There was no better sentimental favorite to win one of Major League Baseball’s major awards this season than Justin Verlander.
What could be more dramatic than Verlander — a two-time Cy Young Award winner, a World Series champion and a Hall of Fame lock — coming back from Tommy John surgery at age 39 and moving into even more elite company by winning a third Cy Young?
Of course, wagering is a bottom-line endeavor with little room for sentimentality, and so Verlander opened the season with reasonably long odds — +1500 at DraftKings, tied for eighth in the American League — of completing the Cy Young hat trick.
Five months later, that’s looking like a pretty good investment.
Verlander has exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations by going 15-3 with a 1.85 ERA in 21 starts. He leads the majors in wins and ERA while ranking second in WHIP (0.86) and sixth in strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.58).
The red-hot return has made what once seemed nearly impossible — Verlander joining the 300-win club — a realistic goal. Verlander has 241 wins, leaving him and his almost-as-good-as-new right elbow three or four seasons similar to this one from reaching perhaps baseball’s most impressive milestone.
In the short-term, though, there’s a Cy Young to win for Verlander, who is the clear favorite (he’s at -165 at DraftKings and -155 at BetMGM as of today) yet has little margin for error with fellow aces — Dylan Cease of the Chicago White Sox and Shane McClanahan of the Tampa Bay Rays — each putting together impressive seasons.
Cease, running second behind Verlander at both DraftKings (+240) and BetMGM (+225), hasn’t been as efficient as his competition. The right-hander is tied for the major league lead in walks (53) over 122 1/3 innings, which has him tied for 34th in the bigs and well behind Verlander (136 innings) and McClanahan (128 1/3 innings).
But the high-wire act is working for Cease, who ranks second in the majors behind Verlander in ERA (1.98) and second in the AL behind Gerrit Cole in strikeouts (166). Most impressive of all, Cease enters today’s start against the Kansas City Royals having allowed one earned run or fewer in each of his last 13 starts, the longest such streak ever by a true starting pitcher (i.e. excluding openers).
McClanahan, listed at +650 today at both DraftKings and BetMGM, has faded a bit since allowing one earned run or fewer in 10 of 11 starts between May 11 through July 13 — his final outing before starting for the AL in the All-Star Game. The 25-year-old left-hander is 0-2 with a 5.60 ERA in three second-half starts, lifting his overall ERA to a still-tidy 2.24, third in the AL and fourth in the majors. His 161 strikeouts rank behind only Cole and Cease in the Junior Circuit.
Like Cease, McClanahan has a chance to make up some ground by pitching in playoff races down the stretch. With a 10 1/2-game lead in the AL West and a 12-game lead over the current third seed, the AL Central-leading Cleveland Guardians, Verlander and the Astros aren’t going to play another meaningful game until October.
But every day could be the difference between reaching the playoffs and missing the tournament for the Rays and White Sox, Tampa Bay is tied for the final wild card spot in the AL with the Baltimore Orioles (no, really, the Orioles) while Chicago is 2 1/2 games back of the Guardians in a division likely only to send one team to the postseason.
The sentimental favorite is still likely to earn the award. But a little bit of slippage by Verlander — and ace-like performances by Cease or McClanahan lifting one or both of their teams into the playoffs — can turn what looks like a redemptive coronation for Verlander into a close race down the stretch.
