I spent most of the summer thinking Chris Sale was going to get my first-place vote for the AL Cy Young award. Even in an era where advanced metrics are increasingly important criteria, Sale’s 300-strikeout season should have some significance. But the more I delved into the numbers, the clearer it became that Corey Kluber’s second-half dominance more than made up for his early-season struggles and his lost month on the disabled list.
I ranked a field of candidates in more than a dozen categories, including bWAR, fWAR, Fielding Independent Pitching, adjusted ERA, Skill-Interactive ERA (SIERA), Win Probability Added, adjusted Pitching Wins and Run Expectancy, as well as traditional stats like ERA, strikeouts, complete games, WHIP and strikeout-to-walk ratio.