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Sizing up MLB’s dark-horse award candidates
- Updated: August 26, 2016
Now that Zach Britton finally took the bold step of giving up an earned run this week, we can probably pump the brakes on the “a reliever might win the Cy Young!” chatter.
But there are still plenty of interesting award-related storylines up for discussion as we storm into the final month of the season. Here are a handful:
That other Cub and the NL Cy Young
The best ERA and the best adjusted ERA+ on the Cubs belongs not to Jake Arrieta and not to Jon Lester, but to Kyle Hendricks, by a decent margin. Hendricks leads the Majors in both marks with a 2.19 ERA and a 184 ERA+, or 84 percent better than league average. Arrieta is at 2.62 and 154, while Lester is at 2.81 and 144.
And Hendricks has the workload, with 25 appearances, to date, and 152 innings. He’s got the second-best WHIP in the NL (1.00), trailing only the Nationals’ Max Scherzer. He’s also got the second-best OPS against (.590), trailing only Arrieta.
Aside from name recognition, there is no reason to consider Hendricks any less a candidate for the NL Cy Young than Arrieta and Lester. Who saw that coming?
Clayton Kershaw and the NL Cy Young
Kershaw will not be winning his fourth NL Cy Young Award in 2016, given the very obvious fact that he hasn’t thrown a pitch for the Dodgers in two months. But it’s still worth pointing out that he was finally just passed in Wins Above Replacement among NL pitchers by Max Scherzer on Thursday night, exactly 60 days after his most recent pitch. And there is increased optimism in recent days that he’ll be able to make it back to the L.A. rotation.
So maybe, if he comes back effective, Kershaw can at least put himself in better position for what would be his sixth consecutive top-three finish in the voting.
Kershaw sits at 121 innings pitched. The fewest innings for a Cy Young starter in a non-strike year? That would be the 198 1/3 innings tossed by — you guessed it — Clayton Kershaw in 2014.
Danny Duffy and the AL Cy Young
This is another case of workload working against a player. But talk about making up for lost time.
Duffy began the year in the Kansas …
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