On Sunday, Yankees ace and Cy Young frontrunner Cam Schlittler shut down the crosstown rival Mets for six shutout innings, giving up just one hit and striking out eight while lowering his season ERA to an anemic 1.95.
While Schlittler seems like a shoe-in to at least finish in the top two in the American League Cy Young award race, with Blue Jays ace Dylan Cease seemingly a similarly worthy candidate.
However, Yankees fans were a little perturbed after captain Aaron Judge, who is usually pretty tight-lipped and deflective during his media availability, seemingly tipped his hand on how valuable he feels Schlittler has been this year.
When asked whether he feels Schlittler should be in consideration for not just the Cy Young but the American League MVP, Judge quipped: “He’s definitely pitching like an MVP. But they’ve got a Cy Young Award for a reason — best pitcher in the game. He’s got my vote, definitely, for the Cy Young.”
Chris Kirschner, who covers the Yankees for the Athletic, argued Judge’s comments were too humble, and that Schlittler’s excellence should put him firmly in the AL MVP conversation.
In making that argument, Kirschner pointed out that Schlittler’s 6.0 Fangraphs Wins Above Replacement (fWAR) ranks second in the AL, behind Royals star Bobby Witt Jr. (6.5) and above Astros star Yordan Alvarez (5.8). Meanwhile, Schlittler’s 7.1 Baseball Reference WAR leads all AL players, a good tick above Tigers rookie Kevin McGonigle (6.3), Witt (6.3), and Alvarez (5.8).
Obviously, fans had quite a bit to say about this debate, with Judge opting for realism – let Schlittler hammer home the AL Cy Young, a prestigious award on its own, before putting him in a conversation that is by its nature hard to evaluate.
While Schlittler can easily become the seventh Yankee pitcher to win the award, it does beg the question: How far should we go in evaluating pitcher worth, and at what point do we start having some uncomfortable conversations?
For starters, let’s point out the stakes, seeing as baseball is a game of tradition and old ways. If the Baseball Writers Association of America were to decide that Schlittler should be the AL MVP this year, that would make Schlittler the first AL pitcher to win the award since Justin Verlander in 2011, and first pitcher since Clayton Kershaw in 2014.
Let’s look at the season stats that 2014 Kersh had to put him in that position, and the two runner-ups.
Kershaw: 8.2 bWAR, 21-3, 1.77 ERA, 198.1 IP, 197 ERA+
Stanton: 6.5 bWAR, .288 AVG, 37 HR, 105 RBI, 161 wRC+
McCutchen: 6.4 bWAR, .314 AVG, 25 HR, 83 RBI, 169 wRC+
Now, let’s take a look at where Schlittler lies compared to this year’s top AL MVP candidates, with all stats as of September 14th.
Schlittler: 7.1 bWAR, 14-6, 1.95 ERA, 184.2 IP, 216 ERA+
Witt Jr. 6.3 bWAR, .291 AVG, 18 HR, 54 RBI, 121 wRC+
Cease: 6.0 bWAR, 11-5, 2.38 ERA, 166.1 IP, 186 ERA+
Alvarez: 5.8 bWAR, .310 AVG, 38 HR, 96 RBI, 175 wRC+
Caminero: 5.2 bWAR, .279 AVG, 40 HR, 95 RBI, 145 wRC+
That’s a lot to unpack. For starters, it’s worth acknowledging just how hard it is for a pitcher to even get into this conversation. If the opinions of sports betting companies were taken at face value, it would seem like Alvarez is the man to beat for AL MVP, with major sportsbooks like betMGM and DraftKings putting Schlittler between +6000 and +10000.
I’d normally pause to include the betting companies in this conversation, but look at Schlittler’s stats compared to Kershaw’s individual MVP season. Schlittler, by all accounts, is right there with the two future Hall of Famers, yet the sportsbooks seem to feel that putting money on him to bring in the MVP is a lost cause.
Even with a season that’s certainly comparable to the last pitcher MVP, Schlittler’s barely in the conversation.
Then, there’s the obvious argument about Yankee bias, because Jacob Misiorowski is having an equally good, if not better, season than Schlittler and he’s been drowned out in an NL MVP conversation dominated by Cubs star Pete Crow-Armstrong and perennial MVP candidate Shohei Ohtani. One could easily say: ‘The only reason Schlittler’s even in the MVP conversation is because he’s a Yankee.’
The question of how far we’re willing to go on evaluating pitcher value starts somewhere around how much better a pitcher is than the average pitcher (ERA+) and ends around how much he has elevated his team when on the mound.
Despite losing Judge for three and a half months, as well as slugger Giancarlo Stanton for longer, the Yankees are neck-and-neck with the Rays in the AL East title race, standing four games back of their rivals with a four-game set in the Bronx still to play.
From June 1 to September 7 – the Yankees’ time spent without their captain, the team had a 3.26 ERA, which was the best in baseball. The team had the 11th best record in baseball in that span (45-39), and somehow lost only 2.5 games on the Rays, who went 49-38.
That ERA figure is obviously not entirely tied to one player – it’s equally attributable to the Yankees’ shutdown bullpen and excellent rotation led by the four-headed monster of Max Fried, Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon behind Schlittler.
But if one player were to be cherry-picked from a staff rich in great options, it would undoubtedly be Schlittler.
In a conversation so dominated by familiarity, with Alvarez returning the highest favor among fans, sportsbooks and likely writers, it’s worth acknowledging just how good Schlittler (and Misiorowski) have been this season, while in the same breath mentioning just how great a pitcher has to be in order to even be a footnote in the MVP conversation.
The reason Kershaw won MVP in 2014 seems to be the exact reason Misiorowski won’t win MVP this year – while Kershaw led the NL in WAR, the clincher was that there wasn’t really a position player alternative, with neither Stanton or McCutchen putting together historic, inarguable seasons. That clincher doesn’t exist for the NL this year, as Crow-Armstrong is putting together a historic season for the North Siders.
In the AL, I’d argue it’s a different story. Alvarez winning the Triple Crown – which is usually an MVP clincher – seems like a long-shot despite him leading in batting average, home runs and RBIs for much of the year. Witt Jr is a true five-tool player whose value speaks for itself, but he isn’t having a historic season; the same goes for Junior Caminero, though he has been incredible this season. And Cease – Schlittler’s only competition for the Cy Young – is in the conversation, too, but is still a level below him in ERA+ and WAR.
These are the terms of the argument made for Schlittler, as is the case with any pitcher, to win MVP: you must lead in WAR, there cannot be a qualified position player alternative, and you must put together some sort of history. For Schlittler, the history was made with his AL-record 1.14 ERA in his first 16 road starts this season, which argues that even away from the bright lights at 161st and River Ave, Schlittler can not only still take care of business, but thrive even more.
The main point of this article isn’t to argue that Schlittler deserves to win MVP. But to close, the question is: if a pitcher goes out and competes every fifth day instead of almost every day, why are there so many obstacles to making a case for them to win MVP?
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