Texas Rangers Starter Second in Cy Young Poll

Texas Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi was the American League Pitcher of the month for May.

Texas Rangers starter Nathan Eovaldi would finish second in Cy Young Award voting if the season ended this week, per a MLB.com poll of 49 site experts two months into the season.

The experts voted in the same manner that voters for the Cy Young Award will vote at the end of the season — a 5-4-3-2-1 scale format, with five points for a first-place vote, etc.

Tampa Ray Rays starter Shane McClanahan ended up the clear favorite in the American League, garnering 29 of the 49 first-place votes.

The Rays (46-19) and Rangers (40-21) will meet each other for the first time this weekend at Tropicana Field in a battle of the American League’s top two teams.

While McClanahan has been integral to the Rays’ league-best start, Eovaldi has been just as helpful to the Rangers putting together the AL’s second-best record. He is 8-2 with a 2.24 ERA and is coming off throwing six innings of one-hit baseball on Sunday against the Seattle Mariners.

In May, Eovaldi was named both the AL Pitcher of the Month and the Rangers Player of the Month.

Eovaldi went 4-0 with a 0.96 ERA in five starts, allowing one-or-zero runs in four of his five outings. His 0.96 ERA ranked second-best in MLB among pitchers with 25-or-more innings, and it was just the seventh time in Rangers history that a pitcher has recorded an ERA below 1.00 in a full month (minimum 30.0 innings). His four wins were tied for the Major League lead. He also leads MLB in complete games with two.

The remaining AL Top 5 included the New York Yankees’ Gerrit Cole, Houston Astros’ Framber Valdez and Minnesota Twins’ Sonny Gray.

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