NL Cy Young Race: Chicago Cubs' Justin Steele or Padres' Blake Snell?

With the regular season winding down, Padres pitcher Blake Snell and Cubs ace Justin Steele are the favorites for the National League Cy Young.

Jack Vita | Sep 5, 2023

NL Cy Young Race: Chicago Cubs' Justin Steele or Padres' Blake Snell? /

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Chicago Cubs

With just under four weeks remaining in the regular season, the National League Cy Young Award race appears to be very tight, with San Diego Padres ace Blake Snell and Chicago Cubs budding star Justin Steele leading the way.

Most sportsbooks have Snell as the odds-on favorite, but Steele should be in pole position to receive the honor for the league's best pitcher, entering the final stretch of the season.

Snell is experiencing a resurgent season, leading the National League in ERA at a 2.50 clip, across 155.0 innings pitched. He also has allowed the fewest number of walks among qualified pitchers in the NL this season. It is worth mentioning, however, that he pitches his home games in a pitcher's park, and in a division with a number of ballparks that are favorable to pitchers.

Baseball Savant's Statcast ranked the Padres' home, Petco Park, as the 29th hitter's park via Park Factor, in 2022. Park Factor measures the conditions and dimensions of Major League ballparks, attempting to put each stadium into its proper context. Colorado Rockies hitters are usually dinged for playing their home games at Coors Field. Shouldn't the parks that a pitcher throws in similarly be taken into consideration?

San Diego has the second best pitcher's park according to Statcast, while division foes San Francisco Giants (7th) and Los Angeles Dodgers (13th) also rank in the top half of the league. Meanwhile, the Arizona Diamondbacks (21st) and Rockies (30th) are highly favorable to hitters.

So, what does ERA+ have to say about it?

ERA+ is a metric that takes into account the ballpark factors when weighing ERA. Snell has a stellar 163 ERA+, second to Steele's 177 mark. So while Snell's ERA (2.50) is slightly better than Steele's is (2.55), his ERA+ is 11 points behind Steele's.

The Cubs' ace also has a lower WHIP (1.138 to 1.252) and FIP, a statistic that stands for Fielding Independent Pitching. FIP effectively measures how pitchers do, independent from the defense behind them. Pitchers will experience both good and bad luck from balls that are hit. Steele's FIP (2.98) is 70 points better than Snell's (3.69).

In addition to ERA+, WHIP and FIP, Steele bests Snell in SO/W (4.64 to 2.26), and has a better BB/9 (1.97 to to 5.17) and HR/9 (0.66 to 0.87).

What really should tip the scale though is how valuable the lefty has been to a Chicago team that is surprisingly in contention for a division title this late in the season. Very few pundits and media members alike expected this team to contend for a playoff spot, much less an NL Central division title. The Padres, on the other hand, have severely disappointed.

By and large, the Cubs' pitching rotation has been rather thin all season long. The club has had four pitchers make 20 or more starts this season: Jameson Taillon (25 starts), Marcus Stroman (23), Drew Smyly and Steele (26). Taillon and Smyly, who each inked multi-year contracts with Chicago last winter, have been severe disappointments. Among pitchers that have tossed 125 or more innings this season, Taillon has the third-worst ERA (5.75). Smyly hasn't been much better, logging a 5.22 ERA, and earlier this summer, he was removed from the rotation for his poor performance.

It's been a tale of two seasons for Stroman. Over his first 16 starts, the veteran posted a 2.28 ERA. In his ensuing seven starts, Stroman allowed 30 earned runs over 30.0 innings pitched, good for a dreadful 9.00 ERA. Stroman is currently on the IL, and hasn't pitched since July.

Rookie Hayden Wesneski also began the season in the Cubs' pitching rotation but underperformed and was moved to the bullpen. Over 11 starts, Wesneski clocked a 5.51 ERA.

Steele has been the only constant in Chicago's rotation this season. The Mississippi native has a 16-3 record entering Tuesday and the Cubs have won 19 of his starts. The ace's presence has made a huge difference for a club in the hunt for its first postseason berth in a 162-game season since 2018.

Without Steele, are the Cubs 16 games worse? 19? Perhaps eight or ten games? We don't know, but I imagine the total is higher than Steele's 4.0 WAR (via Baseball Reference).

As the pressure continues to mount, the left hander has risen to the occasion. In a critical series opener against the Giants on Labor Day, Steele struck out 12, allowing just two hits and two walks, in what may have been the finest performance of the 28-year-old's career. Chicago went on to win that game 5-0.

Some believed that Steele's strong start to the season was a fluke. It wasn't.

The lefty seems to be getting better as the season goes along, delivering in must-win games for his club, and establishing himself as an ace.

There still is plenty of baseball to be played, but with just under a month left in the regular season, Justin Steele is my frontrunner for the National League Cy Young.

Check out the latest episode of the Jack Vita Show, where Orestes Destrade discusses the Cubs' incredible turnaround, and the latest baseball news!

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Published Sep 5, 2023

JACK VITA

Jack Vita is a writer and contributor to Sports Illustrated's Inside the Cubs, and host of the Jack Vita Show, a popular sports podcast available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and wherever podcasts are found. Jack is a 2017 graduate of Valparaiso University, in northwest Indiana. Since completing his degree, Jack has created his own independent sports media outlet (JackVita.com) and podcast (the Jack Vita Show). He has featured prominent guests from the worlds of sports and entertainment including Brian Urlacher, Scot Pollard, Bob Nightengale, Dan O'Dowd, and Survivor icons Stephenie LaGrossa Kendrick, Cirie Fields, Danni Boatwright and "the Dragon Slayer", Coach Benjamin Wade. While studying at Valparaiso, Jack was the school newspaper's beat writer for the Valpo Crusaders men's basketball team, which won three straight Horizon League championships from 2015-2017. Traveling to cover the team, Jack had a front row seat to one of the nation's best mid-major teams, headlined by future NBA Draft pick Alec Peters and coached by NCAA Tournament hero Bryce Drew. Jack hosted a weekly sports radio show and provided play-by-play and color commentary services for ESPN 3 and the university's student radio station, WVUR-FM, 95.1 The Source, covering Valparaiso men's soccer, women's basketball, softball and volleyball. Jack also covered these sports, in addition to men's and women's tennis, baseball and women's soccer for the school newspaper, The Torch. While he was in college, Jack interned for and co-hosted Jewell On Sports, a sports radio program on AM 1050 WLIP in Kenosha, Wisconsin. There, he interviewed various pro athletes such as Ahman Green, Javon Walker and Javier Arenas, in addition to talking sports with the late, great Brad Jewell. Jack also interned for 22nd Century Media, a now defunct newspaper corporation that provided news to the North Shore of Chicago. With 22nd Century Media, Jack wrote post-game recaps, feature stories about local athletes, reviews of local restaurants and compiled the newspaper's "Pet of the Week" and "Athlete of the Week" sections, while providing copy-editing services. Before attending Valparaiso, Jack enrolled at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he studied for two years before transferring. He is a high school graduate of New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Illinois. You can follow Jack on Twitter @JackVitaShow, subscribe to his podcast, the Jack Vita Show, wherever podcasts are found, and reach him via email at jack@jackvita.com.