No clear favorite for AL Cy Young Award

There’s no elegant way to put this, so let’s just come out with it: The American League Cy Young Award race is a hot mess.

We don’t have a clear knockout candidate or obvious A vs. B dilemma. Which means there are a bunch of equally deserving dudes. Which means a column like this, aiming to rank the potential recipients, is bound to upset one fan base or another.

• Rogers: Tight NL Cy Young race centers on Nats duo

Thankfully, we’ve got the next eight weeks to provide more clarity here, but for now these are my top five:

1. Chris Sale, White Sox 14-5, 3.12 ERA, 21 starts, 147 IP, 143 K, 33 BB

Hardware Hopefuls

• AL MVP • NL MVP

• AL Cy Young • NL Cy Young

• Wednesday: AL Rookie of the Year • Wednesday: NL Rookie of the Year

• Friday: AL Manager of the Year • Friday: NL Manager of the Year

• AL MVP • NL MVP

• AL Cy Young • NL Cy Young

• Wednesday: AL Rookie of the Year • Wednesday: NL Rookie of the Year

• Friday: AL Manager of the Year • Friday: NL Manager of the Year

Why, Chris? Why did you have to give up eight runs to the lowly Braves offense in your final start before the All-Star break? If we could remove that start from your ledger, we’d be able to — ahem — cut your ERA down to a league-best 2.73, and this little experiment would probably be a lot easier.

But look, I’m not going to hold the blowup against the Braves or, for that matter, the slicing and dicing of throwback jerseys affect my support of Sale’s candidacy. He made a conscious effort to go deeper into games and has matched knuckleballer Steven Wright’s league lead with four complete games this year. In a field this muddled, there is such a thing as using “legacy” as a tiebreaker, and this guy has four top-six finishes in the vote the past six …

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