Stats, history point to deGrom winning NL Cy

For most of the summer, the National League Cy Young discussion was generally considered a two-horse race. The winner, the narrative went, would either be Dodgers lefty Hyun-Jin Ryu, who carried a 1.45 ERA out of his Aug. 11 start, or Nationals righty Max Scherzer, who had a higher ERA than Ryu but bested him -- and everyone else -- in things like strikeout rate and Wins Above Replacement.

Sure, you could have made an ERA-based case for Braves rookie Mike Soroka, though Ryu had the market cornered on the "low ERA without a lot of strikeouts" lane. You could have made a deeply analytical case for Nationals righty Stephen Strasburg. It wouldn't have mattered, really. This one was Ryu/Scherzer, all the way.

... until it wasn't.

Ryu's last month has been forgettable, spending 10 days on the injured list with neck soreness and allowing 21 runs in his last four starts (after allowing just 23 earned runs in his first 22 starts), pushing his ERA up to 2.45. Scherzer has landed on the injured list two different times in the last two months, and he hasn't gone more than six innings in a start since before the All-Star Game.

They're still in the conversation, of course. Either one of them may yet win the award. They might even be the favorites. But what if they're not anymore? What about last year's winner? What if the door is once again open for Jacob deGrom?

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In his first two starts of the season, deGrom looked very much like the pitcher who won 29 of the 30 first-place votes last season. On March 28 in Washington, he struck out 10 while walking one over six scoreless innings. In April 3 in Miami, he struck out 14 while walking one over seven scoreless innings.

Then, he didn't. On April 9, against a Twins lineup we probably didn't yet know was going to be this strong, deGrom allowed 6 earned runs. It was the beginning of a bad run. He had a 0.00 ERA in his first two starts; he had a 5.31 ERA over his next seven starts. That means that he didn't get his ERA back below 3.00 until after a July 25 start, which hurt his perception somewhat when you see a high number on television every five days.

But since deGrom's bad stretch ended on May 22, he has the lowest ERA in the Majors (2.25), and the lowest FIP in the NL (2.65). He's got the third-highest strikeout rate in the NL (31.4%) and, for those analytically-inclined voters who will consider it, his Expected wOBA (.257) is second in the NL only to Scherzer.

It's not the "since May 22" award, obviously, which is important to point out because Cardinals fans will rightfully point out that Jack Flaherty has allowed a mere seven earned runs in his last 11 starts. Dodger fans haven't forgotten that Ryu went 16 starts over three months without walking more than one batter in a game. Nationals fans will point to Scherzer's historic June/July run where he struck out 79 against six walks in seven starts.

So let's get back to the full season, and where deGrom ranks among other qualified National League pitchers in a variety of stats voters might consider.

ERA -- 2.76 -- 5th
Innings pitched -- 176 -- 5th
FIP -- 2.86 -- 2nd
Strikeout rate -- 31.1% -- 2nd
Strikeouts -- 220 -- 2nd
WAR (FanGraphs) -- 5.7 -- 2nd
WAR (Baseball Reference) -- 5.4 -- 3rd
HR / 9 -- 0.928 -- 5th (tied)
OPS against -- .616 -- 4th
Expected wOBA -- .264 -- 3rd

He's top five in all of this, which makes the pretty strong argument that he's at least in the conversation. So why hasn't it felt that way?

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Let's get back to "the narrative" for a second. We do, believe it or not, have a somewhat unscientific way to quantify that, and then a somewhat more scientific way to project the voting.

Every few weeks, approximately 40 MLB.com writers participate in a straw poll to name their Cy Young picks in each league to that point of the season. It's an interesting cross-section -- it includes local beat writers as well as national writers and editors, who approach stats and metrics very differently -- and looking back, it allows us to see what the prevailing sentiment was at that particular time. (As the instructions note: MLB.com reporters were asked to rank their top three choices in each league, with five points for a first-place vote, three for second place and one for third.)

What that means is that with each update, we can see where deGrom ranked, but more importantly, you'll see that until August, he didn't rank. At all.

May 14 -- Castillo (13 first place votes), Paddack (15), Ryu (14). deGrom: zero votes.

June 5 -- Ryu (35), Scherzer (2), Greinke (0). deGrom: zero votes.

June 25 -- Ryu (27), Scherzer (8), Castillo (0). deGrom: zero votes.

July 16 -- Scherzer (26), Ryu (11), Castillo (1). deGrom: zero votes.

Aug. 6 -- Ryu (31), Scherzer (16), deGrom (0).

Aug. 27 -- Ryu (22), Scherzer (11), deGrom (4).

That feels like in part due to ERA, because Ryu being south of 2.00 was going to make him a slam dunk in the same way it was for deGrom last year. It feels like in part its due to this season simply not being quite as impressive as last year for deGrom, which is both true and perhaps somewhat slightly unfair.

So there's your "narrative," as it were, but what about where we stand now? So far, we've made the case that deGrom ought to be in the conversation with Ryu and Scherzer, and maybe also Strasburg, Castillo, Soroka, Patrick Corbin, and late surges from Flaherty and Gray. We haven't really made the strong case that he ought to win. If you're looking for one, let's provide it.

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For many years, Tom Tango -- for the last three seasons the senior database architect at MLB.com, but a well-known member of the baseball stats community long before that -- has operated his "Cy Young predictor," which attempts not to answer the question of who should win, but who will win, based on the voting tendencies of previous years. The formula is simple -- Cy Young Points = ​(IP/2 - ER) + SO/10 + W -- and it's been relatively successful. (For example, in 2015, it nailed the top five in both leagues in the right order.)

If you were to look at the current NL list ... you'll see that neither Scherzer nor Ryu are at the top. Instead, deGrom is.

64 points -- deGrom
63 points -- Ryu
61 points -- Scherzer
58 points -- Gray / Strasburg

That's basically a tie, of course. But if we go back to the leaderboard on the first of each month, you can see from how far back deGrom came. On May 1, he was 23rd in the NL, behind such luminaries as Caleb Smith and Zach Davies, and while that might tell you more about attempting to gauge a full season award after one month of play than anything, it also tells you what things felt like after deGrom allowed 5 earned runs in 4 innings to Milwaukee on April 26, leaving him with an inflated 4.85 ERA.

In fact, if we look at the five current leaders here -- deGrom, Ryu, Scherzer, Sonny Gray, and Strasburg -- and take their positions in this tool on the first of each month, you can see why he seemed like almost an afterthought. For most of the year, he was.

Perhaps the better question isn't "why deGrom?" so much as "why not deGrom?"

It's true that he's got just an 8-8 record, but it's also true that deGrom won last year with a 10-9 record, hopefully putting an end forever to including pitcher win/loss record in these discussions. It's true that he's got a "narrative deficit" for most of the season, but it's also true that a hot finish might stick in voters' minds, especially if Ryu can't figure things out and Scherzer isn't back to full strength.

Given a vote, this writer would probably side with Scherzer, if the ballots were due today. But there's still four or five more starts to sort things out, and neither Ryu nor Scherzer are at the peaks of their games right now. They're not the only two names anymore. The winner of this year's Cy might just look a lot like the winner of last year's Cy.