Regular readers know that I’ve followed one of the great Cy Young horse races in recent memory, with Cam Schlittler going great start-for-great start with the Blue Jays’ Dylan Cease. We got a little bit of separation this week, as the Athletics touched up Cease for four runs in five innings on Monday, and then Schlittler allowed just a solo shot in seven frames against the Rockies on Tuesday. Cam has crept just ahead by fWAR, enjoys a considerable lead in bWAR, and right now I think would end up at the top of most voters’ ballots.
But something struck me in the aftermath of Cam’s night against Colorado, the same night that Aaron Judge returned to the lineup. Cam Schlittler isn’t just the Cy Young favorite, but he’s built himself an MVP case. No pitcher has won the award since Clayton Kershaw for the 2014 Dodgers, and the last AL winner was 2011 Justin Verlander. Yordan Alvarez is in the hunt for the first Triple Crown since Miguel Cabrera, Bobby Witt Jr. is probably the best overall player in the league, and if Junior Caminero tops the AL in home runs and plays on the Junior Circuit’s best team, he probably gets his share of votes too.
And yet here’s the thing: Cam stacks up fairly against all three of them!
Let’s take Yordan, who I think has the inside track on the award right now. Schlittler’s 0.1 fWAR back, a difference that is literally negligible, and more than three-quarters of a win better by bWAR. Alvarez’s candidacy is based around the Triple Crown, probably being the best hitter in baseball, and dragging what we thought was a finally-deflated Houston Astros team to a division title. Crappy AL West or not, that is exactly the blueprint for an MVP, if one for a slightly older voter.
Should Alvarez not win the Triple Crown, he loses a bit of his case, though he’s likely still the best hitter in the game on a division winner, one who will have played in the neighborhood of 155 games. That’s the big thing both undercutting Witt’s MVP claim while bolstering his position as best all-around player — the Kansas City shortstop has only played 128 games at time of writing, yet leads the league in fWAR and bWAR among position players. With a solid-but-not-spectacular 18 homers and 124 wRC+, the parts of his game beyond hitting are doing the heavy lifting there as well. All that and the fact that the Royals are so bad work against him when it comes to end of season awards though, and Bobby seems cursed to be the Dave Stieb of shortstops.
Junior Caminero, fittingly, is the junior candidate in this slate, trailing the rest of the field pretty clearly by WAR. The home run totals (an AL-leading 39 as of the time of writing) and the Rays’ season of devil magic help fill in some of the gaps that would otherwise leave him a downballot vote-getter that helped a lot of people’s fantasy teams, and in the end he might be just that. Great season, frightening player, but more of a top-five finisher than taking home the hardware.
Cam Schlittler leads the entire AL in bWAR, position players or no. He is virtually tied for third in fWAR. Perhaps most key to his case is the way this Yankee team has been beaten up, with four of his fellow starters seeing IL time this year. The Yankees came into the season with more starting pitching than they needed, and it ended up being just enough, with a chunk of that being because Schlittler has been so reliable, not missing a single start. Virtually every member of the regular starting lineup, save Ben Rice and Paul Goldschmidt, has been injured or demoted in some form this year, and the Opening Day center fielder, DH, and second baseman might not even finish the season on the big-league roster.
Through all that, the consistent, balancing force has been Cam’s right arm every five days.
MVPs are built on a combination of statistical success and compelling narrative — Aaron Judge’s 2022 was at that point his career-best season, but the chase for 62 is what pushed him over the line. Cam has the total value arguments, and certainly if you can make a compelling case for MVP you have to be the favorite for the Cy Young. Moreover, him being at 25 the stabilizing energy for a team that could very well have completely fallen apart, he may end up higher than you think on the ballot that means the most.
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