Preseason favorites to win AL and NL Cy Young
The 2018 Cy Young Award winners proved that the voters within the Baseball Writers Association of America are, in fact, capable of looking past the many variables in baseball that are outside of a pitcher's own control. Mets starter Jacob deGrom winning the honor in the National League was welcomed proof that run support is entirely unnecessary to be crowned baseball's best, and a win/loss record (deGrom was 10-9 in 2018 in his 32 starts) is far from telling. deGrom was hard to look past despite the Mets' 77-85 record last season, and he received all but one of the first place votes.
With 26-year-old Blake Snell winning the American League Cy Young Award, a somewhat unexpected breakout season for a youngster exceeded the continued dominance from some of the game's current greats. Snell became the second Tampa Bay Rays pitcher to ever win a Cy Young (the other was David Price in 2012), beating out a field littered with household names and former Cy Young winners like Justin Verlander, Corey Kluber, Chris Sale, and Gerrit Cole. Though the race was tight, Snell's ridiculous 1.89 ERA—the lowest in the AL since Pedro Martinez's 1.74 ERA in 2000—was too good not to be rewarded.
Can 2019 bring another surprise name to the forefront? Will past winners like Kluber or Clayton Kershaw add another piece of hardware to their mantel? Nationals starter Max Scherzer is looking to join an elite group and become the fifth pitcher ever to win four Cy Young awards in his career. He is already one of 10 pitchers to win it three times. For Red Sox lefty Chris Sale, a Cy Young Award in 2019 would be a first.
Ranked from lowest to highest odds to take home the title, Stacker mined odds from Bovada and stats from Baseball Reference to rank the hurlers that oddsmakers in Las Vegas have pegged as the favorites for the AL and NL Cy Young Award.
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