MLB Futures: Best Bets for Cy Young Winners (2021)

We’re days removed from the start of spring training games, which means it’s about time to start looking into futures. The Cy Young Award winners are a great place to start.

Three pitchers have essentially passed the National League award over the last decade. Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, and Jacob deGrom have won seven of the last 10 NL Cy Youngs, and each of the three has claimed the hardware in back-to-back seasons. Scherzer and deGrom are two of the top-three favorites to bring home the 2021 honor.

The same pitcher hasn’t won the American League Cy Young Award in back-to-back seasons since Pedro Martinez did so in 1999 and 2000. Eight different players have won the award in the last decade.

Contrary to these trends, the National League race is wide open this year, while the American League race is feeling more and more likely to be won by a favorite. Here’s who I’m taking to win both the NL and AL Cy Young Awards. And you

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National League Cy Young

As it currently stands, seven of the top eight betting favorites to win the NL Cy Young pitch in the NL East or West. The only outlier is Jack Flaherty, and we’re getting solid odds on a dynamic pitcher who had an understandably down year in a COVID-stricken 2020.

Remember, the Cardinals were forced to suspend their season for 16 days just five games into the season. As a result, they had to cram 53 games into 44 days. Those are tough circumstances for anyone to succeed in, and they limited Flaherty to just 40.1 innings across nine starts. His 4.91 ERA and 1.215 WHIP from 2020 aren’t pretty, but some of the underlying metrics show that his “stuff” is still there. He just needs a bounce-back year to prove it.

Flaherty struck out 10.9 batters per nine innings in 2020, the best mark of a career that includes a fifth-place finish in the NL Rookie of the Year voting and a fourth-place finish in the 2019 NL Cy Young voting. That’s one of the more encouraging numbers from last year, but let’s focus on the 2019 version of Flaherty because I expect him to return in 2021 and anchor the St. Louis staff.

In 2019, Flaherty had the third-lowest WHIP in baseball and the lowest in the National League. He was also one of only five qualified starters to finish with a WHIP below 1.00. Flaherty finished eighth among pitchers in WAR (5.7), sixth in ERA (2.75), third in hits per nine (6.2), and eighth in adjusted ERA+, which adjusts for ballparks (40.0). The righty also finished the 2019 season on an absolutely torrid pace, posting a 0.93 ERA and 130 strikeouts over his final 16 starts.

Flaherty plays in arguably the weakest-hitting division in the National League, and he’ll avoid multiple starts in home run-friendly ballparks like Coors Field (Colorado) and Citizens Bank Park (Philadelphia). He’s my pick to capture the NL Cy Young.

Pick: Jack Flaherty (+1500 at DraftKings Sportsbook)

Check out our consensus odds to win the NL Cy Young Award >>

American League Cy Young

My American League pick is a boring one, but I see this playing out as a three-player race among Gerrit Cole, Shane Bieber, and Lucas Giolito.

Cole plays on the best team of the three. While that shouldn’t (and usually doesn’t) matter on the surface, his supporting cast will help solidify his case by saving him some runs on defense, and perhaps even boosting his win total by a game or two.

Like Flaherty, Cole stacks up well within his own division, a rarity in the always-grueling American League East. Toronto could make some noise, but the Rays took a step back, the Red Sox are in transition mode, and the Orioles just aren’t very good. 

Plus, Cole is one of the best pitchers in baseball. His ERA hasn’t been north of three since 2017, and his WHIP has placed below 1.00 in each of the last two seasons. Cole should also challenge the 300-strikeout mark, a number he blew past in 2019 with the Astros. He pitches deep into games and was one of just five starters last year to throw multiple complete games. That’ll certainly help his strikeout numbers as well.

Cole is a bonafide ace on the best team in the American League. While we’re getting pretty short odds, the underwhelming AL Cy Young field should be a much simpler one for Cole to navigate if he pitches to the numbers on the back of his baseball card. He’s finished in the top five in Cy Young voting in four of his eight seasons and each of the last three.

This is the year he finally gets over the hump.

Pick: Gerrit Cole (+350 at DraftKings Sportsbook)

Check out our consensus odds to win the AL Cy Young Award >>

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Mike Wagenman is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him on Twitter @mjwags23.