A look at Clayton Kershaw’s Cy Young candidacy

If Clayton Kershaw hadn’t missed 2 1/2 months with a back injury, he’d be well on his way to a fourth Cy Young award. Unfortunately, he did get hurt and his chances are seemingly all but shot. However, there have been some instances when a starting pitcher with as few innings as Kershaw have garnered some significant Cy Young votes, so his candidacy is still worth looking at.

Kershaw is at 142 innings, and he’s averaging 7.1 inning per start, so let’s just say he gets to 149 innings (for argument’s sake). No starting pitcher in the last 40 years — which is essentially the same as saying no starting pitcher ever since starters threw many more innings back in the day — has ever won the Cy Young award with fewer than 150 innings pitched. Here’s a breakdown of where starting pitchers have placed in Cy Young voting in the last 40 years among pitchers with fewer than 180 innings pitched.

Player	Year	IP	Cy Finish
Chris Sale	2014	174	3rd
Doug Fister	2014	167	8th
Jake Arrieta	2014	156.2	T-9th
Matt Moore	2013	150.1	T-9th
Jose Fernandez	2013	172.2	3rd
Matt Harvey	2013	178.1	4th
Zack Greinke	2013	177.2	8th
Francisco Liriano	2013	161	T-9th
Ryan Vogelsong	2011	179.2	T-11th
Clay Buchholz	2010	173.2	6th
Daisuke Matsuzaka	2008	167.2	4th
CC Sabathia	2008*	130.2	5th
Bartolo Colon	2002*	117	6th
Roy Oswalt	2001	141.2	5th
John Smoltz	1998	167.2	T-4th
Randy Johnson	1998*	84.1	7th
Dwight Gooden	1987	179.2	T-5th
Rick Sutcliffe	1984*	150.1	1st

*Traded MidseasonOnly one pitcher who has thrown fewer than 180 innings in either league has won the award, and that was Sutcliffe way back in 1984. And even that comes with a caveat since he threw 94 1/3 innings with Cleveland before being traded to the Cubs to make 20 starts and compile a 16-1 record (important because win-loss record mattered much more 30-plus years ago).

Other than Sutcliffe, the best finishes were two third-place finishes and three fourth-place finishes. And even in those instances, the fewest number of innings pitched were 167 2/3, which is significantly more than what Kershaw is projected to end with.

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The National League has no shortage of viable candidates for the award this season. Noah Syndergaard might be the leading contender, as his numbers among qualified pitchers are outstanding — 2.60 ERA (third in NL), 2.28 FIP (best in MLB) and 6.5 fWAR (best in MLB) — but there is also Kyle Hendricks, who has a sub-2 ERA (1.99) and a solid 3.21 FIP. If you’re into innings pitched, Max Scherzer is your guy, as he leads the NL (second in majors) in that department and his peripherals are great as well. Madison Bumgarner is second in the NL in innings pitched and is also posting some strong peripherals.

Then we come to the late Jose Fernandez. Even before his tragic passing, he was a leading contender — the leader in some folks’ eyes — for the award. His strikeout percentage is the best in the game, as is his K%-BB% (26.9%), and his FIP is 0.02 points behind Syndergaard’s. As such, I would not be at all upset if he won the award posthumously, both because of the circumstances and because you could argue he was on his way to winning it anyway. Actually, at this point I’d be a little put off if Fernandez doesn’t win it.

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The difference between Kershaw and his competition this year and the players before him who have placed in Cy Young voting is that Kershaw was flat-out dominant before he got hurt and has been just as dominant since returning.

He’s going to get close to 150 innings, and his 150 innings are much, much more valuable than, say, another really good pitcher’s 180 innings. Sure, that might mean the other player gets four more quality starts (not in the sense of the statistic), but Kershaw’s rate stats are better in a shorter time frame, and he’s so good there are even some counting stats in which he’s still better.

fWAR is one of those counting stats. He’s tied with Syndergaard at 6.5. If you extrapolate it to give Kershaw seven innings per start over 33 starts, Kershaw’s fWAR would be 10.6 and we’d be arguing for his NL MVP candidacy instead. Extrapolating in that manner assumes a lot, mostly that Kershaw would continue pitching at the level he had been pitching at, but the point is that when he was pitching he was lapping the field, and I’d safely say he would’ve at least have bested his career-best fWAR he posted last year of 8.5.

The other big one is win probability added. Kershaw, despite missing 2 1/2 months (which will equate to 12 starts in a normal 33-start season), is second in MLB at 4.23. He’s behind only Jon Lester at 4.82, but Lester has accumulated his WPA in 55 2/3 more innings.

So even though Kershaw has missed over a third of the season, he’s still near the top of two key stat leaderboards, which is ridiculous and goes to show just how far ahead he’s been this year when he takes the mound.

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Despite his excellence, I’ve already conceded Kershaw isn’t going to win. He shouldn’t. But he will absolutely get votes. I’d even predict he’ll get at least one first-place vote from some progressive baseball writer who has an NL Cy Young vote. Either way, win or lose, it’s still remarkable that this is even something we can legitimately talk about.