Phillies’ Aaron Nola Isn’t An All-Star, But He Leads The NL Cy Young Race

The MLB season is roughly at the halfway point, so July would seem to be a good time to check in on the MVP and Cy Young Award races in both leagues, as well as overall team power rankings. I’ll be doing this utilizing the batted ball-based methods I typically employ here. Last week we looked at the NL and AL MVP races. This week, it’s time to check in on the Cy Young races. Yesterday, it was the AL, today the NL.

The Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara is the consensus midseason favorite for the award, but my batted ball-based method has him running just behind in a tight, three-man horse race. Obviously, there always are players that my method likes better or worse than the mainstream baseball media. Let’s run down the top candidates as I see them, from the Honorable Mentions through the Top 5.

HONORABLE MENTION

The Dodgers’ Tony Gonsolin heads up this group. His raw numbers are mind-boggling, but there is an element of good fortune baked into them. He has been “lucky” on fly balls (49 Unadjusted vs. 61 Adjusted Contact Score), liners (91 vs. 103) and especially grounders (21 vs. 94). Still, his 73 Unadjusted Contact Score is running just behind Alcantara in the battle for NL Contact Manager of the Year. The Padres’ Joe Musgrove has also been extremely fortunate on the ground (26 Unadjusted vs. 95 Adjusted Grounder Contact Score). Still, he’s solidly above average at all of the key facets of pitching, missing bats, minimizing walks and managing contact - particularly the latter two. The Phils’ Zack Wheeler is a bit off of his game in the contact management department this year (91 Adjusted Contact Score), but his placement here is more due to a relative lack of innings volume compared to previous years.

The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and Braves’ Spencer Strider are well short of ERA title qualification at present, but their respective excellence has been so extreme that they deserve to be in the Cy Young discussion. Kershaw is a souped-up version of Musgrove with lesser innings volume, while Strider’s extreme bat-missing ability has covered up some warts on the contact management front. The Giants’ Logan Webb is an extreme grounder-generator with exceptional command, more than compensating for a relatively low (in this company) strikeout rate.

THE TOP FIVE IVE

#5 - LHP Max Fried (Braves) - 72 “Tru” ERA-, 14.4 “Tru” Pitching Runs Above Average (TPRAA)

The bar to make the NL Top 5 is quite a bit higher than in the AL. In fact, Gonsolin, currently ranking 6th, would be 2nd behind only Shane McClanahan in the AL. Fried is one of the premier contact managers in the game today. His current 83 Adjusted Contact Score isn’t that far off of the pace of NL pacesetter Alcantara. He induces plenty of ground balls and successfully limits authority across all batted-ball types. Fried has rounded out an exceptional resume by greatly improving his K/BB profile. His risk/reward ratio is one of the best among top-end MLB starters - he’ll be in this race to the end.

#4 - LHP Carlos Rodon (Giants) - 68 “Tru”-, 14.7 TPRAA - Rodon’s dominance thus far this season would seem to justify the Giants’ two-year, $44M investment in him during last winter’s free agent market. Among NL ERA qualifiers, only #3 below has a higher strikeout rate, and Rodon has evolved into a pretty solid contact manager, posting an 88 Adjusted Contact Score so far. He gets weak-contact outs both up and down in the zone, running a very high pop up rate while still inducing a healthy amount of ground balls. The biggest concern with Rodon is his durability - has hasn’t pitched enough innings to qualify for an ERA title since 2016.

#3 - RHP Corbin Burnes (Brewers) - 61 “Tru”-, 19.0 TPRAA - It’s essentially a dead-heat among the current Top 3 on this list - a midseason vote for any one of them for the NL Cy is properly cast. Burnes won the Cy in 2021, and barely nosed out Wheeler in my method by 40.5 to 39.8 TPRAA. All three of these frontrunners currently outpace AL leader McClanahan’s 18.3 TPRAA. Burnes does it all, miss bats, minimize walks and manage contact. He also was the NL Contact Manager of the Year last season, though he’s down a bit in that area (86 Adjusted Contact Score thus far). He’s poised to go well beyond his 2021 innings total of 167, and will be a very difficult man to beat in this race if he does so. Qualitatively, his 61 “Tru” ERA- is presently the NL’s best.

#2 - RHP Sandy Alcantara (Marlins) - 68 “Tru”-, 19.1 TPRAA - Credit where credit is due here - Alcantara is on pace to throw 248 innings this season, and absolutely NO ONE throws that many innings anymore. He’s clearly among the game’s best at commanding the baseball and managing contact; his 72 Adjusted Contact Score currently leads all MLB ERA qualifiers. His raw numbers have been helped by some good fortune on grounders, and he yields a ton of them. He’s posted a 45 Unadjusted Grounder Contact Score, while his exit speed allowed supports a 105 adjusted mark. For a big grounder generator, he gets plenty of pop ups; he’s yet another elite hurler able to get easy outs up and down in the zone. Alcantara’s greatest limiting factor is his K rate, which is much lower than the other top award contenders.

#1 - RHP Aaron Nola (Phillies) - 64 “Tru”-, 19.5 TPRAA - So, what’s all this then? Nola isn’t on the All Star team, and in most interim Cy Young discussions, it’s his teammate Wheeler (also an All Star snub) that is cited as a legit award candidate. He has a 5-7 record, and both his ERA- (80) and FIP- (72) are both way materially worse than their “Tru”- counterpart. I respond to the first point with - who cares about won-lost record? I support the second point with a nod toward the Phils’ subpar defense, which has in large part caused the disparity between his Unadjusted and Adjusted Fly Ball (120 vs. 93) and Ground Ball (113 vs. 82) Contact Scores. He’s been a quality contact manager overall (86 Adjusted Contact Score) and with a K/BB profile currently rivaled only by the AL’s McClanahan, that’s a pretty unbeatable combination. Nola needs to be recognized as a legit Cy candidate.