Workhorse Wheeler named a Cy Young finalist
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PHILADELPHIA -- People love to talk about the importance and value of starting pitchers who take the ball every five days and throw 200 or more innings in a season.
The only pitcher in baseball who has thrown more innings the past five seasons than Phillies ace Zack Wheeler (829 1/3 innings) is Aaron Nola (850). Wheeler is going to find out again how much workload matters as a finalist for the 2024 NL Cy Young Award.
The BBWAA announced on Monday night that Wheeler is a finalist alongside Atlanta’s Chris Sale and Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes. The Cy Young winners will be announced on MLB Network at 6 p.m. ET on Nov. 20.
Sale is probably the favorite, although Wheeler made a strong closing statement in the final few weeks of the season.
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Wheeler finished the season 16-7 with 200 innings pitched, a 2.57 ERA, 224 strikeouts and 6.1 WAR per Baseball Reference. He led NL pitchers in WHIP (0.955), opponents’ batting average (.192), opponents’ on-base percentage (.253), opponents’ OPS (.581), opponents’ wOBA (.256), quality starts (26) and starts of six-plus innings (26). Wheeler trailed Sale by only 0.1 bWAR for the NL lead among pitchers. Sale also had 6.4 WAR per FanGraphs to lead the NL. Wheeler finished second with 5.4 fWAR.
But Wheeler faced 85 more batters (787 to 702) and threw 22 1/3 more innings than Sale, who was limited to 177 2/3 innings because of a late-season injury.
“He’s a Cy Young, man,” Bryce Harper said in September. “I don’t think anybody in baseball is better than him at this point. I don’t think anybody is in the National League, either. The people down in Atlanta probably think the same thing about the guy throwing down there [Sale], but I thought [Wheeler] got robbed of it three years ago. I believe he earned it this year.”
Wheeler finished second to Corbin Burnes for the 2021 NL Cy Young Award, despite pitching 46 1/3 more innings than Burnes, who finished with 12 first-place votes and 151 points. Wheeler finished with 12 first-place votes and 141 points. It was the closest NL Cy Young vote since the ballot expanded from three pitchers to five in 2010.
Maybe this time BBWAA voters will consider how closely Wheeler and Sale matched each other throughout the season, but also look at how Wheeler finished.