The National League Cy Young Award race is shaping up to be one that will be talked about for years to come.
Cincinnati’s Chase Burns, Atlanta’s Chris Sale, Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes and Los Angeles’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Shohei Ohtani all have had dominant seasons that might put them at the top of the board in most seasons. All of them are among the 12 NL starters who have pitched 60 innings or more with a sub-3.00 ERA.
The race could come into focus more this weekend, though, as the two frontrunners for the award -- Jacob Misiorowski of the Brewers on Friday, which is the one-year anniversary of his MLB debut, and Philadelphia’s Cristopher Sánchez on Sunday -- will take the mound in Milwaukee. Kyle Harrison -- who also has had a terrific season -- gets the nod for the Brewers in the finale, opposing Sánchez.
Misiorowski has taken the baseball world by storm -- both on and off the field -- since he made his MLB debut one year ago. One month after that, he was named to the NL All-Star team after making only five MLB appearances.
This season, Misiorowski has been even better. Entering Friday, he led the NL among qualified starters in ERA (1.50), strikeouts (116), WHIP (0.81) and opponents’ batting average (.151) while allowing just 22 walks in 78 innings.
Misiorowski’s fastball has been crucial to his success. It has been the fourth-best pitch in baseball this year via run value. It also ranks among the nastiest pitches in baseball on our new miss distance leaderboard. That fastball played better than ever in his last start against the Rockies at Coors Field, when he threw the fastest pitch (103.7 mph) recorded by a starter in the pitch-tracking era (since 2008) while also throwing 45 pitches at 101+ mph.
In his last seven starts, Misiorowski has a 0.20 ERA, which is the third-lowest in a seven-start span (excluding openers) since 1913, when ERA became an official stat. The only two lower came in 1968, the year before the mound was lowered to its current height (Bob Gibson’s 0.14 and Don Drysdale’s 0.15).
For Sánchez, he’s coming off a unanimous runner-up finish to Skenes in the NL Cy Young Award race last season. This year, Sánchez has also pitched even better, putting himself in the history books.
He broke the Phillies’ 115-year-old scoreless-innings streak record and set the all-time scoreless-innings record by a lefty by going 50 2/3 innings without allowing a run. That streak is also the third-longest in MLB history.
Overall this season, Sánchez leads NL qualified pitchers in innings (93 1/3) and complete games (one) and ranks second in wins (tied with two others at eight), ERA (1.54) and strikeouts (113).
Entering Thursday, Sánchez also led the Majors in fWAR (3.9) and his changeup has been the most valuable pitch in the Majors via run value.
His scoreless streak was broken two starts ago, but in his last start, it was back to business as usual: 10 strikeouts in seven innings against the Blue Jays on Monday. Sánchez has gone seven innings or more in each of his last seven starts going back to May 5.
Sánchez will be opposing Harrison, who ranks 12th in the NL in strikeouts (77). Harrison is 8 1/3 innings shy of being a qualified pitcher, and if qualified, he would rank 10th in the NL in ERA (2.72). Before allowing eight runs in 2 1/3 innings against the A’s during Milwaukee’s 15-14 win on Monday in Las Vegas, Harrison hadn’t allowed more than two runs in any of his first 11 starts to begin the season. With that string of starts, there isn’t any reason that Harrison can’t right the ship and continue to deal.
If that’s the case, he and Sánchez could be rounding out a weekend of outstanding pitching that we look back upon during awards season as the series that separated the top NL Cy Young contenders from the others.