Making the case for Mason Miller to win NL Cy Young this year

Mason Miller is unhittable right now. The San Diego Padres closer has allowed a grand total of three hits and two walks across 12.1 scoreless innings to begin the year. He has nine saves and a preposterous 27 strikeouts over that stretch, and he has not given up a single run, earned or unearned.

It's still early, but Miller is flirting with history — and many are starting to tout his Cy Young candidacy. Miller would become just the 10th reliever in the MLB's long history to win its top pitching honor. Amid a wide-open early field, does he have what it takes?

Mason Miller is the most dominant force in baseball

Miller currently sits in the 90th percentile or above in every key metric on Baseball Savant, except for extension (76th percentile). Pound for pound, in concentrated doses, there is not a more comprehensive display of pitching excellence in baseball at the moment.

Quite simply absurd. Miller misses bats more than any other pitcher, reliever or starter. When an opponent does luck into contact, it's generally weak and easily fielded. Miller displays total command over his 100-plus MPH fastball and a razor-blade mid-80s slider, which generates an average of 39.4 inches of vertical drop and 9.7 inches of glove-side break. He has thrown 86 sliders this season and allowed zero hits off that pitch.

This overlay of Miller's fastball and slider simply does not feel real.

Even the best relievers struggle to capture Miller's unique blend of top-end velocity and command. It's also worth noting that Miller only unleashes his signature fastball, which tops out around 104 MPH, on 42 percent of throws. He's dealing his slider 53 percent of the time — up from 46 percent last year and 35 percent in 2024. Miller is evolving right before our eyes. He has come to realize that the fastball is even harder to catch up with when hitters are programmed to expect a slider that tumbles out of the zone in slow motion. There is not a more potent two-pitch mix out there, and Miller's changeup (two percent of pitches) is a killer third when he deigns to use it.

Is Mason Miller good enough to win the Cy Young award?

The short answer is yes, absolutely. Miller is on track for one of the greatest relief seasons of all time. It's still early, of course, but Miller's scoreless streak of 33.2 innings dates back to last season. He currently boasts an impossible -0.76 FIP — or Fielding Independent Pitching, a metric which removes balls in play and focuses on what pitchers can control.

A look back into history reveals that some of the greatest relief seasons of all time can't hold a candle to what Miller is doing right now. In 2016, Baltimore's Zack Britton finished with a 0.54 ERA and 1.64 FIP and finished fourth in AL Cy Young voting. In 1990, Oakland's Dennis Eckersley finished with a 0.61 ERA and 1.34 FIP, which earned him the fifth-most Cy Young votes. He won the award two years later with a 1.91 ERA and 1.72 FIP, notching 51 saves in 80.0 innings.

Miller will regress eventually. He's not going to finish an entire season without allowing a run (we think). But could he quite feasibly finish with a sub-1.00 ERA, a sub-1.00 FIP and the league lead in saves? The Padres will probably win enough to put Miller in that position, and right now, it's hard to find fault in what he's offering up on a nightly basis. Every season has ebbs and flows. Miller, like all pitchers, will hit a rough patch or two. But right now, as a one-inning specialist with the strongest pure stuff in the sport, Miller is positioned to really carve out a niche in the MLB history books.

The last reliever to win the Cy Young award was Dodgers closer Eric Gagné in 2003. That season, he put up a 1.20 ERA and a 0.86 FIP, with 55 saves and 137 strikeouts in 82.1 innings. Miller, notably, has never pitched more than 65.0 innings or recorded 28 saves (although playing for the A's certainly deflated his output in the latter category).

There are pros and cons to this new age of understanding in baseball. Pitchers just aren't deployed as liberally as they were even 20 years ago. Teams understand the importance of preservation, of using a wider variety of weapons and playing to specific matchups, all with pitch count and elbow health in mind. Miller probably won't pitch 82.1 innings in relief this season. He probably won't reach 50-plus saves. Last season's saves leader was Carlos Estévez with 42 in 66.0 innings.

That said, in the media (and in the awards voting apparatus), there is a greater appreciation for the finer details — or more bluntly, the "numbers under the hood." The fact that Miller's Baseball Savant page lights up like a traffic light will matter. The important powers that be will take notice. It's not all about wins or saves when it comes to Cy Young voting anymore. Miller's strong statistical profile will matter a whole heck of a lot more.

So there's where Miller's candidacy really takes center stage. He's going to continue doing things we can barely even process numerically. On the other hand, many of those same analytics — especially those meant to capture overall value, like fWAR — will almost certainly favor the best starters, even if Miller is more dominant on a per-inning basis. So he will need the right mix of narrative thrust (a Padres division crown and No. 1 seed?) and sustained, historic dominance to bring it home.

Who is Mason Miller's foremost competition for the NL Cy Young award?

The field will change over the next several months, of course. It's far too early to know definitively how the awards race will shape up in late April. That said, here are the names worth monitoring (for now) when it comes to tracking Miller's competition in the Cy Young race:

Yamamoto was FanSided's preseason experts pick to win the NL Cy Young. Maybe that was voter fatigue, as Paul Skenes has done little to dissuade the notion of a potential back-to-back victory. Shohei Ohtani, meanwhile, is probably the best pound-for-pound starter in baseball right now. He's just lagging in the innings pitched department (you know, because he's also a full-time DH and MVP candidate).

It will be difficult to Miller to scale this particular mountaintop. He really has zero margin for error as a reliever. He will win all the relief pitching awards out there. He can swing a series in October and help San Diego really compete with L.A. and the other NL contenders. But when it comes to awards voting, there's a reason a reliever has not won since 2003. It's hard to muster the necessary respect and totality of impact when the best starters absorb 200-plus innings a year.

Never say never, but Miller faces a true uphill battle.

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