by Stuart Kirsch
Fried and Darvish Surge to the Top of the NL Cy Young Charts /
The trade deadline has come and gone, and big names rumored to be on the move, including Trevor Bauer and Sonny Gray are still in Cincinnati. They have, however, traded in their favorite rankings for the best pitcher in the NL to Atlanta and Chicago, to Max Fried and Yu Darvish, specifically. Fried and Darvish are the only NL pitchers with six victories on the season.
Fried picked up his sixth against no defeats on the season in an effective effort against the Red Sox. The Sox posted two runs on him early, with two runs on five hits and two walks in five innings, but Fried and his Atlanta mates prevailed 6-3. Fried has now won three straight starts.
His ERA is a tidy 1.60 on the season, with a 1.00 WHIP and .199 batting average against. Fried has fanned 43 versus 14 walks and given up no home runs. His league-leading odds to win the CY Young are +325.
Darvish posted his sixth victory against one loss in a six-inning shutout appearance against the Reds. Darvish scattered seven hits and two walks and was helped out by a few double-plays from the Cubs defense behind him.
Darvish has a decision in each game he has started, reeling off six straight wins after starting with a loss. He leads the league in ERA at 1.47, tied with Fried for the lead with a 1.00 WHIP and has struck out 52 batters in 43 innings of work while walking eight. Opposing batters are hitting .222 against him. The winner of the NL Pitcher of the Month, Darvish has odds of +350 to win the 2020 NL Cy Young award.
NL Cy Young Odds: Bauer and deGrom Slipping Back /
Trevor Bauer was all the rage recently, both figuratively and literally. The Reds have been on the edge of contending for a playoff spot and now find themselves bunched at the bottom, two games out of the eight seed, with a lot of teams to jump to snag a spot.
Bauer has taken two straight losses to make his season record 3-2. He faced a sparkling Darvish in his last appearance and gave up two bombs to Anthony Rizzo on the way to the 3-0 defeat. Bauer’s ERA sits at 2.13 in his six starts, with a 0.79 WHIP and .144 batting average against and leads the league with 4.5 hits per nine and 12.8 Ks per nine. Bauer’s odds for the Cy Young have lengthened to +550.
Meanwhile, the season for two-time reigning Cy Young award winner Jacob deGrom seems (not surprisingly considering this is 2020) to yet to get on track. With two thirds of the season gone, deGrom is 2-1 for the equally barely-contending Mets. deGrom was charged with four runs on six hits and two walks in a six-inning performance against the Marlins, but a fielding error behind him made three of the runs unearned.
He took his first loss of the year in the 5-3 final. deGrom’s other stats are in better shape than his record, a 1.76 ERA, 58 strikeouts in 41 innings, a WHIP at 0.90, and a batting average against of .185 in his seven starts. deGrom’s odds for the Cy remain at +600.
NL Cy Young Odds: Other Notables
Philadelphia ace Aaron Nola has led the resurgent Phils with a 4-2 record and 2.45 ERA, capped by his most recent win, an eight-inning, two-hit shutout of the Nationals. Nola’s Cy Young odds are fifth best in the league at +800. Recent odds favorite Sonny Gray has fallen on tougher times, dropping to 5-2 with a 3.19 ERA and +1200 odds to win the Cy.
Arizona’s Zac Gallen has some nifty stats to go with his 1-0 record, a 1.80 ERA and 54 strikeouts in 50 innings. His odds are +2000. Clayton Kershaw finds himself now at 5-1 for the league-best Dodgers, with a 1.50 ERA in six starts, but only 36 innings. He’s thrown two shutout victories in a row and has Cy Young odds of +2500.
