Pittsburgh Pirates star Paul Skenes made Major League Baseball history last year, and Toronto Blue Jays ace Dylan Cease might not be far behind.
Skenes won the 2024 NL Cy Young Award despite going 10-10, becoming the first starting pitcher to capture the honor without a winning record. As of Aug. 8, Cease is only 7-5 for the disappointing Blue Jays, though the advanced stats are starting to favor him over the Yankees’ Cam Schlittler.
Yet, we’re not hearing a ton about Cease’s Cy Young case, with the national media typically only discussing Schlittler. The sportsbooks have started making things closer, though, and the race will likely come down to the two AL East rivals and how they close this season.
Should Dylan Cease be considered the AL Cy Young Award frontrunner?
Before going any further, let’s take a quick look at Cease’s and Schlittler’s stats, at least the ones that I personally consider when evaluating someone’s Cy Young candidacy.
AL Cy Young race: Cam Schlittler vs. Dylan Cease
Statistic | Cam Schlittler | Dylan Cease |
|---|---|---|
Win-loss record | 10-6 | 7-5 |
ERA | 2.26 | 2.28 |
Innings pitched | 139.2 | 126.1 |
FIP | 2.65 | 2.20 |
bWAR | 4.5 bWAR | 5.0 bWAR |
fWAR | 4.3 fWAR | 4.7 fWAR |
Strikeout-to-walk ratio | 171-31 | 184-52 |
Strikout percentage | 30.8% | 36.4% |
Walk percentage | 5.6% | 10.3% |
Home run percentage | 2.3% | 1.4% |
Outside of a concerningly high walk rate, the metrics definitely favor Cease. That’s not to say that Schlittler doesn’t deserve to be in the running; in fact, if voting ended tomorrow, I think it’d be incredibly close and could go either way. Perhaps not the 15-point margin between Blake Snell and Justin Verlander a few years ago, though that was an aberration and a significant mistake in Snell’s favor.
Currently owning a 7-5 record, Cease might not sound like he’s in danger of finishing at or below .500. But less than two months remain, and the Blue Jays entered Saturday at 55-62. They’ve been outscored by 60 runs on the season and have received no meaningful offense from Vladimir Guerrero Jr. Those factors don’t exactly favor Cease winning five of seven starts down the stretch.
I’m admittedly old-fashioned in the sense that I still put a heavy emphasis on innings pitched, and Cease averages approximately six innings per start. The days of a Cy Young winner racking up a workload like Felix Hernandez did in 2010, when he averaged roughly 7.1 innings over 34 starts, are long gone.
Voters don’t seem to overly care about team success anymore, either. Skenes won the NL Cy Young last year for a Pirates team that couldn’t even score enough runs to make sure he finished above .500. So if the Blue Jays continue at their current pace and post a losing record, I don’t expect that to significantly hurt Cease’s case.
I also don’t think media market size or the Blue Jays playing in Canada would factor into the Cy Young voting. We’re only five years removed from then-Toronto ace Robbie Ray winning the AL Cy Young in 2021. The idea that a player could effectively be penalized for not playing in the U.S. always felt like a contrived and false media narrative.
Depending on how the schedule plays out, we’re running out of opportunities to see Schlittler and Cease go head-to-head. The Blue Jays host the Yankees for a three-game set next weekend before concluding their season series with another three-game series, this time in the Bronx, beginning Aug. 21.
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