Atlanta Braves: Composition of a Cy Young Award Winner (Part 1)

Considering past Cy Young winners and loads of statistics, we take a look at which Atlanta Braves’ starting pitcher is most likely to win the 2020 Cy Young.

The Atlanta Braves franchise has won the second most Cy Young awards in the history of the game with seven — six of them coming in the ’90s with the big three.

But the last time a Braves player has won the distinguished pitching award was in 1998 when Tom Glavine won it for the second time.

What does it take to win a Cy Young?

With a promising mix of youngsters on the way up and a veteran who still showed he could hang with the cool kids last year, let’s take a look at which Atlanta Braves’ starting pitcher is most likely to win the Cy Young in 2020.

In 2019 the Cy Young Award was dominated by strikeouts. NL winner Jacob deGrom and AL representative Justin Verlander both exceeded 30% k-rates. Verlander was half-way between 30 and 40!

In 2015 Dallas Keuchel won it with a 61.7% groundball rate. That season Keuchel induced three groundballs to every flyball hit against him.

In 2016 Rick Porcello won the AL Cy Young while only striking out 7.63 batters per nine innings. That season stands out as an outlier of greatness in an otherwise solid pitching career for Rick.

Some even refer to it as fluky. What did Porcello do that season that led him to a Cy Young that was so different? Was it all luck?

Porcello is a very good control pitcher with a career BB/9 of 2.1. He has only walked 5.5% of hitters in his career. In 2016 he was in peak form with a 1.2 BB/9 and a 3.6% BB-rate. In 2016, out of every 100 batters faced he only walked three whole men and one from the mid-torso down.

Being a Cy Young winner means doing what you have to do, within your skillset, to prevent the opposing team’s cleats from stepping on home plate. There’s more than one way of accomplishing this.

In this article, to determine which Braves’ pitcher is most likely to win a Cy Young in 2020, we’ll take a look at stats from all different angles and from all different types of pitchers. Here are the categories we’ll be reviewing in the following slides.

We have broken the following article up into two separate parts or two articles. The first part reviews a few past Cy Young Winners and their varying and individually unique styles. The second part breaks down the top four candidates for the Braves to hoist the NL Cy Young for the first time since Tom Glavine won it in 1998. 

We broke it up into two parts for two reasons.

1. Easy Digestion- We want you to be able to process all of the information in time. It’s like when you jump to a conclusion about a movie you just saw, you should really give it a day or two of digesting before you finalize your thoughts.
2. In the vain of digesting information, the reality is… I know most of you read this while you are on the toilet. Breaking it into two parts provides you with convenient reading while dropping a deuce while your legs are able to maintain proper circulation.
3. I just came up with a third reason, dropping a deuce is a useful metaphor for how we will drop the second part of this article on Saturday. So you read on and drop your deuce, and take comfort in knowing that Tomahawk Take will drop the deuce of this article later on.

Now that we are all on the same page…Here’s what to look forward to in our two-part series on the composition of  Cy Young Award winner and which one of the Braves Big Four is most likely to win the award in 2020.

1. 2019’s Cy Young breakdowns and how different styles can be equally effective.
2. Different methods, same results
3. Batted-Ball BABIP breakdown and WTH line drives? (End of Part One)
4. Cole Hamels (Beginning of Part Two)
5. Mike Foltynewicz
6. Max Fried
7. Mike Soroka
8. Conclusion