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Does Shohei Ohtani have a shot at winning the AL Cy Young Award?

By Zachary Levine |
Chicago White Sox v Los Angeles Angels; Shohei Ohtani
Chicago White Sox v Los Angeles Angels; Shohei Ohtani / Sean M. Haffey/GettyImages
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LA Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani is a lot of things. He’s an All-Star, a Silver Slugger, a former Rookie of the Year, and of course an MVP. However, there is still one more individual title Ohtani has yet to add to his ledger, Cy Young winner.

Due to having substantially less innings pitched than the rest of the competition, it was assumed that Ohtani would never be in serious contention for the Cy Young.

However, while it’s true that Ohtani will still finish behind the AL’s top starters in innings pitched, his utter dominance on the mound this season may be too much for voters to ignore.

2022 could very well be the year Shohei Ohtani wins his first Cy Young Award with the LA Angels.

First, before getting into his actual performance, let’s address the innings problem and why it stands as the biggest obstacle in Shohei Ohtani’s quest to win the first Cy Young Award of his career and the first for any LA Angels pitcher since Bartolo Colon in 2005.

Innings pitched is obviously a major factor when it comes to deciding who will win the Cy Young. Since the award’s inception in 1956, only four starting pitchers (in non-shortened seasons) have ever won the award with less than 200 innings pitched.

The good news, though, is that all four have come in the last eight seasons, including both winners in 2021, with reigning NL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes’ 167 innings pitched being the lowest total ever by a starting pitcher in a normal season. Plus, Carlos Rodon managed a fifth-place finish in last year’s AL Cy Young voting despite only having 132.2 innings pitched across 24 starts.

Clearly, as starters are tossing fewer innings than ever, voters are starting to put less emphasis on it as a deciding factor. Case in point, no one in the American League even reached 200 innings pitched in 2021.

Keeping that in mind, with 13 starts and 74 innings already this year, Ohtani is on pace for around 28 starts and roughly 150-160 innings pitched. Even if he falls short of officially qualifying for the final leaderboards, this total should still be enough to convince voters to not completely overlook him like in 2021 (23 starts, 130.1 IP) when he was completely shutout with zero votes.

With all of the innings stuff out of the way, let’s take a look at just how elite Shohei Ohtani has been for the LA Angels through the first three months of the season.

Shohei Ohtani is having a career year on the mound for the LA Angels in 2022.

As of July 1, Shohei Ohtani is seventh in the AL in fWAR (2.3) and fifth in strikeouts (101) despite having upwards of 20 less innings pitched than some of his contemporaries.

In terms of rate stats, Shohei dominates the leaderboards in both traditional and advanced metrics.

On the traditional side, among all AL starters with at least 70 IP, his 2.68 ERA is the ninth best in the league, with his 2.53 FIP slotting in at third and his 1.01 WHIP being good for sixth place. Likewise, his .209 batting average against also cracks the top 10 at ninth overall, while his 12.28 K/9 and 2.07 BB/9 earn him second place and ninth place, respectively.

For as amazing as these numbers look, Ohtani’s advanced statistics are somehow even better, suggesting that he may actually continue improving as we get deeper into the season. Right now he’s sixth in the league in xERA (2.83), second in xFIP (2.52) and second in SIERA (2.54).

A big reason why these numbers are so low is that Shohei has done a masterful job this season in inducing weak contact and limiting hard contact, currently leading the AL with a 21.5% soft contact rate and sitting in sixth in hard contact rate at 26.0%.

Also, in case anyone somehow forgot, Ohtani is doing all of this while being a full-time DH. He's not on the mound fully rested like everyone else is, and yet he is still just as dominant. Rob Friedman, AKA the Pitching Ninja, even made the claim that if Shohei just focused solely on pitching, he would probably win multiple Cy Youngs easy.

Taking this all together, Ohtani is not just having the best season of his career as a pitcher, he’s in the midst of one of the greatest seasons ever by an Angels pitcher. But is that enough to win the Cy Young?

Despite his incredible performance so far, winning the Cy Young is still a longshot for Shohei Ohtani.

Shohei Ohtani faces some serious competition in the race for the AL Cy Young.

The biggest competition for Shohei Ohtani right now is the current frontrunner for the award, Shane McClanahan. Having a sophomore season for the ages, McClanahan leads the AL with a 1.77 ERA, 2.33 xERA, 2.02 xFIP, 2.20 SIERA, 0.83 WHIP, and 123 strikeouts on top of his 2.5 fWAR. Honestly, it will take a massive regression from him for anyone else to have a realistic shot at winning the Cy Young.

Beyond McClanahan, there are other young guys having breakout years too, like Alek Manoah and Dylan Cease, both of whom have Ohtani beat in ERA and xERA and are about even with him in many other categories. There’s also perennial contender Justin Verlander who continues to defy father time by putting up some of the best numbers of his career at age 39, including a 2.03 ERA.

Kevin Gausman is a major threat as well thanks to his league-leading 1.70 FIP and 3.6 fWAR, even though he only has a 2.93 ERA.

Bottom line, the 2022 AL Cy Young race is absolutely brutal.

Having said that, we’re not even halfway through the 2022 season yet. Anything can happen over the next few months. If Ohtani can continue on his current pace while a couple of the other contenders run into some trouble, be it performance or injury related, his odds of winning the Cy Young will skyrocket.

At the bare minimum, even if he doesn’t win, Shohei should be afforded the same consideration Rodon was last year and find himself on many voters’ ballots, maybe securing a top-five finish as well.

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Knowing how competitive he is, coming up short this year will probably just motivate Ohtani to do even better next season.

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