Projecting Dark-Horse MLB Cy Young Candidates for the 2016 Season
It's easy to dismiss a dark-horse candidate as a serious contender for one of baseball's individual awards until you realize that three of the past four Cy Young Award winners could reasonably fit under that umbrella.
Nobody saw the Cleveland Indians' Corey Kluber coming when he won the American League Cy Young Award in 2014, and while both the Chicago Cubs' Jake Arrieta and the Houston Astros' Dallas Keuchel headed into 2015 with high expectations, few believed they'd be dominant enough to walk away with the award at year's end.
Yet that's exactly what they did.
So while the six pitchers who follow—three in each league—may be overshadowed, overlooked and without much of the fanfare that surrounds past winners and usual suspects (Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, David Price), we can't write them off as contenders for the Cy Young Award.
If we've learned anything over the past few seasons, it's that anything can—and usually does—happen.
Raisel Iglesias, RHP, Cincinnati Reds
1 of 6
We detailed why Raisel Iglesias is a potential breakout star last week, and all those reasons are applicable when it comes to building a case for the 26-year-old as a dark horse in the race for the National League Cy Young Award.
He's maintained his elite strikeout rate (24.5 percent) through his first two starts in 2016, fanning 12 batters over 11.2 innings of work while improving his control, posting a 4.1 percent walk rate that's 3.0 percent lower than last season and more than 4.0 percent lower than the league average thus far.
Those small steps forward may not seem significant, but they are. For example, last season, Iglesias walked 2.6 batters per nine innings of work. In the early part of 2016? He's got his BB/9 down to 1.5. That's a big improvement.
While Cincinnati has gotten off to a far better start than anyone imagined, winning five of its first seven games, expectations are that the Reds will battle the Milwaukee Brewers for last place in the National League Central this season.
That might be Iglesias' biggest obstacle to garnering significant support in the Cy Young Award voting—that he pitches for a losing team. Still, he has the arsenal and whiffability to not only emerge as Cincinnati's ace, but also be one of the Senior Circuit's best starters by the end of the regular season.
Carlos Martinez, RHP, St. Louis Cardinals
2 of 6
Armed with a fastball that sits comfortably in the mid-90s, which he uses to effectively set up a groundball-inducing, mid-80s changeup that, per Brooks Baseball, has become his go-to swing-and-miss pitch, Carlos Martinez has quickly established himself as one of baseball's best young starters.
Despite earning his first All-Star nod last season, Martinez tends to be overlooked thanks to his more well-known teammates, Adam Wainwright, Michael Wacha and, this season, Mike Leake. Yet it's Martinez who might be the best starter in St. Louis, something that wasn't lost on ESPN.com's Mark Simon:
"The 24-year-old Martinez has the stuff to be great. He had a 3.01 ERA and 3.21 FIP in 29 starts before being shut down at the very end of the season with a shoulder strain. Martinez had a 2.52 ERA before the All-Star break and a 3.73 ERA after, but all of his peripherals (strikeouts, walks, home runs allowed) were considerably better after the break. His 9.5 percent hard-hit rate after the break ranked 14th among the 114 starters with the most innings.
"
While he has only one start under his belt in 2016—six innings of two-run, four-hit ball against the Atlanta Braves in an error-filled outing by St. Louis' infield—all indications point to Martinez picking up where he left off last year, especially when it comes to limiting hard contact.
Entering his age-24 season, there are concerns about Martinez's ability to handle a heavy workload. His 179.2 innings pitched in 2015 were not only a career high for the 6'0", 190-pound righty (whom many consider undersized), but 2015 was also only the second time in six years that he cracked the 100-inning mark.
So long as he can stay healthy, Martinez has a chance to emerge as St. Louis' ace by season's end and potentially garner significant support in the National League Cy Young Award race, especially if the Cardinals are able to win their fourth consecutive National League Central crown.
Jose Quintana, LHP, Chicago White Sox
3 of 6
What do Bartolo Colon, Marco Estrada, Phil Hughes, Collin McHugh and Matt Moore all have in common?
They've all appeared on at least one ballot cast to select the past three American League Cy Young Award winners, while Jose Quintana, who has posted superior numbers over the past three seasons, has never received a single vote.
That's absurd.
Per FanGraphs, only eight starting pitchers have posted more wins above replacement from 2013 to 2015 than Quintana—whose 13.4 WAR are not only more than those named above, but that number is also better than the likes of Cole Hamels (12.9), Madison Bumgarner (12.8) and Gerrit Cole (10.2) as well.
It's even more remarkable when you consider that only five starting pitchers received less run support in 2015 than Quintana did. But through his first two starts of 2016, Chicago has scored a combined nine runs, which works out to 4.5 runs per start.
