should be in consideration list in my opinion. They also eliminatesd any pitcher who pitched less than 162 innings, so Kershaw and deGrom in the NL and Fulmer in AL are eliminated.
Smoltz named the 6 categories as ERA, Wins, Strikeouts, WHIP, BAA and K/BB. I took the top 10 in ERA and assigned them a score of 1-10 based on their rank in that category. If there was a tie; those tied all were awarded the maximum point.
Smoltz chose these stats as he said, “It best reflects how good the pitcher is.” The less base runners you allow on base, the more likely that runs won’t score. He also said that the more Ks you had the more likely unlucky runs would score against you. All those leads to more wins.
He says that this has been a good measuring stick the last 10 years. I didn’t go back and check to see if what he said was correct.
Here is the Top 10 on the AL:
| ERA | W | K | WHIP | BAA | K/BB | Total | |||
| 1 | Verlander | 2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 14 | |
| 2 | Porcello | 4 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 1 | 18 | |
| 3 | Kluber | 5 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 22 | |
| 4 | Sale | 9 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 24 | |
| 5 | Tanaka | 3 | 8 | 7 | 5 | 7 | 3 | 33 | |
| 6 | Happ | 6 | 2 | 8 | 8 | 6 | 8 | 38 | |
| 7 | Sanchez | 1 | 6 | 9 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 41 | |
| 8 | Quintana | 7 | 9 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 6 | 44 | |
| 9 | Hamels | 8 | 6 | 4 | 10 | 8 | 9 | 45 | |
| ## | Santana | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 9 | 7 | 55 |
Here is the top 10 in the NL:
| ERA | W | K | WHIP | BAA | K/BB | Total | |||
| 1 | Scherzer | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 14 | |
| 2 | Lester | 2 | 2 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 24 | |
| 3 | Hendricks | 1 | 5 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 6 | 27 | |
| 4 | Fernandez | 7 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 31 | |
| 5 | Bumgarner | 4 | 10 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 29 | |
| 6 | Cueto | 5 | 3 | 5 | 6 | 9 | 5 | 33 | |
| 7 | Arietta | 10 | 3 | 7 | 5 | 1 | 8 | 34 | |
| 8 | Syndergaard | 3 | 9 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 2 | 36 | |
| 9 | Roark | 6 | 5 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 10 | 45 | |
| 10 | Martinez | 9 | 5 | 9 | 10 | 8 | 9 |
50
|