That's nearly a full run more than Quintana was getting last season—and it will help him crack the 10-win mark for the first time. While the popular stance is that wins don't matter when it comes to a starting pitcher's worth, the fact is that when it comes to individual awards, they still do.
Hitting double-digit wins, coupled with a significant rise in strikeouts—through his first two starts in 2016, Quintana sits with a career-best 9.3 K/9 rate—will help elevate him to greater prominence and improve his chances of contending for the highest regular-season honor a pitcher can receive.
Sure, he's always going to be overshadowed by his White Sox teammate Chris Sale, whose continued excellence may rob Quintana of support in the voting. But the 27-year-old's numbers will be strong enough to stand on their own and, at the very least, earn him a spot on multiple ballots.
.png?w=256)
Danny Salazar, RHP, Cleveland Indians
4 of 6
While he's hardly an unknown, Danny Salazar fills the unenviable role of third wheel in a stacked Cleveland rotation behind former Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber and Carlos Carrasco, who finished ninth and 13th, respectively, in last year's vote.
The 26-year-old rebounded from a disappointing 2014 campaign to deliver a breakout performance in 2015, going 14-10 with a 3.45 ERA, 1.13 WHIP and 195 strikeouts over 185 innings of work. In fact, those 185 K's put Salazar among baseball's top 20.
Per FanGraphs, his 25.8 percent whiff rate tied Tyson Ross for the 11th-best mark in the game, ahead of noted strikeout artists like David Price (25.3 percent), Zack Greinke (23.7 percent) and Felix Hernandez (23.1 percent).
Noah Syndergaard, RHP, New York Mets
5 of 6
This writer has contributed to the hype surrounding Noah Syndergaard—hype that has grown to the point where, if we didn't know any better, we'd think he had already won a National League Cy Young Award. So maybe it's a mistake to include him here.
But we're going to do so anyway. Syndergaard was downright filthy in his first appearance of the year against the defending world champion Kansas City Royals, scattering three hits over six scoreless innings while walking a batter, striking out nine and leaving a Hall of Famer in awe.
“There is no man alive who could have hit those three sliders [Syndergaard] threw to [Kendrys] Morales,” Royals manager Ned Yost told reporters after the game, per the New York Post's Joel Sherman. “I don’t think I have ever seen a 95-mph slider. George Brett was in here [his office] and I asked him if he could have hit that, and he said no way.”
While it's early, the velocity on his fastball, sinker and slider each lead the majors. His changeup trails only Clayton Kershaw's in terms of speed, while his curveball sits among the game's 10 fastest. Per Brooks Baseball, he's able to generate whiffs with all five of those pitches, especially his slider and change.
Based on what we saw last season, there's no reason to believe that he's suddenly going to experience a significant drop in that elite velocity, which, coupled with how good those offerings are, makes him difficult for the opposition to hit when he's on.
It's really not a question of if Syndergaard will be in the National League Cy Young Award race; it's a question of whether the presence of his two teammates, Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey, will take enough votes away from him to keep him out of the top three.
Yordano Ventura, RHP, Kansas City Royals
6 of 6
It's never been a question of stuff when it comes to Yordano Ventura reaching his full potential. And while he wasn't ready to proclaim the 24-year-old righty a mature adult, Kansas City general manager Dayton Moore wouldn't discount that idea, either.
“Some young guys mature really quickly,” Moore told Ken Davis of Today's Knuckleball. “Others are still maturing and becoming men. Yordano has a great heart and is always trying to do the right thing. He tries to apply instruction on and off the field. He’s just learning to control his emotions. He did last season at the end of the year. He’s just like all of us. We’re all trying to do better.”
Ventura, who was ejected from two of his first four starts in 2015 before being demoted to Triple-A, flashed more than maturity toward the end of last season. He flashed the ace-like dominance the Royals have been waiting to see on a consistent basis.
Over his last 11 regular-season starts, he pitched to a 2.38 ERA and 1.24 WHIP, striking out 81 batters over 68 innings while holding the opposition to a .218/.303/.304 slash line. In fact, Ventura saw his K/9 rate rise by a whiff-and-a-half after the All-Star break, a significant increase.
With elite velocity on both his fastball and curveball—the latter a pitch that, per Brooks Baseball, generates a swinging strike percentage over 40 percent—and a mid- to high-80s changeup that has become his go-to strikeout pitch, Ventura has all the tools to become one of the game's premier starters.
If he can keep his emotions in check for a full season, there's no reason he couldn't find himself a legitimate contender for the AL Cy Young Award.
Unless otherwise noted, all statistics courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs.
Hit me up on Twitter to talk all things baseball: @RickWeinerBR.
.png?w=480)
